Cincinnati Review

Shruti Swamy’s “In Blue” captures a sense of shifting identity at the core of new motherhood.

Every six minutes another word is dropped from the lexicon. Who says there’s no use anymore for woolfell,the skin of a sheep still attached to the fleece? And when did we stop calling tomatoes love apples?I need somewhere in the world for there still to be a fishwife who understands the economy of fleshgrown taut …

The velvet ant is not velvet, not ant. It is a wasp, grooved with sting. If scooped into the muzzle of a lizard, the velvet ant (not velvet, not ant) jackhammers. Its whole body is ammunition. They call it cow killer. Yet it is beautiful, too: encased in orange & white thistle. Spotted red & …

Danni Quintos’s “Milkfish” begins with the simplicity of a mother’s pregnancy craving for milkfish.

Carl Lavigne’s story “The Walking River” is a wonderfully unsettling portrayal of the natural world gone topsy-turvy.