Project MUSE®: Colorado Review - Latest Articles
https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/594
Project MUSE®: Latest articles in Colorado Review.daily12026-05-12T00:00:00-05:00text/htmlen-USVol. 36 (2009) through current issueLatest Articles: Colorado ReviewTWOProject MUSE®Colorado Review2325-730X1046-3348Latest articles in Colorado Review. Feed provided by Project MUSE®Editors' Page
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/983582
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It's mid-December as we wrap up production on this issue, and the news cycle, often grim anyway, feels particularly so at the moment, creating an unfortunately familiar sense of disconnect: Adjacent to so much tragedy and sorrow, there is inevitably still joy. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the stories and essays in these pages echo this peculiar crux of our human experience. Norm, a grieving saddlemaker in Mellissa Sojourner's story "Queen of the Rodeo," makes this doleful observation: "In one square mile there could be loss and sickness, there could be sun-scorched inner tubes and autumn nights—that was how the world looked to him now, heaped in contradiction, a shiny jewel just waiting for a thief." In a family on the
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-12T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/594/image/coversmallEditors' Page2026-02-25text/htmlen-USEditors' Page2026-02-252026TWOProject MUSE®54892026-05-12T00:00:00-05:002026-02-25The Good Thing
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/983585
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The explosion was missed, though by how many miles or minutes, I can't say. We saw only the blood it left behind, pink with melt on the trampled snowbank. My father made a show of examining the spatter and, sucking condensation from his mustache, pronounced it fresh. There was no sound except his breathing. We looked down the trail for the dying thing—for it must have been dying, dying still, because dying, I'd come to realize, takes so fucking long—but we saw no sign of it, just gray light and the perfect chiaroscuro of the snow-decked conifer: beauty like a blunt object."Some idiot," my father said.He grunted irritably, like he always did before cursing the failure of circumstance to, yet again, prepare him for
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-12T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/594/image/coversmallThe Good Thing2026-02-25text/htmlen-USThe Good Thing2026-02-252026TWOProject MUSE®334402026-05-12T00:00:00-05:002026-02-25Wesside Haibun
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/983586
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For the sugarcane laborers…there is such a thing as too sweet…haloed by mushroom-top hats…so happy when they put up the screen, I could change in privacy…fistfuls of splinters, blooming…resewing the bottoms of the baby's shoes, cast red by dust…three generations at the stove, another bathing in the sink…three rows of children on the porch steps, thick-chinned & sullen…three Portuguese on three brown horses…the cane…the cane…tonguing the blisters… they say when she arrived, her skin was like porcelain…now, leather…remembering the first time he laid eyes on it, said, which is the part you eat…gaman…gaman…chewed in the mouth…a word I don't know until I'm fifteen…whose house is this…whose pot on the stove…whose
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-12T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/594/image/coversmallWesside Haibun2026-02-25text/htmlen-USWesside Haibun2026-02-252026TWOProject MUSE®33592026-05-12T00:00:00-05:002026-02-25Vertebrate, and: Slides
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/983587
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L4-L5: There is a subtle bulge with ligamentum flavum thickening resulting in severe spinal canal stenosis. There is a mild bilateral neural foraminal narrowing due to a subtle bulge, anterolisthesis, and severe bilateral facet
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-12T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/594/image/coversmallVertebrate, and: Slides2026-02-25text/htmlen-USVertebrate, and: Slides2026-02-252026TWOProject MUSE®94152026-05-12T00:00:00-05:002026-02-25I Test the Ductile Strength of Everyday Objects, and: Interline, and: Epitaph, After Voring
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/983588
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With
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-12T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/594/image/coversmallI Test the Ductile Strength of Everyday Objects, and: Interline, and: Epitaph, After Voring2026-02-25text/htmlen-USI Test the Ductile Strength of Everyday Objects, and: Interline, and: Epitaph, After Voring2026-02-252026TWOProject MUSE®105272026-05-12T00:00:00-05:002026-02-25In the Wake
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/983589
