CNF: Lilith’s Song
by Sunmisola Odusola
It may appear that a woman is always on the verge of becoming—a god, the moon, a still brook, a fruit, crockery, a mass of blackened blood, a daughter, so what she feels the need to do is to contain herself. In the room, a loaf of flesh brooding over ink-filled dead leaves, ink on her body, ink on her teeth, her blood warming up against her. The woman herself is a container. In the role of a daughter, not much is done, a lot is replicated instead. She wears her mother’s skin, and sheds it later on to become her own mother. But a container must forget, or be confined to a single use. Likewise, a girl must become and become, until her skin turns translucent, until she wakes up without a body, and until she feeds herself her own body. This consumption happens on the inside—the shedding of the lining—a metaphor for a body that cannot live with itself. A body that must run and run until it becomes the path it is chasing. First a daughter, then a lover, of the world, of art, of paper, of beauty. The first time I came in contact with beauty, it was the skin of a snake, and I had almost picked it up before I heard the hissing.
Sunmisola Odusola writes on existence, love, and death, and daydreams about making surrealist art someday. They were shortlisted for DKA Poetry Prize (2024), and have had their works published in Backwards Trajectory, Brittle Paper, Fiery Scribe Review, Witcraft, April Centaur, and Eunoia Review.
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What surprising, fascinating stuff can you tell us about the origin, drafting, and/or final version of “Lilith’s Song”? Milan Kundera wrote in The Unbearable Lightness of Being about life being a sketch of itself, lived without rehearsal and preparation. I wrote Lilith’s Song in a moment of the same unpreparedness he wrote about. I had just resumed university, and it was the first time away from my mother. What came easily to me became quickly exhausting. The roles were irreconcilable (daughter, student, lover, person, writer). Each of these roles demanded a different version of me. It was then I realized that there was nothing more “woman” than the perpetual state of becoming, of resisting confinement. The feminine is represented and mythologized in the media by this very transformation: as the abject (the possessed woman), the cursed, the divine feminine—even in Lilith herself. This brings to mind the process of becoming, which is in a way similar to birth itself—to take on, to consume, and to shed. The work is in itself a response to Barbara Creed’s “The Monstrous Feminine.” by Carolyn Zaikowski my rugs and tiles, I love them. yes, this is the correct word, love. my sinks, chairs, forks, these fronds on my ferns, and all my deep purple hearts. my primrose as well. and the atlases, those ancient ones I carried with me, with all their keys in code. and the mishappen stones, hoarded strings, dull tacks. for forty or a hundred days, or ‘til all that remains: yes, this vow is correct. for I left everything for here. left his home and his, too. was caught in phonebooths downtown and in fields stuffed with what were called, by trusted sources, wild things. I was brashly scissor-cut from the elegies and odes of my mothers and fathers and their mothers and fathers all the way back. which wasn’t far, to be fair. and from rooms crushed by walls toppled by the unpacked crates of others. barred from the only room I had a key to, driven from the bed I’d, as in a dare, named mine. and so I lay my body down: my paper stacks and dishes, my sprays. my notebooks and jumpers. lights and switches. all the shoes on my feet imprinting floors just because they can. crusty chairs, the links on my chains, forty or a hundred days for my body forty or a hundred days for my bruise— all the way back, foreseeing my autumn fern and its fronds, I someway waited. predicted my fern’s primordial lace, the glories of its slits and arrowy points. patient. maybe not serene, but patient. the man who never arrives will tell you: I’ve always been so patient. studying with a hustle and hope only to be attained with the glasses I was born with, and my abacus, my astrolabe, my camera obscura. all these trances I loved within, stubborn, years before I could aspire to meet lace, let alone the lace of a fern. Carolyn Zaikowski is the Poet Laureate of Easthampton, MA and the author of the novel In a Dream, I Dance by Myself, and I Collapse (Civil Coping Mechanisms, 2016). Her fiction, poetry, and essays have appeared widely, in such publications as The Washington Post, Alaska Quarterly Review, Everyday Feminism, DIAGRAM, West Branch, and Denver Quarterly. Carolyn holds an MFA in Creative Writing from Naropa University and currently works as a creative writing instructor and volunteer death doula. She can be found at www.carolynzaikowski.com and carolynzzz.substack.