With the knowledge that reflection, like creation, inherits nothing, poet Aviya Kushner, in Eve and All the Wrong Men, draws note from stone and makes music of the locality that resides in looking back. While whole days go missing from reader and writer alike, Kushner’s Eve, with her extra moments, returns art to art as the past taps melancholy as its future hire. These are poems of reclaim and removal, plaintively progressive, and in each a prolonged brevity bells visions for an eyesight untethered that sees Adam absorbed into the loneliness of she who creates herself second and then watches as god is devoured by a belief that’s eating for two. If one can picture a bottle of milk as perhaps the first thing broken by a child crawling into a refrigerator, then one can believe there is a rib warmer than the others. If one has no backstory, then one can narrate an imaginary dream. So it is with if, and so it is with then. Here: If Eve, then Eve.

I was first impressed by Jordan A. Rothacker’s earlier collection, The Pit, And No Other Stories, and his latest, Gristle: Weird Tales, doesn’t disappoint. Veering into uncanny, humorous, and philosophically engaging realms, Gristle is akin to The Outer Limits with its varied subject matter. Although you may not be able to fully relate to every scenario or character, you cannot help but marvel at the assured storytelling on display. While some stories, such as the opening “Taking the Bone,” failed to connect with me, others like “Something That Happened a Long Time Ago” and “Augustus and Anastasia” are mini masterpieces.

You can’t help being entranced by the stories that author Pam Jones weaves. Her latest novella, Ivy Day, showcases her command of atmosphere and dialogue. While the world building in Ivy Day is not as expansive as that in her superb Andermatt County: Two Parables, Jones manages to tap into the nostalgia of video stores and moviegoing without veering into sentimentality. Her penchant for developing engaging characters is also on full display, including its title character—who gives Shirley Temple and Audrey Hepburn a run for their money. Behind the façade of celluloid, Jones has such sights to show you.