Superstition Review – Spring 2008

Superstition Review is not just another journal of interviews, art, fiction, nonfiction and poetry. This creation is a unique collaboration between an all-star team of professional writers/professors and the Arizona State University student community of writers. In this first issue, although there is gluttony of writing selections for you choose from (mostly from professors), you are not left bored, fatigued or searching for your lucky rabbits foot to take you into uncharted and more creative territories in whatever genre you choose to read from first.

Superstition Review is not just another journal of interviews, art, fiction, nonfiction and poetry. This creation is a unique collaboration between an all-star team of professional writers/professors and the Arizona State University student community of writers. In this first issue, although there is gluttony of writing selections for you choose from (mostly from professors), you are not left bored, fatigued or searching for your lucky rabbits foot to take you into uncharted and more creative territories in whatever genre you choose to read from first.

In Jim Daniels’s short story “Single Room,” in a dorm, Jenny is left wondering why Jason is in her room when she last remembered that he had been sleeping with Kate from across the hall:

Two years ago, when they were sophomores, Jason had been sleeping with Kate, who lived across the hall. Early one morning, Jenny dashed out of the communal bathroom in her bra and panties. It was usually safe that early, but as she neared her room, Kate’s door opened, and out stumbled Jason. Little Kate with the big boobs and shit for brains who stole Jenny’s hairdryer and could not be trusted. There was no turning back. Jenny quickly squeezed by him into her room, burning under his blatant stare.

This story is an homage and genuine portrayal of the college dorm life that will charm you into reading further because it will remind some readers of their own experiences as an undergrad and the seemingly rapid pace at which things happened.

Sara Bailey’s nonfiction piece, “Ennis, Texas,” addresses the history and the memory of her grandfather, along with many of his siblings and relatives whom she never met. This story relates to a generational frustration of grandchildren and nieces and nephews everywhere that never met, knew or were told about their closest relations due to  long standing family feuds never addressed, or at the very least, not explained to them. Also, this narrative shows us as readers and as humans how we often have little to go on  when learning about our own histories.

In “Fear of Shadow Puppets” by Rigoberto Gonzalez, callousness of being born into this world is explored as if bastard children or children that did not survive birth or much thereafter were ghosts always remembered, or if they barely survived, how it could explain their mean demeanor:

Charcoaled homunculus that only his five-fingered mothers can tame
by closing the socket to conceal his famine’s glare. Still he hungers

for texture and seeks out the meat of depth, the elusive third
dimension denied him the moment he crawled into life, bastard

child of flesh and light. No wonder he’s cruel, finding kinship
with the knuckle of rock, mimicking mono-stings vulgar as black flower

wasps.

This poem is so rich in imagery that you feel each word as if it were flesh.

If you continue to read this journal, not only may you be stung by a bee, get seven years bad luck and need to carry a lucky rabbit’s foot with you everywhere, you will also become a ravenous reader of their detailed, specific and singularly rich writing that reels you into their varied worlds. You may be like the demented worm, sticking yourself on the hook so that you may be surrounded by all the words these pieces have to offer.
[ www.asu.edu/superstitionreview/]