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 “I am here to lay my body down”? This is part of a poetry manuscript I began writing, largely by accident, during the early months of the pandemic, where I was living alone in a post-divorce apartment. The spiritual significance of “forty days” to me was dancing with the etymological significance of the word “quarantine”, which originally meant “space of forty days” for ships to isolate after their journeys during the plague. There was a lot of contemplation and emotion happening around the theme of physical space, objects, and inside-ness, and the fraught history of homes and safety going back to my childhood. The symbolism of the journey, the waiting, of arriving at last, having earned a home that was mine, that I could be the priestess of, a home I had finally earned that no one could touch, control, make unsafe, or tell me what to do (or not do) within. It was the first time in my life I’d had that, despite imagining its possibility as a child, where I waited in a hell-home. Writing this piece, I was so aware that despite my severe depression and the depths of horror that were happening in the world, I finally had a home and, goddamnit, it was mine. A humble little priestess-dom within which I would lay my body down, and which I would lay my body down for, stubbornly, if ever I had to fight for home again. by Joseph O’Day I once got scolded in first grade because I needed to sharpen my pencil. Sister Rose had told us to take out a piece of paper and prepare for a quiz, but my pencil’s lead had broken. Before I could make my way to the sharpener, she hovered over me, and in raised voice declared, “No wonder you need to sharpen your pencil, Mr. O’Day. You’ve been writing all over your desk!” I started crying and Sister Rose sent for my sister Maureen in fifth grade to come see how bad I’d been. That scene lived in my head for forty years, until I wrote it out. I had an image of short, stocky Sister Rose and of my desk in the back row behind the other kids, and of the patch I wore over my right eye to exercise my weak left eye. I believed I never wrote on that desk, but couldn’t be sure; I was only six at the time and lost touch with most of the living witnesses. I also believed the story’s essence centered on Sister Rose’s oppression, how she pulled my chair and me to the back wall of closets (which stored our coats and lunch bags), and on my mother’s tepid reaction when I got home – “Those nuns make such a big deal out of everything.” But the more I rewrote and reviewed my memories, the shakier seemed my “facts.” I wondered for instance where the pencil sharpener was located. Was it next to Sister Rose’s desk in the front of the room like I thought? Was I seated in my chair when Sister moved it furiously to the back wall? How had she gotten from the front of the room to the back so quickly? Did she really strut through aisles of frightened students like I’d written, knocking them aside like Moses parting the waters? Some elements stayed true, like Sister Rose showing Maureen the markings on my desktop, and her directive to tell our mother I’d “damaged school property.” There was another, overlooked, moment I recalled, that occurred away from Sister Rose’s grasp, when Maureen’s facial expression told me how ridiculous this was, when she looked into my eyes and whispered, “Jody, don’t worry. Don’t worry about it.” How soothing her words had felt, how great to have had her on my side. No wonder I didn’t worry about my mother finding out. I realized my story wasn’t about Sister Rose’s stridency, or my mother’s scoffing about nuns. It was about my ten-year-old sister’s kindness in that moment. It was about how Maureen had knocked away my feelings of humiliation and isolation and replaced them with love. Joseph O’Day’s writing focuses on family relationships and life transitions. His work has appeared in The Bluebird Word, Oyster River Pages, Spry Literary Journal, The Critical Flame, bioStories, and other publications. He served as Director of Pharmacy at Brigham and Woman’s Faulkner Hospital for many years until his retirement and received his MA in English from Salem State University. See what happens when you click below. What surprising, fascinating stuff can you tell us about the origin, drafting, and/or