Why We Chose It: “The Retch” by Colten Dom

Mid-American Review fiction staff selected “The Retch” by Colten Dom for publication in Volume XLII, Number 2.

“The Retch” is one of those stories that contains seemingly incompatible subjects: on the literal level, it is about dog vomit; on a thematic level, it delves into marriage, family, nostalgia. One of the pleasures of the story lies in this unexpected pairing, the way in which the surface conflict of the story subtly explores the underlying conflicts of the protagonist, Queenie, through a balance of pathos and humor. What starts as a fairly ordinary occurrence (the family dog, Bee, eating something she shouldn’t and throwing up on the carpet) quickly escalates into the absurd, as Bee begins regurgitating objects she couldn’t possibly have eaten. First, it’s items from the owners’ childhoods, then unnaturally large objects (“a golf club or an intact model ship”), and eventually orbs that resemble fish eggs “warm to the touch, with the texture of a flayed grape and the smell of a leather armchair gone rancid in the rain.” 

As evident in the above description, Dom’s language is striking, with attention to sensory details that make even the impossible feel physically real. The opening paragraph is rich in sensory details packed into rhythmic sentences: “There are hooks made of sound: the slap of sex, the generic jingle of the nightly news or the cacophony of your husband sneezing. There are pop song sippets of adolescence, guitar licks that drag you back to high school. And jaunty radio realty commercials, dropping through time to mom and dad and the typical divorce, leaving your childhood toys behind to guard the leaky attic where they became toothpicks for a family of raccoons.” The poetic syntax, alongside the story’s absurdity, renders the familiar conflicts of domestic life unfamiliar and therefore new.

The story as a whole is built around pattern—Bee vomiting increasingly unbelievable things—but continually moves in directions the reader could not anticipate. George Saunders, writing about David Barthelme’s “The School,” describes this kind of structure as a series of “gas-stations” that propel the reader forward. While advancing the pattern, the writer “fling[s] us forward via a series of surprises; each new pattern-element is. . . introduced in a way we don’t expect, or with an embellishment that delights us” (177). The patterns and surprises of “The Retch” accelerate the story forward in unexpected, but nonetheless fitting, directions. The ending, in which Bee vomits a web that slowly forms into a house, provokes questions about Queenie’s relationship to the domestic sphere and her family, particularly things she has kept inside herself that ultimately must come out, however messy and unpleasant that might be.

––Jane Wageman, Mid-American Review

Note from the editors: This essay contains a quote from “The Perfect Gerbil: Reading Barthelme’s ‘The School'” from The Braindead Megaphone by George Saunders. New York, NY: Riverhead Books, 2007, pp. 175-185.

Why We Chose It: “Wolf Tours: Special Full Moon Excursion” by Alyse Knorr

Mid-American Review poetry staff selected “Wolf Tours: Special Full Moon Excursion” by Alyse Knorr for publication in Volume 42.1 

In MAR, we gravitate toward poems that create a peculiar and uncanny feeling in the readers. Knorr’s poem was selected for its overall strength, particularly the lyrical meter and cadence. The poem successfully takes on the mystical world of werewolves and holds so much weight in the world being created. According to Managing Editor Mary Simmons, “It’s a short poem, but it holds so much weight.” In poetry, editors look for poems that we cannot get out of our heads. Knorr evokes the unshakableness we aim to capture in MAR. Knorr’s poem elicits the feeling of reading a ghost story in late October under the covers with a flashlight. After reading “Wolf Tours: Special Full Moon Excursion,” readers are left to contemplate painful bones in a new place where the poet asks, “Will you choose to accept, or will you choose to allow? / The bones will hurt most, and they will not be speedy.” 

