Poetry by Edgar Kunz and Leigh Lucas, and short stories by Mary Grimm, Lesley Nneka Arimah, and Bennett Sims

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He was like tissue paper
coming apart in water.
—From Fixer, a collection of poetry by Edgar Kunz (Ecco, 2023). These lines are from "Fixer" [I held him together], which was first published (as "Piano") in The New Yorker (November 7, 2022), p. 41. It appears on pages 46-47 of the paperback. 

All that week, Bob Lilly was working on the gas tank of his car, which had to be replaced. He was doing it in my driveway because he lived with his sister, and she wouldn't let him do it at her house. He was the smartest person I had ever met, which didn't mean that he was in any way a success in life or had as much sense as my cat. 
—From "Fate and Ruin," a short story by Mary Grimm, One Story, Issue 265 (May 15, 2020).

Buchi woke to the thwack-thwack of the machete in the grass and the offended clucks of the chicken who took issue with the noise. Every few moments a ping would echo as the blade struck the stucco of the house. She counted on the sharp sound to wake her daughters.  
—From What It Means When a Man Falls from the Sky, a collection of short stories by Lesley Nneka Arimah (Riverhead Books, 2017). This section is from "Buchi's Girls," which begins on page 123 of the hardcover. This particular story originally appeared in Five Points (Vol. 16, No. 3).

The boy begs his mother to buy him a balloon. As they leave the grocery store and cross the parking lot, he holds the balloon by a string in his hand. It is round and red, and it bobs a few feet above him. Suddenly his mother looks down and orders him not to release the balloon. Her voice is stern. She says that if he loses it, she will not buy him another. The boy tightens his grip on the string. He had no intention of releasing the balloon. 
—From "Fables," a short story published in White Dialogues: Stories by Bennett Sims (Two Dollar Radio, 2017), pp. 127-139 in the paperback. "Fables" was previously published in Conjunctions and Subtropics (as "The Balloon"), and anthologized in the Pushcart Prize XXXIX. I mentioned a couple of stories from one of his other books, Other Minds and Other Stories (2023), in a blog post from 2024.

I empty my pockets of odd little flyers and tear-off numbers
for pest solutions and local handymen. I save them; some
may prove critical at the end of the world.
—From "I empty my pockets of odd little flyers," a poem published in Landsickness, a chapbook of poetry by Leigh Lucas (Tupelo Press, 2024, p. 9). This poem was first published in The Tusculum Review. 

Stories by Bennett Sims, Jared Hanson, Saïd Sayrafiezadeh, and André Alexis, and a prose poem by Joni Wallace

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The client turned out to be an older man, a lawyer nearing retirement.
          I met him at his office downtown, where he gestured for me to sit across the desk from him, as though I were the client and his were the services we were there to discuss.
—From "The Postcard," a short story by Bennett Sims, Socrates on the Beach, Issue 7. It was included in his collection Other Minds and Other Stories (Two Dollar Radio, 2023). My other favorite from the collection was "Unknown," which originally appeared in The Kenyon Review. 

At the end of the summer of 1995, I had finished all my credits for high school and my father handed me twenty dollars. That's the last you're getting from me, he said. Either I had to enroll in the community college or start paying him rent. No, he said, let me rephrase that: you're going to pay me rent and I'll pay your tuition at the community college.
—From "My Life on the Streets," a short story by Jared Hanson, Bodega, Issue 134 (March 2024).

It's around six months or so after society has begun changing, mainly for the worse, when Lizzy and I decide to take that trip we've been talking about for so long, and which, only in hindsight, is probably our biggest mistake, i.e., not knowing what we're getting ourselves into.
—From American Estrangement, a short story collection by Saïd Sayrafiezadeh (W. W. Norton, 2021). This segment is from "Scenic Route." Please note: the sixth/next-to-last story in this collection, the one with the metaphor in the title, contains an uncomfortable subplot that may not be for everyone.

Math was tricky ground for him: it could be useful, but was often frivolous. He saw math as the thin edge of the entertainment wedge, as if, once you engaged with Fermat's Last Theorem, reality TV was not far behind. 
—From "Houyhnhnm," a short story by André Alexis, The New Yorker (June 20, 2022), pp. 52-58.

Starlings chitter up in dawn-light. Slip-of-a-dog, a languid coyote, steals between houses,
—From "Clockwork," a prose poem by Joni Wallace, Rhino (2024).