final version of “Finding My Story”? Most of my writing is nonfiction based on my life. I want to get the details right, so when my memory begins to fade someday, I can return to my pieces and trust what I read. When I revisited early drafts of “Finding My Story,” I was surprised to find that I’d embellished. Perhaps unconsciously, I’d added drama, and some of my main points felt weak and untrue. I decided to strip the piece down and to challenge the truth of everything I’d written. The more I rewrote with this mindset, the less concerned I became for the embarrassment I’d felt as a first grader, and the more did the significance of Maureen’s actions come to the fore. Maureen had stepped in when my six-year-old self needed her most. That’s why I got emotional whenever I returned to the story, and why, despite setting it aside several times over the years, it never left me. All I needed was to find its truth. by Jennifer Edwards Home on winter break, unshowered, slightly buzzed, overtired, binge-watching 90-day Fiancé, hedging bets about which relationships will last. My husband says, Babe, you’re blending in! He sends a photo to our friends group chat documenting my obsession with Buffalo Plaid. My disembodied head floats in a congealed mass of my fleece-lined long sweater, knit blanket, and throw pillows of the same black and white print. I’m dissolving into comfort. He grins & waves his whole arm from across the sectional, smiling hello like Forrest Gump on a shrimp boat. I laugh & he pretends to be startled; Oh, I didn’t see you there! We’re confused when a girl on TV talks of Tylenol or first child an all. How long were we not paying attention? Wait, is there a child involved? We rewind. Oh, she meant tell all! It’s funny being wrong in different ways. Nobody speaks clearly anymore, I complain. Mmmhmm, he agrees. Or actually listens, I continue. Ya, exactly, he mumbles, down to his phone. Jennifer R. Edwards’ collection, Unsymmetrical Body (Finishing Line Press) was an Eric Hoffer Honorable Mention, First Horizon Finalist, and Boston Author’s Club Julia Ward Howe Award Finalist. Her poems have received Pushcart and Best of the Net nominations, the New England Poetry Club Amy Lowell Prize, 6th place for the Poetry Super Highway contest, the Thomas Lux Poetry Fellowship from Palm Beach Poetry Festival and other support. Her poems appear in several anthologies and journals including Iron Horse Literary Review, The Shore, Beaver Magazine, RHINO, ELJ, MER, One Art, and Terrain. She’s a neurodiversity-affirming speech-language pathologist in public schools, and MFA in Writing candidate at Bennington Writing Seminars. She’s a curator for Button Poetry and serves on the board of the New Hampshire Poetry Society as events coordinator. https://linktr.ee/JenEdwards @JenEdwards8 See what happens when you click below. What surprising, fascinating stuff can you tell us about the origin, drafting, and/or final version of “I’m the Teacher They Make Memes About ”? This piece really was a frank depiction of some biographical events that I wrote immediately the night it occurred. I’m a speech therapist for a public school and last winter break was so worn out that I found myself really dissolving into watching reality TV, getting takeout, and practically hibernating as never before. Suddenly, I could recognize myself in circulating teacher memes, the long sweaters and lounging and avoiding interaction. I think the turn at the end surprised even me a little, how hard it was for us to carefully listen. How the show and our discussion of it transported us into a vaguer exploration of our communication. The presence of phones was felt to the level that it had to be present in the poem. Maybe reality shows about relationships interest us, in part, because we now don’t have that level of concern over appearances. This poem acknowledges allowing yourself comfort, silliness, and the familiarity of years which is wonderful but sometimes feels a little dangerous. I really love the freedom prose allows me, especially when writing first drafts. This piece originated in prose poem, and was revised and lineated as poetry, but returned to prose because the form depicted more energetic movement. I wanted to move the reader through the flash of the show and conversation of people watching it, the same way flashing moments add up and information is missed or misunderstood. I wanted some personal jokes, some disorientation, distraction, obsessive negative thought trying to creep in but ultimately a speaker who’s aware and (mostly) OK with how they’re