My contributor’s copies for Norton’s New Micro, edited by James Thomas and Robert Scotellaro, have arrived! Shapard writes, in his foreward, that these stories "matter, almost before you know it."
Read MoreThe stories in the New Micro invite readers to fill in silences, to wrestle with mysteries, to wonder if what they’re reading is prose or poetry, narrative or lyric. Here’s a three-line look at some of Portland Review’s favorite micros from this inventive collection:
“Mermaid” by Claudia Smith (Rose Metal Press)
The postcard ocean is not
the gray one where
my sister now lives.
“I found his paperbacks in my mother’s closet. I think the first one I read was Moving On; I still remember the book cover, the foreground the color of yellowed book pages, and the sultry looking man lounging with his red shirt open all the way down, a necklace of some sort dangling down his neck. He was wearing cowboy boots. Angled towards him was a topless woman in jeans, her long, shining brown hair covering the suggestion of breasts. She looked happy and comfortable.”
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