At Parenthetical Note, a web journal featuring “fictional essays and factual stories,” I read a powerful letter by author Nelly Reifler. Written to Ronald Reagan, the letter was started by Reifler in the 1980s. Twenty-three years later, a few months after Reagan’s death, Reifler finished the letter in which the young speaker sends a message from the housing project where she lives to those of us reading her words now. I found the visual presentation of the letter by Parenthetical Note effective too.

The new issue of Chelsea, a New York literary journal, starts with ten short stories edited by poet Rush Rankin. The stories – each one being fully realized on its own – work particularly well together. They flow while still maintaining a variety that absorbed me as a reader. One story by Wednesday Kirwin shows in visual detail an artist’s interaction with a captive preying mantis; another story by Pabro La Rosa reveals an Afro-Cuban jam session in which the musicians honor a murdered friend.