NAP – July 2013

Unfortunately, this is the last issue of NAP. As they said on their Facebook page in June, “Nap wants you to know that quitters never win so don’t be like NAP and don’t be a quitter.” But their last issue is certainly not filled with quitter writers.

Unfortunately, this is the last issue of NAP. As they said on their Facebook page in June, “Nap wants you to know that quitters never win so don’t be like NAP and don’t be a quitter.” But their last issue is certainly not filled with quitter writers.

Sarah Bridgins’s “Cricket Cage” starts with a haunting first two lines: “Have you ever Googled yourself / and found your mother’s obituary?” Those lines instantly draw a connection between the narrator and the mother—if there is much more than a biological connection. While emptying the mother’s storage unit, she looks back to a time when she “believed in something / so stupid as luck.”

Matthew Dexter’s piece “Paratrooper Pedagogy” also looks to a time when things were more innocent. However, in his story, these children are shocked from their innocence while playing with the parachute at gym class when their teacher accidentally flashed his “scrotum,” went “free-balling.” The narrator notes that before the moment they go under the parachute and Mr. Wilson “introduc[es] fuzz to the ritual,” they “made magic. We stood in a circle and flapped. Like gripping a flying carpet. It lifted me in the air for a moment as our hands waved in harmony.”

Lucy Tiven’s two poems are snappy, with a little bit of sass and sarcasm—but not too much. In “Short Answer,” the answer is no, “I don’t know why all my poems have fish in them.” And Dylan York’s “Strange Life Forms in Areas We Used to Think Were Uninhabitable” is also worth the read:

I made a ship that you swallowed
because anyway who needs one,
because where we go we swim
and it is easy.

Also unfortunate is that this issue isn’t very long, but I guess that’s all the more reason that you should take twenty minutes to sit down and read it. Even though NAP is taking its final rest, I’m certain these writers won’t be—and they deserve to be read.
[napnapnaps.com]