Citron 15: Celebrating the Short Form – The next five years

Letter from the Editor

Last Thanksgiving, I told my parents that when I was a little girl one of my favorite childhood games was pretending to see the future by looking into a crystal ball that I found in their bedroom. I first saw a crystal ball in The Wizard of Oz when the Wicked Witch of the West used it to track Dorothy and her friends as they headed to the Emerald City. Even though I found the witch very scary, I was fascinated by this idea, by the slight movement of hands, that you could see what was happening and what would be.

Inside the water-filled crystal ball in my parents’ room were three crimson roses. Each time I visited the crystal ball I tried hard to see the future, then ultimately picked it up and shook it as hard as I could to see if it would clear the vision. What I didn’t know was that my father had given those flowers as a 1st anniversary gift to my mother. Over the years they wondered why the water turned darker as tiny pieces of petal sat at the bottom of the crystal ball.

The traditional gift for a 15th anniversary is crystal, and the modern gift is timepieces or clocks. This fall The Citron Review celebrates its 15th anniversary. It seems like we just published our anthology, Citron 10: Celebrating 10 Years of the Short Form, and the companion anniversary issue. So much has happened since then, so much uncertainty in the past five years, and yet we keep moving forward. Time continues to pass.

We’ve been fortunate to have a strong team over the years, regardless of who was sitting in what role, we’ve been able to celebrate the short form for fifteen years. This couldn’t have happened without incredible readers and writers choosing to spend their time with us. To celebrate our 15th anniversary, we have gathered some of our favorite works from issues over the past five years as a continuation of our 10th anniversary anthology published in Fall 2019. It was incredibly hard to choose, and thoroughly enjoyable to revisit each work.

Also in this issue, we are pleased to announce our nominations for this year’s Best of The Net. You can also find our nominations from other years on our Previous Issues page. If you have not yet read our Citron 10: Fall 2019 Issue or the anthology, Citron 10: Celebrating 10 Years of the Short Form, I highly recommend that too.

To our readers, writers, founders, and former editors and staff, on behalf of The Citron Review, thank you for choosing to spend your time with us. We look forward to what the future holds.

Cheers to fifteen years,

Angela M. Brommel
Editor-in-Chief
Poetry Editor
The Citron Review

Masthead

Poetry

Michele Reese	Growing Up	Fall 2020
Charles Rafferty	The Problem with Not Owning a Ladder	Winter 2021/2022
Sher Ting	Hunger	Winter 2021/2022
Katie Kemple	Under the Buck Moon	Winter 2022/2023
Tara Labovich	Sonnetletter to a Mule Deer	Summer 2024

Creative Nonfiction

Anita Gill	What We Can’t Do: A Father’s and Daughter’s List	Summer 2023
Shakirah Peterson	Ugh, Uub.	Spring 2021
Nancy Huggett	Benediction	Fall 2022
Arin Calaway	Dear Shannon Moore	Fall 2022
William Woolfit	Bad Blood	Summer 2023

Flash Fiction

Beth Gilstrap	FAYE FURR KNEW SHE WAS NOT AND NEVER WOULD BE WACK	Summer 2021
Star Su	Freezing Point	Spring 2021
Kristen Zory King	Her Kingdom Come	Spring 2021
Sabina Y. Wong	Shine in Her Light	Fall 2022
Joe P. Squance	Triboluminescence	Fall 2021
Lindy Biller	Stone Fruit	Fall 2023

Micros

Jessica Hudson	Four Riddles and a Joke from The Big Book of Fairy Tales for Grown Up Girls	Winter 2020/21
Sudha Galopal	Frozen Biryani	Fall 2021
Aanuoluwapo Adesina	Solus	Summer 2022
Melissa Llanes Brownlee	the graduation party you decided to skip	Summer 2022
Nia Mahmud	In Mourning	Winter 2023