“I love that this is a werewolf poem that is so lyrical and subtle. I’m a huge fan of folklore and myth, and the way Knorr weaves that in with haunting imagery and beautiful cadence is particularly enchanting. My favorite thing about this poem is how easy it is to get lost in.” ––Mary Simmons, Managing Editor 2023-2024

“The moment I knew I would fight for this poem was the line ‘You’ve never had enough / legs or teeth.’ Along with the title, I love how Knorr works with the ideas of transitions, the feeling of never having enough (never being enough), journeys, and the inevitable. The line coming after, ‘The less you want to hurt someone, the more likely you will,’ feels like a connection of all those ideas: the wanting to change, the inevitability, the feeling of never being enough (or not quite right). I think this section is so well crafted and thought out. I also love the question of accepting versus allowing; the subtlety in those words, questioning whether actually have agency or just let things happen. The full moon, the wolves, the transitions, the wanting, the allowing. So good.” ––Michael Beard, Managing Editor 2022-2023 

––Elly Salah, Mid-American Review

Why We Chose It: “Some Kinds of Drifter” by Justin Thurman

Mid-American Review fiction staff selected “Some Kinds of Drifter” by Justin Thurman for publication in Volume XLII.

Thurman’s piece was selected for its overall strength but particularly for its nontraditional use of form and genre. The piece takes the form of an ethnography, detailing the different spiritual and cultural norms common amongst different groups of drifters. Drifters, in this piece, are homeless individuals distinguished from hoboes, who are mentioned but not examined, by the element of choice. “Hoboes are proud of their vagrancy…. Drifters do not suffer from wanderlust to the degree that hoboes might. Drifters have no choice.” The piece also makes use of a cartesian graph upon which individual drifters might be placed to complete the aesthetic of an academic report. 

This notion of choice, and its absence, is an undercurrent throughout the piece that helps to ground it and bring a balance to the absurd sense of humor present throughout. Thurman’s narrator has a strong voice that reads almost as a mix of Ken Burns and Raoul Duke. 

The further details of “Some Kinds of Drifter” are best experienced firsthand, but suffice it to say that the story is one that we on the MAR staff will still find ourselves talking about long after the selection process has ended.

-William Walton, Mid-American Review

Why We Chose It: “Character Sketch for the Oil CEO” by Alyssa Quinn

“Character Sketch for the Oil CEO” by Alyssa Quinn will be featured in an upcoming issue of Mid-American Review.

“Character Sketch for the Oil CEO” by Alyssa Quinn is an astounding metafictional work that shifts the authorial lens back onto the author (fictional, in this case). Though the story maps out the traits and behaviors of an oil CEO, the story also reveals the biases and preferences of the writer, an implicit character in the narrative. The writer deliberates over whether the CEO can be blamed for the cataclysmic oil spill his company has likely caused. The writer agonizes over this guilt in the same way the character might: “he is just a single person in such a large system, does he really matter that much, can he really be blamed? Can he?” The unfamiliarity of hearing this wavering from the writer exposes the tendency of writers to replicate themselves in their characters.

This story also challenges perceptions of how real characters are and what their creators owe them. Intimate description is usually considered a fundamental tool of characterization: an achievement when used well. Quinn makes it feel like an invasion. “You could follow him into the shower, describe the way he washes.” We chose this piece not because it sketches an Oil CEO well—though it does—but because it makes us doubt whether we should be sketching him at all. Perhaps he does not want to be “summoned by every sentence.”

—Daniel Marcantuono, MAR

Why We Chose It: ”On The Cape of Sleep and Wellbeing”

On the Cape of Sleep and Wellbeing, by Drew Calvin McCutchen, was selected for publication this spring and published in Mid-American Review Vol. XLI.

On the Cape of Sleep and Wellbeing is a magical story about dreams, community, and the human experience. Readers follow one girl who, for no fault of her own, is unable to join in a dream shared by the entire town each day at 4pm. The story follows her as she attempts to navigate this lonely existence, disconnected from her peers’ reality, reaching for connection by painting them as they dream. The strengths of this piece are its voice, the clear imagery of the town, and the originality of the plot. In its exploration of one character who finds herself living at odds with her community, this story draws influence from folklore, but though it may remind us of some fairy tales we grew up hearing, this story, reminiscent of folk horror, ramps up its tension to an explosive ending that’s as original as it is hard to forget. 

—Samuel Burt and Chloe McConnell, MAR