Hell is a Venice Beach public restroom. It is dark and covered with the writings of a rambling madman scribbled in neon orange paint. A thick green sludge lives on the floor and can never…
Posts Published by Guest Contributor
For over sixty years, Portland Review has been supported by contributions from writers, editors, readers, and advocates of the literary arts. The journal is produced by the graduate students in the English Department at Portland State University, which is a nonprofit public institute.
Take up Your Quarrel with the Idea
I dreamt there was a fire in the study and I tried to put it out and she called me a fool saying save the fire and save the books; the child. We take up…
Last Call by Kirsten Holt
For Michael Pandel In a pub toasting your too-late birthday, I imagine your eyes purpled and shut, unlike plums but yielding, spoiling into the hard ground of your cheekbones the rise and fall of the…
The Stubborn Child by Gwyn Ruddell Lewis
We told our children he hadn’t listened to his mother. We said he played Chicken. With a train. His mother had told him to stay away from the tracks. The train braked, much too late….
FATHERS OF THE UNIVERSE by Megan Freshley
As a little boy in Perrysburg, Ohio, he takes a shit on the marble steps of the methodist church while his father preaches a sermon inside. It must be impossible for my father to tell…