changing. by Amy Speace My mother would throw open the curtains of our darkened yellow room singing, O what a beautiful morning!, the stabbing sun at high noon, a cheery scold as the house had been moving for hours, alive as a corporation. I never saw the sunrise until I had a baby and then I saw every hour. At night she’d dress in her bridal peach nightgown, long gauze train, satin straps holding her to her vow, over sweatpants smeared with flour handprints. Curled under covers, my sister and I would squeal when she’d enter our room. She called herself the night nymph and would dance us off to sleep, while our father worked past dinner, past stories, past dreaming. Amy Speace is an award-winning Americana/Folk singer and songwriter, discovered by Judy Collins. Her songs have been recorded by Ms. Collins and many others and she has won “International Song of the Year” from the Americana Music Association (UK). Her writing has been published in The New York Times, The Guardian, Working Mother and Salon.com. Her debut collection of poetry, The Cardinals, will be published by Red Hen Press in Spring 2027. She received her MFA from Spalding University and teaches English at Cumberland University. She resides in Nashville, Tennessee with her son, Huckleberry, and her dog, Dusty Springfield. See what happens when you click below. What surprising, fascinating stuff can you tell us about the origin, drafting, and/or final version of “Night Shift”? I can tell you this. Many of the poem in my collection deal with childhood memories and parenthood, marriage and divorce. There is a theme of my mother’s satin nightgown and my father not being home a lot because of work in different poems. “Night Shift” is a memory piece that started as tercets and I revised it many times using a few different forms. In the end, it seemed to land better in prose, as if the narrator was telling this memory in one breathless outpouring. by Karen Regen Tuero As long as her hat was on, she looked quite good. The hat hid her thinning hair; showing only her thick, dark, shoulder-length curls; letting her imagine she looked young. But sometime between yesterday and today, the hat disappeared, and the jig was up. The hat itself was old yet durable, the packable, washable kind meant for adventures. In earlier days before it ever dutifully protected her vanity, it protected her skin. It had travelled with her the world over, lately to this gaucho town outside of Buenos Aires, where today, as the sun waned, it had to be somewhere. Retracing her steps in and out of the shops, restaurants and cafes around the town square, she encountered sympathetic shopkeepers who shook their heads to her inquires before letting her check for herself whether her hat had been left on a table or dropped on the floor or even forgotten by a washroom mirror. But there was no tan hat. The village dog resting outside of one cafe apparently understood her distress. He led her to the square; waiting patiently, his dappled front paws outstretched on the lawn while she checked each bench, each path, then combed the grounds. He seemed to accept she might expect to find the cotton hat torn to pieces, the handiwork of one of his mangy brothers that ruled the town. But there were no tan cotton pieces anywhere. Later, she found the hat on her bed. She had never put it on. Panic set in. She was at the beginning of a new adventure she had no desire to be on—the great decline. Next time the hat would not so easily reappear. Little by little, all would be lost. Karen Regen Tuero is a Pushcart-nominated writer whose work has appeared in The North American Review, Glimmer Train, and elsewhere. She holds an MFA from Sarah Lawrence College. For links to her many published stories, go to: https://linktr.ee/kregentuero See what happens when you click below. What surprising, fascinating stuff can you tell us about the origin, drafting, and/or final version of “Game Over”? I scribbled most of “Game Over” in a composition notebook while flying home from Argentina last year. Stateside, I read it, along with other material filling the notebook; expecting to use dialogue, description, or snippets to expand the story. But none of it did the trick. That’s when I realized the story was better off short. The problem was, it was incomplete. And I wasn’t sure what it needed. As I pecked the story into my laptop, I had some new ideas, however. Quickly the story coalesced. I looked at the word count, a mere 295 words. I read it again to be sure it didn’t need more. I decided it was all there. My first micro! After printing, normally I