REVIEW: “Lacus Odii (Lake of Hate)” by Josh Pearce

Review of Josh Pearce, “Lacus Odii (Lake of Hate)” Radon Journal 9 (2025): 66-67 — Read online. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman.

Well, this is quite a prescient poem! I had to go back and check just exactly when in 2025 this issue of Radon Journal came out — and the answer is, two days after the US presidential inauguration. Who knows whether Pearce had insider knowledge of what was to come, or is just very good at predicting the future, the first stanza of this poem cuts awfully close to home, a month on from the inauguration. Want to be thoroughly depressed? Read this poem.

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REVIEW: “Buttons and Soap” by Josh Pearce

Review of Josh Pearce, “Buttons and Soap,” Radon Journal 9 (2025): 68 — Read online. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman.

The structure of the poem meant I had to read it a couple of times in different orders — once straight through, once with just the parentheticals and once with just the non-parentheticals — to see if I could determine how it should be read, because the first read through just left me confused. The parentheticals alone do make sense, and have a nice rhythm and rhyme to them; but what is left behind when they are extracted didn’t feel to me like it held together.

The upshot is that I spent more time confused about this poem than I did reading it, which unfortunately means this one didn’t work for me.

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REVIEW: “Imago Dei” by Josh Pearce

Review of Josh Pearce, “Imago Dei,” Flash Fiction Online 124 (January 2024): 8-10 — Purchase here. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman.

Content note: Cults, forced insemination.

Creepy and disturbing, this story took mundane things that are already horrible, and combined them with the horrible fantastical, to make something even worse. Not the sort of story I normally seek out, but I thought it was pretty brilliantly done.

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