Girls with Insurance

 

 

They Used to Dance on Saturday Nights, is Aforementioned Productions latest from Gillian Devereux and it is a punch in the gut. This small collection of poetry carries a spark of imagination in its throat, and reading the language is reminiscent of grit and fire igniting the page. The content of the collection focuses on the sideshow carnival acts, and the fantastical tone carries me to a Tom Waits style of readability, that grabs your hair and makes you watch the story unfold. Nobody but him has made the carnival so sexy, raw, or appealing until now. There is a little bit of everything; dancing bears, an assistant who can’t escape the clutches of a knife thrower, and the integrity to explain why though mostly it’s a hoax, the magic of desperation is real along the cheap thrills and lost souls of the side show act.

Julie Ann Weinstein's Flashes from the Other World in an eclectic assortment of flash fiction stories all based around the themes of the absurd, the paranormal, and the relationships that life weaves in its' grand tapestry of coincidence. Weinstein looks at the little bumps in the road that we all face, steering us in a direction we may have otherwise never noticed. These stories take ordinary days and make them exceptional memories.

Michael J. Atwood spins a multifaceted tale in the HiStory of Santa Monica. It is a tale of loss, regret, and redemption interwoven through many voices in a Faulkneresque postmodernism. The stories could be read in any order and although they can stand independently, we have to ask if they are not altogether connected as well.