Maryland Literary Review

Current Essay Winter 2024

Byron’s Band

Jason M. Thornberry

In eighth grade, I joined the miniature orchestra at my private Christian school: Jake played violin, John the baritone horn, James, Eric, and Wendy were our clarinet section, while Byron, Warren, and I played alto saxophones. Our band teacher, Mr. Gravestone, waved a thin white baton and wore a thick brown moustache. Smirking at us, Gravestone stroked his moustache like ... Read More

Current Fiction Winter 2024

Pilgrimages

Valerie Fox

You can find a lot of reasons to keep living in a crackly French language cult-film, you know which one. There’s a man and a woman walking to the Main Street Pharmacy, in Lewisburg, Pennsylvania, a short distance from their home near the university. It is said that Isabel, Karl’s wife, has a law degree or is a rocket scientist ... Read More

Current Fiction Winter 2024

Mermaids Wanted

TJ Butler

The rage in the man’s voice: This is the kind of bullshit vacation I’d’ve gone on if I’d stayed in Saluda and had kids with Erin. He stood next to his sports car yelling at a girl leaning against the car with her head down. A gold rope chain at his neck shone dully in the sun. The girl murmured, ... Read More

Current Poetry Winter 2024

Postcard from Colorado

Todd Copeland

When we observe calmly, Bashō said, we discover all things have their fulfillment. Overturned canoes along Lake Dillon’s western shore rendered into general shapes, valley fields made tabula-rasa white. He sat alone in the cabin watching cloud shadows range mountains. Solitude and morning laziness, pine branches sagging beneath late-season snow ... Read More

Poetry Spring 2024

Favonius

Alessio Zanelli

You wonder what else can happen, now that snowdrops spangle the high pastures in the Merla days and you can wade the Great River in mid-Lent. Now that the winter spirits have vanished, fled without notice, to end up annulled in the absolute freeze of outer space. What will the May hay bring along? As you wonder this, and more, ... Read More

Essay Spring 2024

All That’s Fit for Letting Go

Heather Rounds

I don’t take up too many pandemic hobbies but one of my distractions from the many kinds of grieving is reading physics books. I fail to understand them for the most part, the content too dense, the words mostly impenetrable. But I like how small it makes me feel. I don’t mind how unsurmountable the sentences are. It reminds me ... Read More

Fiction Spring 2024

The Zipper

Caroline Bock

You switch on cable news at lunch, a peanut butter and honey sandwich. You’re watching as much to see what the Anchor is wearing— today, a structured designer A-line white dress. A zipper down the front, a sense of professionalism hinted with sex (the zipper) and then the news—an ex-President, a future President, a war, more candidates, the election is ... Read More

Fiction Spring 2024

The Witnesses

Edward Belfar

David Mellin was his real name, but we all called him Melon Head. Junior had hung that cartoonish moniker upon him on the very first day of camp for good reason, in our view. With a massive ovular head resting uneasily atop a chubby little torso, Melon Head looked like a cartoon character. He had pale, almost translucent skin, with ... Read More

Poetry Winter 2023

Aeaea

Michele Evans

[eye-ee-ah] n. a mythological island said to be the home of the goddess-sorceress circe i had no mama to show me round the kitchen for she took her last breath as i took my first. my skin honeyed and caramelized kept me in the big house, away from my own, hidden from kin but not the ruthless one always hovering ... Read More

Fiction Winter 2023

The Doctor’s Appointment

Shaun McMichael

Hi there, DeVarius. D, okay then. It’s nice to meet you, uhm, D. We have? Well! I don’t… Let’s see here. Oh, back in October. Sinus infection. That’s right. I thought I remembered you. Well, I’m glad I could fit you in today. That’s what’s nice about being on campus, huh? So. Tell me what the trouble is. I see ... Read More

Poetry Winter 2023

Emily as I Offered My Tongue as Bookmark

Darren Demaree

She is ungentle most of the time, but we’re twenty years of her never shelving me. I’m out, ribboning both sides of her curve. I like to be active & wait for her to thwap me into position ... Read More

Fiction Winter 2023

Mr. Magnetism

Richard Peabody

lives in the forest gaps where power lines run taller than trees. He soars down these green expanses until he reaches a power station and gets juiced up again, so he can squeeze out sparks, a party trick crowd pleaser. His earliest beginnings were kid’s birthday parties until he melted a cake with the snap of a finger. Mr. Magnetism ... Read More

Essay Winter 2022

An Anniversary

Gary Fincke

Before I pull off the four-lane highway, I make sure the shoulder is wide. Amish families live in the area. They drive their buggies along this road, and yet, despite the paved shoulder, I pick a spot where an open field seems level enough to take my right-side tires as insurance. When I open the door, there is plenty of ... Read More

Fiction Winter 2022

Manon, Christophe, and the Sea

Stephanie Dupal

Whenever Manon awoke from dreams in which she still played for l’Orchèstre Symphonique de Montréal, the feel of the cello lingered between her knees, and the whitecaps of her life—the echoing arcs of before, during, and after the accident—came crashing in her thoughts once more. The instrument remained with her throughout the day like a phantom limb. It was still ... Read More

