Month: September 2026
Flurry
by Lydia Gwyn
I dig holes for snowdrop bulbs. A song of psalms, over and over. Turning and turning. I plant so many bulbs that when spring arrives, the hill will become a snowbank. By that time, I’ll be a different version of myself. Patient and pauseful. One who listens more. One who notices. My daughter’s ponytail curling on itself, her pretty, open face. The sachet rooms of orange light in my house. My husband playing guitar until the cords go slant in my brain. The sound of my son on the phone with a friend, pacing as he talks, like his father. I place each bulb in its hole, a flurry of them, and remember other fall days years ago, when I was in college and visiting my parents’ home for Thanksgiving break. Football cheer on the TV, and the smell of onions, buttered potatoes, the boiling, baking air. My mother assembling pumpkin pies, pricking the bottom crust with a fork. I was always in-love with some boy or other. Waiting for their calls. How I wish those lovers had loved more. Snowdrops have such small blooms. I picture how these on the hill will bud and open, dangling like strange opioids or like the tips of someone’s fingers dipping sugar from a bowl.
Lydia Gwyn is the author of the flash fiction collections: You’ll Never Find Another (2021, Matter Press) and Tiny Doors (2018, Another New Calligraphy). Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in DMQ Review, The Best Microfictions 2024, Appalachian Places, Elm Leaves Journal, Fractured Lit, F(r)iction, The Florida Review, and others. A selection of pieces from her new collection “Emptiness, Standing Still” is available in Issue 22 of Ravenna Press’s Triples Series. She lives with her family in East Tennessee, where she works as an academic librarian.
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What surprising, fascinating stuff can you tell us about the origin, drafting, and/or final version of “Flurry”? I often write from prompt words, and “Flurry” incorporates five of them, including “snowdrop.” I’m always surprised by how prompt words influence my writing and the paths they open for a story or poem. In this instance, one of the prompt words became the organizing principle of the piece, providing the structure for the entire work. by Avital Gad-Cykman Glimmers crawl like larvae in dirty puddles left by hours of drizzling rain. Slippery stones tilt each step, teasing the body’s balance, the near-symmetry of legs, threatening to twist an ankle. A line of adjoining houses stands like a stalled train, their surfaces peeling, throwing angled shadows across a ghostly uneven street. Steady drizzle blurs the eyes, but from this hollow in the landscape it is impossible to glimpse the hilltops at sunrise anyway. Chilly darkness clenches like a fist around passersby. This month, a man in his fifties strangled by blood clots, has lost his ability to speak. His mouth twists and his eyes roll as he surveys the ruins of his brain, searching for a way out. To reach others, he needs one word-that’s all. The right word, to pull him back from a loneliness stretching forever without it. We walk through the city of depression and no one speaks. Our feet hurt, our heads are bursting, our hands reach out without finding anything solid to grasp, something to hold. We pass each other without looking. Then a whistle. Someone sings something old, a children’s song. The man turns his head. He listens. The song is about a garden. And a boy. A memory spirals open. A flower. Avital Gad-Cykman is the author of the story collections Light Reflection Over Blues (Ravenna Press) and Life In, Life Out (Matter Press). She is the winner of Margaret Atwood Studies Magazine Prize and The Hawthorne Citation Short Story Contest, twice a finalist for the Iowa Fiction Award and a six-time nominee for the Pushcart. Her stories appear in Spectrum, The Dr. Eckleburg Review, Iron Horse Review, Prairie Schooner, Ambit, McSweeney’s Quarterly and Michigan Quarterly, twice in Best Short Fictions, W.W. Norton’s Flash Fiction International anthology and Best Microfiction 2025. She lives in Brazil. See what happens when you click below. What surprising, fascinating stuff can you tell us about the origin, drafting, and/or final version of “The City of Depression”? I wrote this flash, thinking of my beloved brother-in-law, who had a stroke earlier this year. His admirable struggle with aphasia, a condition that limits a person’s speech, and the huge difficulty of that man who’d always excelled in communication brought to my mind the image of being lost in a city. Fortunately, the first word appeared, and then others. by Kim Chinquee I center myself on the moto, balancing my core. Out here in the open air, on the road, wearing long pants, my ref jacket, whistle, timer, helmet. My driver is from England, not far from where I used to live when I was in the Air Force. Cyclists use their legs, helping them go forward. It’s my job to make sure they’re not drafting, nor breaking any rules. Also: ensure safety. Today, I’m Head Official. When I see athletes grouping on the bike course, I tell my driver to slow, follow, and the athletes tend to self-correct, moving single file outside of the draft zone. I’m an athlete myself. We ride up and down the course: twenty-six miles of vineyards, farms, and hills. Along Lake Cayuga; it’s