revise. A lot! Sometimes for weeks until I’m literally sick. But typically I’m writing novels or longer stories or flash. This time, though, I read it aloud and thought, Hmm, I like this. This was my third submission to Journal of Compressed Arts, where kind rejection notes from Randall, the editor, made me want to try again. I got an interim note saying the story had advanced to the next round, after which a final decision would be made. But with it came editorial advice. Randall suggested I consider taking out the last two ending lines in the original submission. These were: And then what? It would be Game Over. Initially, I was nervous, but reading the story over, I realized it was actually stronger landing on the line: Little by little, all would be lost. Grateful for the suggestion, I told Randall to make that edit. Several months later, I was delighted to learn the story was selected. I sure am glad that on that trip last year I took along a composition notebook. But what writer goes anywhere without one? Or at least a laptop. by Abbie Doll ‘Twas the season of calendars crammed: too many appointments to name, let alone manage. The seeing-yet-another-physician season, the scans-and-surgeries season. The revolving-door season of hospital stays, both scheduled and unforeseen. The insufferable season of suffering, the season of wondering when—or if—you’ll make it back home. The season of asking on repeat: is this it? Is it? The season of one too many close calls, the season of pleading: please, give it to me straight. That d(r)eadful season of determining how and why and when… ‘Twas the season of staring at each clock in disbelief, willing them all to wind back. The season of constant wondering, of hope & despair warring in equal measure. The season of forsaking every last belief while wallowing in the feeling of flat-out defeat. The burdensome season of failing to cope with your new reality: the irreversible necessity of need in every minor thing. Assistance, a must. ‘Twas the season of gradual-yet-rapid deterioration. A season of too many feelings: the regrets, the longings, the never-ending negotiations, the wanting more time, the blues, the blues, those fucking relentless blues. That inescapable shame with your biology to blame. Letting everyone down, down, down…and feeling let down—by your own body no less. Welcome to the season of no autonomy, the postseason period where life itself ceases (to matter), the season where the writing on the wall is unalterable—the stains and scars permanent. The season of incessant apologies, the season where language itself atrophies into sheer inadequacy. You’ve reached the all-too-predictable season of Death approaching—Death lurking, Death bedside-lingering. The sickening season of postmortem planning, concluded by the cessation of planning entirely. Then comes the heavyhearted hassle of saying goodbye, while fickle Father Time clicks his tongue and checks his watch. Enter the unbearable season of not knowing what to say, while somehow also having too much to say. Then comes the season of solitude: of not saying anything at all—where silence descends like snow. Enter the contradictory season of trying to fit everything in, as if you hadn’t already rushed to live your whole damn life. The season of trying to secure One. Last. Taste. The oh-so-infuriating season of demanding a do-over. That back-and-forth seesaw season of wondering if you ever did anything right. That finicky assessment season. The final-countdown season, without knowing exactly when. The hoping-death-is-just-a-new-beginning season. That sucky barnyard season of being put out to pasture—having to let go of everything and everyone you ever knew…or die trying (but really, dying either way). ‘Twas the season of last reflections, the season of sorrow, the season of bargaining, and reluctantly, oh, so reluctantly, the season of acceptance. ‘Twas the final season, after all. The season of separation, the season of farewell. The season of departure, the season of burial. The season of grief, the season of reckoning. The season of no longer being around. The season of no longer being. The season of no longer. Abbie Doll is a writer residing in Columbus, OH, with an MFA from Lindenwood University and is a Fiction Editor at Identity Theory. Her work has been featured in Door Is a Jar Magazine, 3:AM Magazine, and Pinch Journal Online, among others; it has also been longlisted for The Wigleaf Top 50 and nominated for The Best Small Fictions, Best Microfiction, and the Pushcart Prize. Connect on socials @AbbieDollWrites. 