The Weekly Atticus (08/16/2017)

A recap of the week at Atticus Review, along with some extras.

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Dear ,I used to think that I could trick my shadow. That if I ran fast enough, I could beat it. And when that didn't work, I'd try walking extra slow, and I'd lift my foot and put it down with precision so as to make it not meet the shade it cast at the concrete. When you're a little kid, you think these kinds of things might be possible. You think you can out-run yourself. Break free from what you are, from the shadow you cast upon the earth. You believe in your power to create a different self free from the laws of the world and of science. When you're a little kid, you don't need help getting high. You don't need drugs, or money, or people to do it for you. You just leap off the ground. Or off a brick retaining wall. Or out of a tree in your yard. You pedal your bike fast toward a ramp that you've made out of dirt and mud and you fly from it and you don't look back when you leave the ground. You do this, and you do it every chance you get. You do it to see if this time it will happen. If this time, you'll lose your shadow. Because, to you, nothing is inevitable, yet. Not the certainty of foot meeting silhouette. Not the predetermined mathematics of a terminal velocity. Not the inescapable truth of yourself in the world. Not the adult idea that your past self determines your future one.What about this idea: your future self creates your present one. If we want to lose our shadows we have to start imagining a future without a shadow in it. Or as Francis Dunnery puts it, if you want to make a pizza in your present, you have to "start acting in accord with a future with a pizza in it."You can start doing this today by entering our Flash Fiction Contest, Judged by Carmen Maria Machado, who was just long-listed for the National Book Award for her book Her Body and Other Parties published by Graywolf Press. If you want to be the Atticus Review 2017 Flash Fiction Contest Winner, you need to start acting in accord with a future where you are. You can start by submitting today. 

There are some good stories below. Thanks for reading. We're glad you're here.

David Olimpio Publisher and Editor-in-Chief

ATTICUS NEWS

ANNOUNCING OUR FIRST ANNUAL FLASH FICTION CONTESTJudge: Carmen Maria MachadoSUBMIT HERE!First Prize: $250Second Prize: $75Third Prize: $25Deadline: October 22nd, 2017Winner Announced: November 27th, 2017

THIS WEEK AT ATTICUS

FERAL TOWN by Adam Gustavson

FELIX

BOOK REVIEW: LITTLE BOXESEdited by Caroline CaseyReviewed by Ashley Miller"The observations presented in Little Boxes not only hold an intellectual appeal to those interested in the cultural importance of television, but they appeal to anyone who has ever had a favorite television character, who still remembers a particularly poignant Very Special Episode or the first time you saw a version of yourself on screen. Really, this collection will interest anyone who has ever been captivated by a fictional world flickering on the small screen."READ MORE

10-4by Jen Knox"I write notes. I hand them to my instructors that get me front row seats and special allowances; I watch body language closely, making a study of it. I watch the soldiers glide down high school hallways with predatory eyes. I watch boys with slumped shoulders look up to them without looking at them. I watch police officers stroll our neighborhood, their guns resembling extra limbs."READ MORE

POETRY: "The Husband Approaches Morning in Maine" by C. Boyce McKay"So, what if one Sunday morning in February,the sun slants into the kitchenas you’re pouring her coffeebefore you settle in with the Times?And you close your eyesand the snow you saw a minute agois white sand on the Mediterranean"READ MORE

NONFICTION: BUFFALO PARKby Keene Short"I don’t belong out west either. I’m not doing it any good, but I’m still here enjoying it, this portrait left in the desert, de-coloring in the sunlight, burning up, curling, splintering into a dry framework of bones. The west possesses us in a death grip, and while we’re strangling it we seem totally unaware that it’s strangling us too. It possesses us in a frenzy to survive after all the survival it’s done already. It’s not wild the way we want it to be, but there’s wildness in its death cries. It’s as wild as it’s ever been, and we don’t like it anymore because it’s storming out of the frame and coming after us."READ MORE

THEATER REVIEW: THE HUNGRY GHOSTSDirected by Tessa BorbridgeReview by by Rachel E. Diken"Core Artists Ensemble brings Tessa Borbridge’s The Hungry Ghosts to The Barrow Group Theatre this fall, a 'comedy about addiction' that delves into several angles of the current American opioid epidemic."READ MORE