Valentine, Texas.

Valentine, Texas begins with two men, lifelong friends, hunting buddies, guys who shot reflector lights out of mailbox posts and fought cowboys and Indians in grade school, and now find themselves on opposite sides of the law in a showdown. The threats they make are real, but are couched in careful language, and in fact great care is the hallmark of their interaction. Instead of confronting events squarely, they circle them in wary, oblique rhetoric. The second part of the collection moves away from Valentine but retains the same basic ideas of language, isolation, and failed companionship. The collection reaches its finale at a bridge in Kingfisher [Oklahoma], a place where fish are falling, at a moment when everything is falling

word~river literary review (2011)

wordriver is a literary journal dedicated to the poetry, short fiction and creative nonfiction of adjuncts and part-time instructors teaching in our universities, colleges, and community colleges. Our premier issue was published in Spring 2009. We are always looking for work that demonstrates the creativity and craft of adjunct/part-time instructors in English and other disciplines. We reserve first publication rights and onetime anthology publication rights for all work published. We define adjunct instructors as anyone teaching part-time or full-time under a semester or yearly contract, nationwide and in any discipline. Graduate students teaching under part-time contracts during the summer or who have used up their teaching assistant time and are teaching with adjunct contracts for the remainder of their graduate program also are eligible.https://digitalscholarship.unlv.edu/word_river/1001/thumbnail.jp