one of the Fingers. I give my driver orders, and we stop here and there to chat. He’s a retired physicist who came to the US by way of Cornell. I’m a professor myself. He also is an athlete. It’s a thrill, on the back of his motorcycle, speeding, slowing, speeding, feeling the air, seeing the athletes on the bike, knowing what that’s like. The burn of the muscles. The breath. The hard climbs, sailing through the downs. We wave to police directing traffic. Part of this course shares a Half Ironman route I’ve done more than once and will do again next month. As I start the two-hour drive back home, I listen to a novel on audio, and I imagine myself on the moto, imagine myself on the bike, pushing on the ups, speeding through the downs, the clean breeze on my face, and oh, the beauty of the landscape, and the lake! Again, an uphill and a down one! Faster, faster—wee! Turning left, I see lights behind me, the police. I’m still wearing my official gear. My hat and shirt and jacket and my whistle. I pull over, unroll my window, and a cop steps up and asks me for my license. I say, “Was I speeding?” “It goes from 55 to 40 down to 30.” “Oh,” I say, handing my ID. He says, “It’s not a race.” Kim Chinquee’s eleventh book is Octopus Arms. She’s Senior Editor of New World Writing Quarterly, Prose Editor of Midwest Review, and Associate Professor of Journalism at SUNY-Buffalo State. She’s a competitive triathlete, a Certified USA Triathlon and World Triathlon Official, and lives with her three dogs in Western New York. See what happens when you click below. What surprising, fascinating stuff can you tell us about the origin, drafting, and/or final version of “One of the Fingers”? I find it interesting to be riding on a motorcycle monitoring cyclists during races. (As an athlete myself, I appreciate the work, especially on the inclines.) I tried to capture my fascination with that (and the beautiful landscape) in writing. During a race, one is aiming for speed and endurance, whereas, as a driver in a car, one must adhere to the speed limits! I worked on several revisions of this piece, and recently changed the title. And ending, which I hope sings. by Michael Okafor Today, I am not going to write a single word about it. I will take a walk in the clear-cut repose of the park. I will listen to Fela. I will watch the hectoring winter-white pigeons peck at an army of red ants. I will lasso my mind around a single thought. Perhaps I will write a poem that outruns meaning. It is useless to try to explain anything. I stopped writing about it because I stopped writing about it. It is apparent what it is. I am not afraid. My great-grandmother was afraid when they took her eldest brother. I will not even mention who they are or what they did. I don’t want to write about anything terrible. I will tell you what I would love to write about: Sclater’s guenons; those slaves who died by the dull stab of the Atlantic; the perseverance of ants. It is not easy to preserve a species marked for extinction. But we have to do what we have to do, don’t we? I might as well be the one to write what happened on those ships. You weren’t there, remember? I am the only one who knows. It is my single responsibility. I can’t remember when it became that way. I guess it’s just like running; you never remember the first thing that made you sprint—you just know you have to keep running until the air in your lungs starts fluttering against your ribcage like some frightened bird in a cage. Every person is running from something. My ancestors ran from white men for years. This wasn’t some sport; I checked—they didn’t make it to the Olympics. I’m not even making this up. I have gathered my empirical data from my dreams. I am a scientist like that. My aim is to convince you that history is an approximation of lies. I know the ocean still plots my death. I know how heredity works. Michael Okafor is an Igbo writer and medical radiographer from Nigeria. His work, which explores the human condition, has been shortlisted for the Bridport Poetry Prize (2025) and was first runner-up for both the Pacific Spirit Poetry Prize (2025) and the SprinNG Annual Poetry Contest (2023). A 2023 SprinNG Writing Fellow and member of the Nwokike Literary Club, his poetry is featured or forthcoming in Prism International, Chestnut Review, The Shore, and Broken Antler Magazine, among others. He’s on X (@okaformichael_) and Instagram (@okaformichael0808). See what happens when you click below. What surprising, fascinating stuff can you tell us about the origin, drafting, and/or final version of “ Apophasis”? The first time I came across the rhetorical device, Apophasis, I found it really interesting. And I decided to write a poem built around this idea of bringing something up by denying that it will be mentioned. I have always wanted to write about historical trauma without falling into the predictable, explicit tropes of grief. I wanted to see if a poem could successfully do this, and it did that for me.The City of Depression
And there it is.One of the Fingers
Apophasis
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
10/12 • Kathy Fish
10/19 • Katherine Garrison
10/26 • Beverly Jackson
11/02 • Robert Scotellaro
11/09 • T.L. Sherwood
11/16 • Susan Buchler
11/23 • Chelsea Stickle
11/30 • TBD
12/07 • TBD
12/14 • TBD
12/21 • TBD
12/28 • TBD