[{"id":19359,"date":"2026-08-21T14:36:51","date_gmt":"2026-08-21T14:36:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blreview.org\/?p=19359"},"modified":"2026-08-21T14:36:55","modified_gmt":"2026-08-21T14:36:55","slug":"issue-32-highlights","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blreview.org\/issue-highlights\/issue-32-highlights\/","title":{"rendered":"BLR 25th anniversary ~~ Issue 32 highlights"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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For 25 years, Bellevue Literary Review <\/em>has been publishing stories, essays, and poems that take readers into the shared space where art and medicine meet. Throughout our anniversary year, we’re marking this incredible milestone by inviting you on a journey through the BLR<\/em> archive, from the beginning through the present.

Join us each week as we curate special highlights \u2014 stories, poems, photos, and more \u2014 from each of our issues.<\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n

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About the Issue<\/h1>\n\n\n\n


Issue 32 features the annual BLR Prizewinners \u2014 highlighted below \u2014 and includes writings that showcase the nuances of relationships as they are impacted by illness, from a couple’s physical intimacy during cancer treatment to a young researcher trying to care for her primate subjects and her ailing mother at the same time.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n

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From the Foreword<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Greetings from the 32nd issue of the Bellevue Literary Review<\/em>, my first issue as assistant poetry editor… I am grateful to join a journal that has explored the stories of medicine and literature as it has been intersecting the lives of medical professionals and patients alike for almost two decades. When I began reading submissions for the BLR<\/em> I felt like I was a student again. This time, Leila Chatti invited me to question the presence of blood in the violent, peaceful, and intimate scenes she rendered in her poem \u201cBlood HX.\u201d And through the poem \u201cBack in the World: Commuter Student,\u201d JoLee Passerini taught me what it is like to return to school after a military tour overseas. From a couple\u2019s bedroom to a bed in the ICU, these works of literature teach us that writing is not done solely to share oneself with others, or to commemorate a moment. Rather, great literature is meant to help us understand how it is to be another human.
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– Jen Hyde, former Assistant Poetry Editor
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Read Highlights from Issue 32<\/h1>\n\n\n\n

Each week, we’ll be highlighting one outstanding story, poem, and essay from the featured issue. We encourage you to explore more from the issue on our website or, better yet, to pick up a copy!<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div>\n<\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n

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FICTION<\/span><\/h1><\/div><\/div><\/div>\n<\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div>\n<\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n
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Do I Look Sick To You?<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

2017 Winner, Goldenberg Prize for Fiction<\/em>

Pushcart Prize Winner<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

by C.J. Hribal
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At first you don\u2019t. You hold back, stroking the small of her back. You kiss her ear. You nestle in behind her. Finally she says, \u201cWhat, you\u2019re afraid I\u2019ll break? You\u2019re afraid it\u2019s contagious? Trust me, the cancer will not stick to your dick. It\u2019s not gonna rush up your urethra, pummeling your little spermies on the way, and explode like an IED in your insides. It\u2019s only trying to do that to me<\/em>.\u201d

This is how it\u2019s going to be\u2014she is going to kick cancer in the ass. Everyone says this, \u201cShe is going to kick cancer in the ass,\u201d until it becomes a mantra. Everything is going to be as it was before, only now you are \u201cliving with cancer.\u201d 

\u201c\u2018Living with cancer?\u2019\u201d she says when her oncologist uses this phrase. \u201cWhat, I\u2019ve lent out rooms? I\u2019m just supposed to think it\u2019s a particularly sloppy roommate? It leaves its clothes everywhere, its dishes mound up in the sink, it leaves its towels on the bathroom floor and clots of hair in the drain, and when I say, \u2018This is not working out,\u2019 my cancer roommate gets to say, \u2018Screw you, I\u2019m staying\u2019? That is so<\/em> not right.\u201d Her oncologist and her nurses love her. So do you. She is going to kick cancer in the ass.
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NONFICTION<\/span><\/h1><\/div><\/div><\/div>\n<\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div>\n<\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n
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Of Mothers and Monkeys<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

2017 Winner, Felice Buckvar Prize for Nonfiction<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

by Caitlin Kuehn<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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In the morning I rush past the early shift nurses and the acrid chemical scent of burnt coffee in Styrofoam cups, towards the locked doors near the cafeteria of our city\u2019s largest teaching hospital. There are other student research assistants, but I have been here the longest, nearly three years, so I am the most trusted to self-manage the hustle and flow of laboratory life. By the time I layer on the second pair of gray plastic booties over the first set, and steal a look at the clock perched above another layer of locked doors, my mother is already halfway through surgery at the other end of the hospital. I pinch the metal at the bridge of my facemask onto my nose, take a hard breath in, and enter the lab in search of Domingo.

The trick with Domingo is outwitting his speed. He is small enough and jittery enough\u2014and clever enough\u2014that even with the back of the cage slid forward, pressing him with his flank against mesh, he manages to spin himself around until he is spread-eagled facing me. From this position it is impossible to safely administer the ketamine into his quadriceps. Intramuscular injections are a delicate process, a quick and confident plunge through the skin into the muscle tissue before the leg is instinctively jerked away. If the aim is off or I am too self-conscious in my movements, too tenuous, shaky, sluggish, or scared, I risk hitting major arteries or the sciatic nerve that runs deceptively close to the surface in primate thighs. Acute neuropathy, localized necrosis, lameness, and atrophy can all be the permanent fallout of a poorly aimed injection.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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POETRY<\/span><\/h1><\/div><\/div><\/div>\n<\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div>\n<\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n
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Poem For A Friend Growing Lighter and Lighter<\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

2017 Winner, Marica and Jan Vilcek Prize for Poetry<\/em>

by Abe Louise Young

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How are you? <\/p>\n\n\n\n

     I\u2019m on the barbs of stars <\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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     A bug eating through the shirt someone draped on a stone saint<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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     Soft moldy orange with a white-to-green halo <\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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     Sexual hopes redeem my fears <\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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     Lamotrigine, Clonazepam, friendship and gliding <\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

How are you? <\/p>\n\n\n\n

     Just like you\u2013a septic tank covered in honeysuckle vines, leaking time<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Issue 32: The Cover
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A Lexicon of Persistent Absence: Erotic Fantasy <\/strong><\/em>by Bo Joseph<\/strong>

Bo Joseph is a New York-based artist, originally from California. His abstract artwork is based on powerful images culled from books, magazines, or auction catalogues. \u201cI scavenge images of objects that transcend cultural boundaries,\u201d says Joseph. He often layers the images and repeats silhouettes using stencils. He then uses \u201cchancy techniques\u201d such as sanding, masking, and rinsing to alter the images from their original forms and upend their original contexts. The result is a \u201cmingling of iconic forms from disparate cultures and historic periods.\u201d
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(Quotes are from an artist statement by Bo Joseph. More insight into Bo’s creative process can be found in an interview by Matthew Weinstein, published in BLR <\/em>Issue 32.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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