Month: February 2026
CNF
by Terena Elizabeth Bell
Zoomers at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, June 2024
In the room young women come and go, TikToking Michelangelo.
Terena Elizabeth Bell is a fiction writer. Her debut short story collection,Tell Me What You See (Whiskey Tit, 2022), was named one of the “best books of the century” by New York Society Library. Her writing has appeared in more than 100 publications. A Kentucky native, she lives in New York. Get one story delivered to your inbox every month by subscribing here: patreon.com/terenaelizabethbell.
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What surprising, fascinating stuff can you tell us about the origin, drafting, and/or final version of “Zoomers at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, June 2024”? I go to the Metropolitan Museum often and every time I do, I can’t help but notice how many people never actually look at the art. No matter what part of the museum you’re in, you see them: these women in their 20’s who walk around with their phones held up the entire time, recording, eyes locked on their screens. One day I was on a bench in one of the European galleries and this sentence just came to me. by Wayne Lee Writer, editor and teacher Wayne Lee (wayneleepoet.com) lives in Santa Fe, NM. Lee’s poems have appeared in Tupelo Press, Slipstream, The New Guard, Writer’s Digest and other journals and anthologies. He was awarded the 2012 Fischer Prize and has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize and four Best of the Net Awards. His collection The Underside of Light was a finalist for the 2014 New Mexico/Arizona Book Award; his collection Dining on Salt: Four Seasons of Septets was published by Cornerstone Press in April 2025; and his collection The Beautiful Foolishness is forthcoming from Casa Urraca Press in 2026. Lee is the host of the online Tuesday Poetry Practice community. See what happens when you click below. What surprising, fascinating stuff can you tell us about the origin, drafting, and/or final version of “Interview Erasure”? There isn’t a lot of “fascinating stuff” to tell about “Interview Erasure.” I was simply writing an erasure poem from the Candace Bergen interview in Time, and I kept erasing and erasing until I had whittled it down to what felt like a tight little prose poem that made a much larger comment on aging and summoning the courage to face our own mortality. by Sarah Daly The existential angst of not being able to find a job was squashing her brain. Like flattening it to a pancake. Her brain would become so flat that there would be no room for the 12,000-word research paper about beetle worms’ spots. There would be no room for the two-hour lecture about the habits of glowworms in volcanoes. There would be no room for the three-year experiment comparing the variegations of gnats’ wings. Her brain would become so flat that there would be big gaps in her head. Her head would sound hollow when she slumped over her desk and impatient students knocked on it. Helium from the gnats’ nests would creep into her ears and fill those hollow spaces. Her head would get so light that her feet would lift off the ground. She would begin to float over her crazy city and look down on everyone. She would float over lakes and rivers and streams and cities and mountains and oceans, lots and lots of oceans. She would get so sick of water that she would dream she was a cactus. She would float higher and higher until the clouds were cushioning her and wrapping themselves around her like ermine robes. She would wave at passengers on airplanes who fainted when they saw her. She would knock birds off their courses, who plummeted to untimely deaths. She would float until the air was purplish and speckled with stars. She would float until she passed the satellites and saw nothing but swathes of light on a blueish background. She would float until her feet touched a white, dusty surface and she landed. Then the helium would leak from her head and her brain would expand back and she would live a very happy existence on the moon. Sarah Daly is an American writer whose fiction, poetry, and drama have appeared in fifty-five literary journals including New Feathers, Moss Puppy Magazine, Shot Glass Journal, and The Avalon Literary Review, and Autumn Sky Daily. You can find her work at https://sarahdalywrites.wordpress.com/ See what happens when you click below. What surprising, fascinating stuff can you tell us about the origin, drafting, and/or final version of “First Woman”? I wrote the first draft of “First Woman” in 2019 while waiting for some chemical analyses to finish in the lab. Airplanes were flying over the building, which sparked a sudden inspiration to give my rather mundane experience a sci-fi twist: a scientific woman circumventing man-made structures and being the first woman to walk on the moon. Often in science, we forget the remarkable things we are doing and are bogged down by day-to-day details. by Robert McBrearty He was meditating in his favorite rocking chair in the cabin when his wife said, rather urgently, You might want to hurry with that, the enemy is about to attack. His eyes fluttered open for a moment and he caught a glimpse of the full moon through the window. Of course, he thought, they always attack during the full moon. It was so like her to make a big deal of things. He heard the wind rattling the clapboard cabin. Plenty of time, he said, you can’t rush a meditation. He shut his eyes and focused on his breath, in, out, a wavelike movement of the belly. She gave that certain long-suffering sigh of hers. He heard her storming about, shuttering the windows, barring the door, loading the weapons. Really, she said, couldn’t you help a little for once? This isn’t a good time, he said, without opening his eyes. Let me know when they arrive. Jerk, she muttered. There was a fierce pounding at the door. The door shuddered and creaked at the hinges. The wind rushed in. He stood up, blinking his eyes in bewilderment. My God, he said, what’s going on here? His wife gave him that certain withering look of hers and asked, Is it a good time now? But she was already opening fire. Robert Garner McBrearty’s stories have been anthologized in the Pushcart Prize and widely published in literary journals including Missouri Review, New England Review, North American Review, StoryQuarterly, and previously in The Journal of Compressed Creative Arts. He’s the author of six books of fiction including A Night at the Y, When I can’t Sleep (Matter Press), and The Problem You Have (University of New Mexico Press, 2025). His writing awards include a Sherwood Anderson Foundation Fiction Award and fellowships from MacDowell and the Fine Arts Work Center. See what happens when you click below. What surprising, fascinating stuff can you tell us about the origin, drafting, and/or final version of “About Time”? I’m always intrigued by how stories originate. For as long as I remember, I’ve had images and dreams of being under siege, people trying to break through my doors and windows. I suppose this speaks to some sense of vulnerability, of being under threat, whether that threat is real or only in the imagination. I also like to meditate, perhaps to free myself of such images. The story idea came to me when I put those two things together, being under siege while trying to meditate, as an avoidance strategy, I suppose. It probably isn’t a good time to be meditating as the man’s wife points out. The interactions of the couple, their contrasting viewpoints, helped pull the story along. One thing that happened during the drafting was that I changed the story from first person to third. I’m not sure why, but I like the story better this way. Perhaps it helps to see the story a little more from the outside looking in. Interview Erasure
First Woman
About Time
Check out the write-up of the journal in The Writer.
Matter Press recently released titles from Meg Boscov, Abby Frucht, Robert McBrearty, Tori Bond, Kathy Fish, and Christopher Allen. Click here.
Matter Press is now offering private flash fiction workshops and critiques of flash fiction collections here.
Submissions
Poetry, creative nonfiction, and fiction/prose poetry submissions are now closed. The reading period for standard submissions opens again September 15, 2025. Submit here.
Upcoming
12/15 • Isabelle Ness
12/22 • Catherine Bai
12/29 • Stephan Viau
01/05 • Allison Blevins
01/12 • Justin Ocelot
01/19 • Yejun Chun
01/26 • Mathieu Parsy
02/02 • Robert McBrearty
02/09 • Sarah Daly
02/16 • Wayne Lee
02/23 • Terena Elizabeth Bell
03/02 • Michael Mirolla
03/09 • Nicholas Claro
03/16 • TBD
03/23 • TBD
03/30 • TBD