Staff Recs
The team at No Contact recommends their favorite pieces from the past year.
Elliot Alpern Recommends “Appetite” by Zach VandeZande
Do fish think this much about the ocean?
VandeZande’s narrator is a little high in the early afternoon, and he’s taking a shower about it. A wedding ring slips off a soap-slicked finger. Meanwhile, I can barely cut the tension with a power-saw. Who knew that a simple afternoon shower, a high shower, could pop open like a gag can of spring-coiled snakes. Twists, turns, stomach-churning dilemma. And isn’t that what we prize from the best fiction? That little hiss of air as you crack the seal — uh-oh. Oh my. This is so much more here than you could have ever expected. And won’t you be all the better for it? Read here.
Nathaniel Berry Recommends “Ground Beer for the Dogs” by Veronica Shore
There’s so much to love about Veronica Shore’s “Ground Beer for the Dogs.” The struggle for something beautiful to be born in a world of fire and mud, the way tension about the puppy’s survival is cut and expertly replaced with the grief and guilt of the father character, who transforms seamlessly from a stern patriarch to an apologizing drunk who needs his daughter behind the wheel. Shifts in the meaning of simple phrases: look at what “He’s funny” means the first and second time Shore uses it, how she transforms the phrase from something a charmed teenager thinks of a gregarious older man, to something Phillip Marlowe would say about a goon he’s going to have to shoot. The world may all be mud, but there’s enough toughness and tenderness and beauty in this story to make all that mud a tragedy. Read here.
Michael Colbert Recommends “From Under the Cork Tree” by Jessica Nirvana Ram
There’s something that brings me back again and again to Jessica Nirvana Ram’s “From Under the Cork Tree.” The poem’s speaker is precise, shaping the form on the page to represent an unburdening of joy, so specific in its cajun fries and outer space jellyfish, building to the speaker’s final request, “let me have more of this, let me be worthy of this.” I feel the form of this poem so instinctually–its simultaneous containing and breaking free–and that feels so representative to me of our recent past. Read here.
Apollo Deal Recommends “Sex in Portugal” by Bill Hollands
Bill Hollands’ “Sex in Portugal” is exquisite — harnessing carefully chosen details without losing its effortlessly humorous flow. The piece combines self-deprecation and a keen, beautiful eye for the details that make human interaction not only laughable but affecting. The poem is simultaneously hilarious and gorgeous, two qualities which rarely go together. “Sex in Portugal” is full of quiet, lethal hilarity. Read here.
Stephanie Frazee Recommends “Baby Teeth” by Lauren Cassani Davis
This story has everything: tender treatment of complex characters, the horrible irony of our modern world in which McDonald’s sponsors the children’s cancer ward, laughter in the face of death, the complexities of a childhood cut short not just by illness but by living in the horribly ironic modern world adults have created but can’t help a child navigate, a quiet and considerate clown. And so many layers of contradiction, all in a story about a child who’s obsessed with synonyms. Not to mention beautiful, disturbing images—a french fry cigarette, a quivering bag of blood, a sharp baby tooth. How many times can a story of just a few pages break your heart? Read this one here and find out.
Rachel A.G. Gilman Recommends “Word Count” by Madeline Garfinkle
At least once a week, I find myself thinking about this intoxicatingly candid story of heartbreak, heartache, and ("sort of, maybe") heart recovery. This compact piece presents a raw, hyper-real exploration of the strange relationship between writing for yourself even when you're writing about someone else, posing ideas that had me constantly nodding along and widening my eyes in uncomfortable, earnest agreement. I have no idea how many words it takes to get over someone, but as many as Garfinkle will write on the subject, I will read—check out her photo column "Lost and Found" if you haven't, too! Read “Word Count” here.
Shelby Hinte Recommends “New York State of Mind” by Sionnain Buckley
There’s so much I love about Sionnain Buckley’s “New York State of Mind.” I am a sucker for pieces set in transient spaces and the images of an American landscape as seen through the passenger windows of a bus in the piece are striking. The structure of the story itself is somewhat of a landscape as well. It’s composed of two narrative columns existing in tandem; one side of the “page” is text messages the narrator receives, and the other are the observations made on the bus. And here is the root of what I really love about this piece, the thing that has kept it in my mind ever since I first read it and what’s lead me back for a reread on more than one occasion — that Sionnain has captured a contemporary portrait of people processing complex emotional dramas as they unfold in the palm of their hands. It reminded me of the scene in Beautiful World, Where are You when Eileen is doom scrolling from one atrocity to the next while seemingly unchanged in her work surroundings. Sionnain creates a similar tension and anxiety in “New York State of Mind” where internal and external lives feel out of sync with one another. People are moving through space together, within arm’s reach of one another, and yet each of them are also absorbed in a private communication and emotional experience no one else can see. Read here.
Suzanne Richardson Recommends “I Would Like to Speak to The Manager of My Life” by Zoa Coudret
I love this poem! Why? Because its form moves perfectly with the subtle rhymes and while it sounds so lovely, and harmonious the subject is about being at odds with yourself and the world. The enjambment in this piece helps to carry us forward with anxiety but also underscores this speaker’s disconnection with the life they’re living. This kind of tension between form and content builds with self-loathing, observation, gorgeous language, and phrasing, “Lexapro and dildos”, “simulacrum city”, “oasis the meager spaces.” The last two stanzas go inwards as our speaker begins to make meaning. It’s not quite a nocturne, though when I first encountered it, I wondered if it might be, “My reflection, superimposing the night.” The stacking up of objects and the replicas and imitations of things being placed on top of one another make us wonder about the value of the things being written. There’s also a question about temporary life. This speaker is having a crisis of reality. They are searching for reality and what’s constant in a city of reflection, imitations, and disposable things. There are a lot of things in this poem, but what will stay after the poet is gone? The title implies our lives are consumable, for sale, temporary, and we’re not even in control. This poem really wants to investigate the relationship between objects and happiness and what I love is how it’s surprisingly forgiving in the end “it’s enough to know/ we tried.” That softness feels so generous after the worry of the poem. The forgiveness is what’s real and enduring. Read here.
Paul Ruta Recommends “Dead Eli” by Nicole Tsuno
This is a weird story, yet on Planet Tsuno it comes around to make perfect sense. She tells it simply and with a straight face. She fills it with oddball observations and absurd sentences, arranging the words just so, like dollhouse furniture: “As he kisses me through the last of the chicken nuggets, he tells me that if he weren’t dead, he might make me feel wanted.” It’s touching and hilarious at the same time – miles beyond the typical fare leaning on the much overused YoPeFu trope (Young People Fucking). Read here.
Gauraa Shekhar Recommends “Re: Stuff” by Jason Sebastian Russo
A wedding photo with no one in it. A lone flip flop found on the moon. A podcast that’s just the sound of breathing. A police artist sketch of God. A fight between two phantom limbs. An NFT of the first time you laughed. Jason Sebastian Russo knows how to find humor in the debris of culture, and this poem’s spareness gives each image the space and potency to disassociate freely. I can’t help but return to “Re: Stuff” whenever the world (read: internet) feels flat and I need to reach for comfort in our shared loneliness. Read here.
Andrew Walker Recommends “i am having a good time ok” by blake levario
As capitalism quickly commodifies everything around us, levario pits Karl Marx against Gwen Stefani while trying to imagine liberating our world while still enjoying an espresso on our freshly Roomba’d floors. Within this poem, we as readers struggle with our own want to veil our reality in the condom of consumerism. Isn’t it so uniquely human to be robbers in this silly game we all play? Read here.
