Cincinnati Review

Translated by Yuemin He, “End of the Year Poem, 2020” by Zhihao Zhang begins where many of us begin our days (regularly, but perhaps especially during a global pandemic): looking at our phones. This mundane act gives way to a reflection that, like the year 2020 itself, is filled with rote action, uncertainty, and contradiction.

The speaker of Dev Murphy’s hybrid piece “The Hoard” uses the words of literary figures to examine and reexamine love and desire, creating a hoard within the text itself, which she reshapes throughout the piece.

This poem’s form is a sonnet-and-a-half that drives the reader onward; in the end, we’re left in the middle.

In this twist on a creation myth, R. Cross’s “A Young Woman Made Up of Dirt” explores self-definition and womanhood through the speaker’s musings on her formation and destruction.