Non-Contest Submissions: “Desire” (Issue 75) UPDATE: We have re-opened non-contest submissions for fiction, nonfiction and poetry for the next two weeks, until Saturday, November 10th, 2018. Submit! Contest Submissions: “Desire” (Issue 75) Submission Period: September 24th – November 5th Finalist Judges: Jo Ann Beard – Nonfiction Contest Nicole Walker – Flash Prose
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“It’s not always easy to tell the difference between thinking and looking out the window.” —Wallace Stevens, Letters (1966) * * * “Where do you want the window?” Everett asks, standing on the unframed
I hushed my child, remembered the fallen squirrel who wouldn’t cryand how we played hours of recorded wails until its mother heard, pulled it from our dried fruits, nuts, towels, capful of water, and fled.
Oh Honey, Bless Your Heart There’s nothin like Nana’s kitchen with the angled door frames and the sound of everybody bein ugly.
Letter from a Young Poet “Do not write love-poems; avoid at first those forms that are too facile and commonplace: they are themost difficult, for it takes a great, fully matured power
We watch PBS and learnhow every bird was a dinosaur,how the earliest whales were wolveswho found the water goodand disappeared into it. I get high enough to see that death is merelya change
You misunderstand me, mother. You, who do not soften into me. I’ve always wanted to say that to you. Now that I have, I must remark on lesser things: our pinky nail
ATTACHMENT THEORY Once she began spitting, foam dashing the windshield like snow, I reached sideways from the driver’s seat and volleyed my fist against her breastbone. Twice. More than twice. Don’t hit me! She cried out
The Sun, Naked A tidal surge of greenacross the Vaca hills,new grass,mermaid hair.Wind announcing spring beforeits time. Mustard waist-high,furrowed rows of vines,the sun, naked.Lupine flushin purple rash as if to say we’ve had enoughwinter rain.
The only flowers you can’t pick on the island are wood lilies. They shoot out of the ground in clusters, orange with brown flecks on their petals, and in 1978 the state
Clatter-drawn, drawn by hail.In rain the stones go soft and feral.You’re ferocious in trauma’s pelt,prickly skins each generationpasses down, heavy and re-stitched. You’re a roar of grassesand lashed panes, a rabbit haunchquivering