Yo. It’s Spring. Sort of. We know there’s been lots of snow out there this week. Shout out to the Upper Peninsula. Why not start your Spring off – or, lament that it’s not actually Spring outside – with some Friday reads?

There’s Christy Crutchfield’s The Commuter this week at Newfound. Also at Newfound, Robert Kloss’ excerpt from LET THE DEAD BURY THEIR DEAD, a book we’re pretty damn excited about seeing someday:

And still she refused to acknowledge the beat of their drums, the shadows of their dance. Instead she held your hand to her belly, whispering, “What would you tell him?” and you said, “To love all the inventions of the Almighty,” and you knew then the corn silk softness of his young black hair, the lazy weight of his skull against your chest, the distant murmuring of his child’s voice, and you said, “He will know his letters and he will know his numbers,” and “I will tell him always to run in the grass, for a child is too young to toddle in the dust,” and you continued with your instruction long after your wife fell to snoring. And through all the hours of the night, the natives continued their tumult, ceasing only with the morning silence.

Gregory Sherl – whose collection THE OREGON TRAIL IS THE OREGON TRAIL will blow your brain apart if you haven’t already read it – has this wonderful new poem at Cloud Rodeo: A HISTORY OF GLOW.

New Brevity out this week, including flash nonfiction by Rebecca McClanahan – THINGS GONE THE WAY OF TIME.

In the new issue of The Collagist, there is Brian Simoneau’s poem, THE ALMIGHTY RECONSIDERS HIS ROLE IN A WORLD WE’VE RECREATED:

Still burning, my voice even now emanates from the hiss, snap of cold air and blue

flame,

but no prophets wander these lands to listen

Short one this week. Preoccupied by brackets and basketballs and the coming of baseball. Read these things. Go.