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 Descent into Decline”? The format of this piece was inspired by those famous opening lines from A Tale of Two Cities, a book I attempted much too young; said passage was further cemented in my brain by an episode of Hey Arnold! in which Oskar learns to read, and part of that process involves memorizing those lines, then performing them as proof. This was way before streaming, back when kids were subject to watching whatever reruns networks chose to air. But that’s a really lighthearted explanation for such heavy subject matter. Cartoons and literature aside, I came across a “Seasons” prompt for a submission call, and this ended up being the result. Death and grief contain too many seasons to name, and they’re always knotting and unraveling in new, unanticipated ways. by Michael Mark He’d read in college the author of The Stranger swerved around a squirrel that darted in front of the car and crashed into a Plane tree and died. Ever since, he fixated on not avoiding any small animal should it be in front of him on the road. He’d have to hit it. Images of running over varied creatures repeated in his mind whether he was driving or not. He’d be walking and see a bird, and then himself behind the wheel running over that bird. He was haunted, and shared in detail what he saw in his head, even at parties. It never happened until a pigeon, probably lame, because it didn’t fly away as they all had before. The next time he hit a squirrel, like the one Camus successfully avoided. It hardly made a thud, more like a sigh. Michael Mark is the author of Visiting Her in Queens is More Enlightening than a Month in a Monastery in Tibet which won the 2022 Rattle Chapbook prize. His poems appear in Copper Nickel, The New York Times, Ploughshares, Poetry Northwest, Sixth Finch, Southern Review, The Sun, 32 Poems. His two books of stories are Toba and At the Hands of a Thief (Atheneum). His piece, “House Story,” originally published in The Journal of Compressed Creative Arts, appeared in The Best Small Fictions 2024. He was included in Best New Poets 2024 and awarded a Pushcart Prize, 2026. michaeljmark.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 “If Only The Great Thinker Knew it Wasn’t that Bad”? This piece was written with a stoic’s calm. More I witnessed than wrote it. As if I were documenting what I was seeing: in this case my mind, Camus, road, car, squirrel, tree, and me. And the computer keys with my fingers depressing them, finally. There was no sense of uncertainty or surprise. by Callie Dean Sperm whales have an alphabet. Crows can count to six. Sea otters turn stones into tools. Starlings keep coin collections; orangutans mug into mirrors. Hyenas laugh, bats kiss, giraffes mourn their dead. Lab rats pull on levers as if playing slots in a casino. The giant Pacific octopus can unscrew pickle jars and medicine bottles. Chimpanzees jockey for power with surprising political prowess. Eagles practice monogamy, and not even fruit flies can escape the pull of peer pressure. Elephants paint. Chatbots write novels. And I, with my wild, precious life, click all the images containing motorcycles. Callie B. Dean is a writer, musician, and program evaluator living in Shreveport, LA. Her essays and poetry have appeared at Coffee + Crumbs, JMWW, Unbroken, and HOOT. Her first picture book, Marvelous Mistakes: Accidents that Made History (Beaming Books), will be published in 2026. Find her online at calliebdean.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 “Please verify that you are human”? I’ve never considered myself much of a poet. However, during a recent conversation about creative nonfiction, a wise writing mentor said, “Maybe poets are your people.” Unexpectedly, her words set me on a journey of discovering, and falling in love with, the genre of prose poetry. “Please verify that you are human” is part of an ongoing prose poetry series that explores the implications and pervasiveness of modern technology. As a genre, prose poems occupy a space “in between:” between prose and poetry, between narrative and lyricism, between realism and fantasy. As I look at the world around me, I can’t help but notice that we are living in a similar kind of liminal space as we try to make sense of what it means to be human in an era of information overload and artificial intelligence. Each poem in this series aims to ask big questions about humanity, technology, and transcendence within one delightfully small, quirky block of text. In April of 2024, “Please verify that you are human” will be featured in a two-month-long