Tag: Rejection Letters

  • Prose Poetry Review: “Guns, Sex, Phones” by Katherine Schmidt

    (The prose poetry piece “Guns, Sex, Phones” by Katherine Schmidt appeared at Rejection Letters on October 16, 2025.)

    Image by Aaron Burch

    It’s been awhile since a work popped me on the nose, making me wake up and pay attention. “Guns, Sex, Phones” by Katherine Schmidt isn’t an angry or an aggressive poem, but it does confront the numb sedimentary routine that can creep in, and dominate one’s life.

    I was taken with the start of the piece; how the first line acted like an explosion, and then what followed were words that created contraction, as if the speaker was falling back into themselves, regressing. Look at that first line of the piece, “My friend says let’s go to the shooting range…” a statement to take action, but then the speaker pulls back, “and I tell her I don’t know anything about guns. About hunting. About how fun it is to let loose.” What follows are three examples of empty, disparate attempts at human connection; dinner with a phone, responding to a text on the toilet, not answering a call from their mother though the speaker watches the screen light up. It’s a good use of the “Rule of Three” and excellent at setting the theme and mood. When the choice is made to take action, to connect both physically and emotionally, an almost resignation takes over. The phone reenters the scene. Though the speaker makes a shallow attempt of connection with their friend via the phone, I can’t blame the friend for not watching the sent meme.

    This isn’t the first piece to decry the vapidness of smart phones, how they are destroying people’s ability to connect with others, or how technology can be alienating. What “Guns, Sex, Phones” touches on with a sharp melancholy focus is how lonely and emotionally trapped this world is becoming. There is no substitute for connection, actual human connection. That these connections need to be cultivated. And if we’re not careful with where we put our attention, we may lose the ability to grow further.

  • Short Non-Fiction Review: “They Only Come Out at Night” by Kara Melissa

    (The short non-fiction piece “They Only Come Out at Night” by Kara Melissa was presented by Rejection Letters on September 10th, 2025.)

    Image by Janvi Bhardwaj

    I had the hardest time coming up with a solid opening paragraph for this review of Kara Melissa’s non-fiction piece “They Only Come Out at Night.” I like to think that I’m good at introductions, but not this time. The issue I am having is how I can’t wrap my arms around this essay to find one single starting point to explain how this honest, interwoven, melancholic story affected me.

    From the first paragraph, Melissa pulled me in with an intense honesty; confidant in its story telling. Not for shock value, nor did this feel like oversharing, or a performative confession. This was a clear declaration of deep emotions, fully self-aware that maybe some people wouldn’t understand this situation, but it was true.

    What follows are three tangents, platted together with connecting themes of MRI’s, hospitals, logic, brain function, and most importantly love; the compassion, empathy and longings which form in situations Melissa finds herself in. Through all of it, I felt this wrap of a happy melancholy resignation to it all. I wish I could explain that better, but it’s what I feel someone who has loved deeply, and lost greatly would feel towards the world.

    I relished how the essay is presented straight forward and logical – The descriptions of medical treatments, aliments, and the causes. The setting is during the Covid lockdowns, and with the clinical narrative, Melissa creates a feeling of isolation and detachment. This makes her desire for connection, understanding, and compassion all the more pertinent.

    I don’t want to belabor this review, as I am purposefully not going into all the details of the essay, because you should go read it. But I will say that the last section left me with a wonderful feeling of hopefulness. That even in the darkness, when we feel lost, that the love we have for each other can carry us through. With everything going on, I needed to be reminded of that fact.

  • Short Story Review – “Séance at the Dinner Party” by Tori Palmore

    (The flash piece “Séance at the Dinner Party” by Tori Palmore first appeared at Rejection Letters on November 27th, 2024.)

    Families can suck, and in literature, this is fertile ground for inspiration which has been plowed many times over, and will forever produce material that will be harvested for our consumption. As I get older, family dramas have become more fascinating to me, and Tori Palmore’s “Séance at the Dinner Party” is a absorbing stream of consciousness entry into the field.

    The narrator takes us through their thoughts/experience/emotions at this family gathering, I believe it is Thanksgiving. There is the subtext of death and the loss of a sibling, perhaps the narrator’s safety at these gatherings, and the repetitive “Brother is Dead” adds a staccato rhythm to the prose, keeping the piece unsettled. I appreciated Palmore’s use of short sentences to build tension and keep the emotions and reactions moving forward. The piece never feels like it can stop, that it will perpetually play over and over again, not only in the narrator’s life, but also in the mind, even when they leave this dinner party of family. How the narrator is uncomfortable with their family, how they don’t feel accepted, to the point of micro aggressions signaling that they are not fully accepted. Yet the narrator keeps their rage, even grief, in check. Though the narrator does escape this evening with their family, the ironic knowledge is that this event will repeat itself again.

    Palmore’s “Séance at the Dinner Party” is the type of flash fiction I look forward to reading. It is direct, clear, and puts me in a moment or emotional state that I can relate to, or learn from. And in the piece, Palmore also creates a moment that also feels as if it exists outside of time, which adds to the resonance of the story.

  • Goodnight Springton! There Will Be No Reviews!

    Yeah, I tried my best, but this week just had it out for me.

    There will be no reviews this week.

    Which is annoying as I had several pieces in the hopper that I just haven’t read yet.

    Such as:

    When She Falls by Louise McGuinness, from Milk Candy Review

    Mr. Mollusk by Didi Wood, from Okay Donkey

    An Excerpt from “Howling Women” (Shelby Hinte), from Rejection Letters

    BOZO by Souvankham Thammavongsa, from The New Yorker

    Hopefully, I will get them read, and feel free to check them out yourself.

    If it helps, here’s a picture of my dog back from the groomers, contemplating if free will is an illusion.

  • Checked That Box

    For those of you that read this blog, and follow me on Twitter/X (all two of you), then you know that I had an announcement yesterday, which was that Rejection Letters published a piece of mine – “Memorably Forgettable.” I have been a fan of this journal for a while, and I really appreciate that they included me in their publication; very cool.

    And as such, I checked off a box on my list of goals for this year – Get One Story Accepted.

    I was prepared to get deep in rejections for this year, as I have received 50 of them so far. I do prescribe to the “100 No’s Before 1 Yes” theory, and as such still feel like there is a lot of rejection out there for me to receive yet. (My Submittable cup runneth over…)

    But, more importantly, I gotta get back to work. I still got a blog to write, a journal to fill up, and a corner in my apartment to sit in and try to make some stories work. And I should be reading more, to be honest.