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Remember this date: Monday, May 23, 2022. That was the day Daddy died in the comfort care unit of Fort Sanders Medical Center. For about six months afterward, I kept forgetting it, often mistakenly using the wrong mnemonic device to remind myself that he died on the twenty-second, the same day I graduated from high school in 1998. When in doubt, which happened often, I'd ask Siri: "What day of the week was May 22, 2022?" Siri would respond: "It was Sunday, May 22, 2022," which always helped me remember that Daddy died on a Monday—the day after my graduation and six days after Aunt Debra, his eldest sister, called to tell me he was dying. Whenever I tell the story of his death, I keep it brief—perhaps because the
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-12T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/594/image/coversmallIn the Wake2026-02-25text/htmlen-USIn the Wake2026-02-252026TWOProject MUSE®373192026-05-12T00:00:00-05:002026-02-25Kundiman, and: A Poem
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/983591
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No imagination helps avert destitution in reality, none can oppose oppressions or sustain those who "withstand" in body or spirit. But imagination changes mentalities, however slowly it may go about this.I was talking to Matthew and saying:What good is poetry in war? What is the role of a poet AS A PERSON?What is it when the people can't receive a poem?I had written in another time, another place but it was still TRUEbecause my family wanted me to be a doctor, a dental hygienist, anything to wear a white coat to make a good living and yet Ichoose a life of words andso, if they met a poem, they would reallypunch her in the face.Matthew and I were talking about Fred Moten and I told him how I loved how Fred said.
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-12T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/594/image/coversmallKundiman, and: A Poem2026-02-25text/htmlen-USKundiman, and: A Poem2026-02-252026TWOProject MUSE®117592026-05-12T00:00:00-05:002026-02-25The Making of the Imperial Tofu
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/983592
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When I was three, my mother taught me a song:I twisted the lyrics and sang it as: "The small one I give to Little Brother Zhang / The big one I save for myself.""No," my mother said, "the big one is for Little Brother Zhang.""Then I am Little Brother Zhang," I declared.As I was growing up, my mother brought up this story whenever she needed proof of my egotism: the original sin of all Chinese children born between 1979 and 2015 under the one-child policy, the so-called "little emperors." When the restrictions were lifted on January 1, 2016, my mother had already gone through menopause. Every now and then, during our phone calls, she'll whine about how the policy cheated her and left her with only a daughter, who
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-12T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/594/image/coversmallThe Making of the Imperial Tofu2026-02-25text/htmlen-USThe Making of the Imperial Tofu2026-02-252026TWOProject MUSE®417352026-05-12T00:00:00-05:002026-02-25Behind Closed Doors, and: Everywhere, Light, and: My Heart Didn't Bleed for the Grief of the World
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/983594
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After
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-12T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/594/image/coversmallBehind Closed Doors, and: Everywhere, Light, and: My Heart Didn't Bleed for the Grief of the World2026-02-25text/htmlen-USBehind Closed Doors, and: Everywhere, Light, and: My Heart Didn't Bleed for the Grief of the World2026-02-252026TWOProject MUSE®123972026-05-12T00:00:00-05:002026-02-25Rabid
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/983595
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One Sunday morning you will be reading in the gazebo and hear your wife scream. You will scurry in your slippers to the mulch pile, expecting a bear, having read about bears, thinking you will make yourself bear-like and scare the bear off, or maybe find a stick with which to hit the bear, or entice the bear into chasing you so as to save your wife and this will be how you are remembered.But when you reach your wife, there will be no bear. She will be on the ground, grasping desperately. For what? For you? For air? Is she in the throes of a heart attack? Stroke? Do people scream when having a stroke?Your insides will crumple at the desperation of the woman who moments ago was hauling clods in a rusty wheelbarrow
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-12T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/594/image/coversmallRabid2026-02-25text/htmlen-USRabid2026-02-252026TWOProject MUSE®253182026-05-12T00:00:00-05:002026-02-25Labyrinth In A Dewdrop, and: Unwritten Overture, and: As We Were Saying