Poetry Winter 2022

I mention the deer

Tina Barry

I preferred my friend’s father. Mine sat silent in cigar smoke, suave in a cheap suit. Hers, a suburban cowboy, weather-worn in plaid flannel, loud with love. “Aw, girl,” he’d say when I visited, patting my cheek, “you’re so darn cute.” On warm evenings, he’d walk with my friend, head bent to listen, one hand holding their mutt’s leash, the ... Read More

Poetry Winter 2022

THE ODDS

Sid Gold

for Arnold Gold, 1922-98 I am certain that if I heckled you long enough, chuckling sarcastically, supplying a few particulars, you would eventually recall those final games of one-on-one, the two of us alone in that schoolyard in Rego Park. You brought your A game that day, the lickety-split moves in the paint, the soft touch, playing better than I’d ... Read More

Interview Winter 2022

Interview with Anthony Moll

Jona Colson

Anthony Moll is a Queer poet, essayist, and educator. They are the author of Out of Step: A Memoir, a queer coming of age story about their experiences in the army, which won the Lambda Literary Award and the Non/Fiction Collection Prize. Anthony is a Ph.D. candidate in English, and they hold an MFA in creative writing & publishing arts ... Read More

Play Winter 2021

Audition

Greg Jenkins

Characters
BOB GAMBLE	A director; about forty
JIM GAPP	A would-be actor; mid-twenties
MAN	A fellow who may or may not be an actor; about forty

Scene

A room

Time

The Present

Poetry Winter 2021

—4/2 9:10 pm 44º Clear

Gerald Wagoner

The lone patrol car rolls. A commercial trash truck idles. Empty trains rattle below. A stranger quick draws a bird on brick. Suspended without suspense, time is elusive in limbo. Unseen bottles clink, clatter into some recycle bin. A woman scrapes her garbage can to the curb. No thrum from the great city. I might be lost in the forest, slogging through an all white ... Read More

Poetry Winter 2021

Two Poems by Caleigh Shaw

Caleigh Shaw

Appropriate Dress Length

If I was a church-going child in 2021, I’d be able to find a midi-length skirt or dress, past my knees no problem. I could have saved so much time in the Belk dressing room. When I flipped through the Delia’s catalogue, I needed a thirty-three inch dress, but all the cute ones were thirty-two. No need ... Read More

Poetry Winter 2021

Covenant

Susan Bucci Mockler

The horses thought they were waiting for you to bring them in from the pasture, in from damp night air, where sweet alfalfa, oats, hay, would be, where they always are—the horses names etched in wooden plaques over their stalls: Comet, Midnight, Scarlet, black iron latches securing them in, safely— but they were waiting for you to make them whole ... Read More

Fiction Winter 2021

Fan Fiction: Paradise Lost

Meredith Sue Willis

The Argument

Sin and Death are guarding the gates of hell when Satan arrives. Sin remembers how she got there, and Satan orders her to open the gates.

– Paradise Lost, Book II

“My babies, oh it hurts!” I cry, as the little hell hounds burst out yet again. They swarm past my face and fly up among the smoky ... Read More

The Northern Lights

Naomi Thiers

stunned me. I wasn’t the same after I stood by a lake, saw white plumes rain and flare like ghost

Poetry Winter 2021

Shirt

Ken Autrey

My hands have become his: freckles, prominent veins, wrinkles where fingers crook. Oh, how it holds his scent: motor oil,

Poetry Winter 2021

Two Poems by Monty Jones

Monty Jones

Terms

The affects and the qualia are more than I can manage, I who strive just to keep the light

Poetry Winter 2021

Senseless Violence

Christian Aguiar

Official and unofficial regrets flitter around, bemoan the way the bullets went, having never tasted life: handmade pasta pressed just

Fiction Winter 2021

Self Portrait with Tigers

Christian Ward

Tigers slipped out of my hot saké while London quietly exited. Taxis and long winding streets jungled around my ankles.

Poetry Winter 2021

This Is Why I No Longer Eat Chinese Food in November

Paul Beckman

It’s 2 a.m. and since I’m a back sleeper the blood is dripping from my nose down my philtrum over

Fiction Winter 2021

For Carmen’s Sake

Karen Regen-Tuero

When the police came, Frank was out making a soda run. He had already added seating to the living room,

Fiction Winter 2021

Old hands

Martin Malone

Vein-braided landscape Like some satellite snapshot of a tangled delta Stippled now with brown pools, Ridges risen between the inlet

Poetry Winter 2021

Less than Frank

Bayveen O’Connell

Daddy,

Trespass through the fibers of me. Take a red pen and scissors to my diary. Blot out all mention

Fiction Winter 2021

The Last One

Peter Cherches

The clerk told me I could find it in aisle 7, but as much as I looked, up and down

Fiction Winter 2021