Spy

Spy Reprints “E Duo Unum” by Maxine Poe-Jensen

February 20, 2023 By The Editorial Team

Editor’s Note: The author is the Featured Student Writer for the 15th anniversary issue. She is the first recipient of the Talbot Arts and Delmarva Review Talbot County High School Mentorship Scholarship award.

Author’s Note: “As an only child, siblinghood has always been a mystery. I’ve always wondered what it would be like to have a person who looked similar to you, who shared a predetermined, yet unique bond with you. E Duo Unum was an extension of my questions. For the brother who suffers the loss of his twin in this story, his grieving is especially intense. How do you deal with being a walking reminder of your loss?”... [Continue Story]

Spy Reprints “Butchery” by Josh Trapani

February 8, 2023 By The Editorial Team

Editor’s Note: “Butchery,” from the 15th edition of the Delmarva Review, has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize in fiction.

Author’s Note: “When you’re a scientist doing fieldwork in another part of the world, uncertainty comes with the territory. That includes the other scientists on your team. How will they act, especially if things go wrong? I set out intending to tell the tale of a field season soured by recklessness. Instead, “Butchery” reveals how misplaced priorities can destroy careers . . . and even cost lives.”... [Continue Story]

Spy Reprints “I Want to Order a Man from the Sweets Catalog” by Fran Abrams

February 7, 2023 By The Editorial Team

Author’s Note: “I wrote this poem after taking a class on how to write a cento. Looking for a source of words, I thought of the Sweets Construction Catalogue I had used when I worked in an architect’s office after college. ‘Sweets’ then was a large collection of three-ring binders but is now online. As I dipped into its pages, the poem began to form in my mind, moving readily from concept to completion.”... [Continue Story]

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Spy Reprints “Authors” by King Grossman

February 6, 2023 By The Editorial Team

Author’s Note: “This poem virtually wrote itself when I was hole up writing in Marfa, Texas, a thin place, as in hardly separated from the source. One afternoon outside my back door I espied through the coke-bottle glass, a young girl who sat at a card table on her porch across the street happy as you please writing in that red bird notebook. I simply stood there in solidarity with another non-civilian.”... [Continue Story]

Spy Reprints “Goodbye Mr. Kamali” by Sepideh Zamani

February 5, 2023 By The Editorial Team

Editor’s Note: “Goodbye Mr. Kamali,” from the review’s 15th anniversary edition, has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize in fiction.

Author’s Note: “Growing up in a country under theocratic rule, I witnessed most Iranians suffering from religious and cultural cleansing, the root of Iranians’ ongoing uprisings today. Minorities, especially Jews and Baha’is, are in constant danger still. Here, I am a young girl hiding in a cupboard, listening. I discover the crime of my father’s friend: his refusal to convert to Islam, and the fate he will suffer for it.”... [Continue Story]

Spy Reprints “Now Only in Part” by Marda Messick

December 18, 2022 By The Editorial Team

Author’s Note: Since I first looked into a kaleidoscope as a young child, I’ve been fascinated by and deeply curious about perception. How do we perceive the world and apprehend mystery? How do we know what we know about anything? Our limitations and the possibility of enlightenment always are juxtaposed, as they are in the poem. I’ve come to rely on poetry itself as a way of perceiving and knowing the world, other people, and the divine.... [Continue Story]

Spy Reprints “Lemon Ginger Tea” by Robin Gow

December 11, 2022 By The Editorial Team

Author’s Note: I wrote “Lemon Ginger Tea” after spending a winter afternoon with my brother. We are both at really transitory moments in our lives and this felt especially true that day. Both our conversation and where we sat felt so indicative to me of both being in a liminal space together. In a lot of ways, I see the poem as being about brotherhood and being able to know someone’s life from that perspective. I use the “you” to try to convey that closeness to the reader so hopefully they can feel it too... [Continue Story]

Spy Reprints “Rescue” by Jessica Claire Haney

December 4, 2022 By The Editorial Team

Author’s Note: “Rescue” was my first attempt at writing flash fiction when I craved something immediate and stark in between revisions of a novel. That initial dabble with flash years ago spawned a series of stories about women who reluctantly come to care for dogs. While most of the other pieces—flash fiction, short stories, and a novella—deal with connections between people or with nature, and some even have hopeful notes, my firstborn remains my favorite... [Continue Story]

Spy Reprints “The Entropy of Little Things” by Martina Kado

December 4, 2022 By The Editorial Team

Author’s Note: I live just outside of Baltimore, in a historically blue-collar neighborhood surrounded by water and wildlife. Sometimes it feels like living in a novel Gabriel Garcia Márquez and Kurt Vonnegut could have written together: filled with the magic and tragicomedy of the universe. As people and animals were dying around me, I wrote this narrative meditation on the disheartening matter-of-factness of transience and finding comfort in tiny acts of kindness and each new day... [Continue Story]

Spy Reprints “A Room Too Small for Sunsets” by Sayan Aich Bhowmik

December 4, 2022 By The Editorial Team

Author’s Note: The poem tries to uncover the gnawing sense of loneliness and alienation that has become a characteristic feature of life in the cities. With every passing day, no matter how well we remain connected to the outside world through social media, there is always this sense of emptiness that devours us. This poem tries to capture that sense of angst and the problematics of belonging... [Continue Story]

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