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/983596
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-12T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/594/image/coversmallLabyrinth In A Dewdrop, and: Unwritten Overture, and: As We Were Saying2026-02-25text/htmlen-USLabyrinth In A Dewdrop, and: Unwritten Overture, and: As We Were Saying2026-02-252026TWOProject MUSE®125192026-05-12T00:00:00-05:002026-02-25If You Wanted to Live
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/983599
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The bunny arrived at Easter, as many bunnies do, with a green fabric ribbon around its neck. I didn't ask for it; my sister Aileen did. I let everyone know, even as I petted its twitching haunch, that I would take no responsibility for its care. That was fine by Aileen, since I was forever co-opting her toys and books, fabricating reasons why they should belong to me. But when we ran down the staircase that Easter morning and I saw the bunny on the dining table next to our laden wicker baskets, I felt my spine tingle and my chest go cold. The cage sat between tall candlesticks, where the ham would be when we got back from church. We lived in the central part of Kansas City and occasionally saw a playful leaping
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-12T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/594/image/coversmallIf You Wanted to Live2026-02-25text/htmlen-USIf You Wanted to Live2026-02-252026TWOProject MUSE®312932026-05-12T00:00:00-05:002026-02-25Queen of the Rodeo
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/983601
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In the last nine months, Norm had lost a kidney and then a brother along with that kidney. To be clear: his kidney had been cut out—pulled through his abdomen in a surgical bag—and then stitched up inside of his brother, and then his brother had passed anyhow, leaving behind a son and a wife, Misty, a woman Norm might have loved once, though it was hard to be sure.The doctor had told him that his remaining kidney would increase in size, that it would claim some of the emptied space and take over the whole job of filtering his blood. "Without a problem," the doctor had said. "Just the same as before." Of course, the doctor had said a lot of things. There were slivers Norm couldn't remember about that day, and then
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-12T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/594/image/coversmallQueen of the Rodeo2026-02-25text/htmlen-USQueen of the Rodeo2026-02-252026TWOProject MUSE®434292026-05-12T00:00:00-05:002026-02-25Everything You've Ever Done Wrong
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/983604
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In the summer of 1989, I was fourteen years old, languishing in the heat and stillness of my small town on the New Hampshire seacoast. Behind my bedroom door, I listened to my Beatles tapes on repeat, letting the guitar lines and harmonies carry me to worlds wilder and more colorful than anything I knew. In the living room each night, my father watched the news of mounting conflicts thousands of miles away in the Middle East. My mother bustled over dinner in the kitchen. My brother spun around the streets in his Chevy Monte Carlo. The electric fans around our house fought a vain battle against the humidity. I waited for the long days to change.Sometime in early July, the announcement arrived over the radio: Ringo
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-12T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/594/image/coversmallEverything You've Ever Done Wrong2026-02-25text/htmlen-USEverything You've Ever Done Wrong2026-02-252026TWOProject MUSE®486682026-05-12T00:00:00-05:002026-02-25Contributor Notes
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/983605
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A Pushcart Prize–winning Black author, Akhim Yuseff Cabéy has had work in Colorado Review, Rhino, Shenandoah, Callaloo, and elsewhere. Get Funky, Get Swoll, his full-length debut collection of poetry, is forthcoming from Black Lawrence Press in 2026. Originally from the Bronx, New York, he can be found on Instagram @the_fit_poet.Kate Lister Campbell was raised in Kansas City and lives in New York. Her fiction has appeared in Granta Online, Witness, Indiana Review, and North American Review. She is the winner of the 2025 Salamander Fiction Contest. She received her MFA from Warren Wilson College.Apollo Chastain (he/they/she) is either crying in the club or crying in the archive. Their work has been supported by Tin
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-12T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/594/image/coversmallContributor Notes2026-02-25text/htmlen-USContributor Notes2026-02-252026TWOProject MUSE®92152026-05-12T00:00:00-05:002026-02-25