It’s August. A month of heat, humidity, and irritable moodiness in the South. On top of that, the 10th anniversary of Hurricane Katrina is coming up and it’s all over the news, all over social media and just everywhere I turn. I am not looking forward to next week. I lived through it and I don’t want to relive it, thank you. I’ll leave it to the politicians and philosophers to “celebrate” how far we’ve come but I’ll be keeping my head down and looking forward to September.

Here’s a little list of what I’ve been reading lately:

Aubrey Hirsch humorously muses about new dads suddenly understanding feminism after the birth of their daughters in her  satirical essay “Abandoning Feminism” in The Toast.  It strikes a nerve while also poking a little fun: “I look at my beautiful, silly, amazing boys and I realize that they do deserve to be paid more than their female counterparts in the workforce. They have both X and Y chromosomes and should be compensated accordingly.”

The recent issue of Blue Five Notebook/Blue Fifth Review is really good and I especially loved the flash piece, “A Glacier is a River Frozen in Time” by Eileen Merriman. Have you ever thought about a world without color? Read this. (Scroll down to find it but definitely read everything else, too.)

You know I couldn’t have a Hot Reads post without a Lidia Yuknavitch reference. Recently I had a Twitter convo with Sarah Galo after she read my post about Lidia’s memoir which then led me to Sarah’s review of Lidia’s new book,The Small Backs of Children in Electric Lit. Then (through her Twitter profile) I discovered Sarah’s “Tiny Letters” mailing list. I subscribed and I enjoy and recommend it.

In Literary Orphans is a piece by Christopher Allen called “The Ground Above My Feet” written with a quirky humor but with an unexpected twist at the end. Do read it.

Poetry that knocked my flip-flops off:

• “Still Life with Table for Disconnection” by Sam Rasnake – What a mood is set in this! Love it.

• “Before We Knew” by Robert Okaji for the 30/30 Project in Tupelo Press – This is beautiful in language and intent. A favorite. (Both poem and poet.) Scroll down to under Day 21.
• “Mother Died Tomorrow” by Bill Yarrow on Fictionaut – Skillful and clever.

• The Bad Girl” by Lucy M. Logsdon – Sometimes I really love an in-your-face poem that says what it means. This is one.

I planned to write more but I think I have some spyware on my PC since the curser is dancing around of its own accord so I’ll cut this short and go to war. Have a happy reading week and here’s a little something to give you a chuckle. xoxo