literary arts installation that I am designing inside artspace, a museum in Shreveport, LA. If you are interested in learning more or participating in this exhibition, please reach out to me using the Contact form on my website (https://calliebdean.com/contact/). by Gaurav Bhalla She says: Why can’t you put the spice bottles back in the rack when you are done with them? He says: I was looking for paprika. She says: You’d find it if you put it back in the same place every time. He says: Should I make my omelet with olives … or capers … or both? She says: Reminds me, did you pay the property tax bill? He says: Hot pan, warm oil, perfect for a fluffy brown omelet. She says: There’s a very hefty fine if we don’t pay the property tax on time. He says: You were saying? She says: Forget it. Asking you to do anything is a waste of time, should just do everything myself. He says: Yes, the property tax, would have paid it, couldn’t find the bill. She says: It’s on the kitchen desk. Did you bother looking? He says: Have you seen the kitchen desk? She says: What about it? He says: Looks like the local landfill. She says: 90% of the junk on that desk is yours—car keys, wallet, watch, Wall Street Journal. Why don’t you dump your junk on your own desk? He says: My desk’s in the basement. She says: All hail the Lord of the Manor. Fie, fie, fie. He says: Ah, the play begins. She says: Want to know the ending? He says: NO. She says: Want to know the ending? He says: Let’s not go there. She says: Let’s, I’m sick and tired of running this show single-handed and being dumped upon. He says: Adam Smith, division of labor. She says: Labor gets paid, I don’t. He says: What are you suggesting? She says: When you started your company, you asked me for an eight-year divorce. He says: A temporary one. She says: It’s coming up on thirteen years. He says: Thirteen years! My how time flies. She says: Time’s up. Choose. He says: Choose what? She says: Cut it out, you know damn well what I’m talking about. He says: Would you like some of my gourmet …? She says: Your omelet’s burning. Gaurav Bhalla is an entrepreneur, educator, and former global C-suite executive. Published in both business and literature, his writing focuses on cross-cultural themes that aim to deepen people’s understanding of themselves and others. His short stories have been published in India, UK, and USA. Recently, his short stories have appeared in Jimson Weed, Defenestrationism.net, and The Writing Disorder. See what happens when you click below. What surprising, fascinating stuff can you tell us about the origin, drafting, and/or final version of “Knots and Braids”? by Jack Bedell My son came into our room last night wanting to know what fight I’d change if I could rewrite the result. It was tough not to rattle off a list of wrongs I dreamed of making right when I was a kid, or of heroes I’d love to put back on their feet. But I couldn’t shake the feeling that any change I gave him might change too much. If I gave Foreman the win in Zaire, would we have lost Ali’s voice from then on? Or what about keeping Douglas down for that long count against Tyson? Would that’ve ruined Tyson’s chance to redeem his life later? So I told him I’d let Frazier land the big left he missed in round one of his first fight with Foreman. If that punch caught chin instead of whiskers, maybe Foreman could’ve found God earlier. Or maybe he would’ve been ready for Ali when he finally got him. Who knows, but maybe Frazier would’ve gone on to be the champion he deserved to be if that hook found its target. I do know I would’ve gone to bed a lot happier that night if it did, and that might be enough of a reason, right there. Jack B. Bedell is Professor of English and Coordinator of Creative Writing at Southeastern Louisiana University where he also edits Louisiana Literature and directs the Louisiana Literature Press. Jack’s work has appeared in HAD, Heavy Feather, Pidgeonholes, The Shore, Moist, Okay Donkey, EcoTheo, The Hopper, Terrain, and other journals. His work has also been selected for inclusion in Best Microfiction and Best Spiritual Literature. His latest collection is Ghost Forest(Mercer University Press, 2024). He served as Louisiana Poet Laureate 2017-2019. See what happens when you click below. What surprising, fascinating stuff can you tell us about the origin, drafting, and/or final version of “Revision”? “Revision” is part of a series of micro CNF essays about boxing I began writing last year. Before my middle son, Sam, left for college, he got into the habit of bringing his laptop into our bedroom before bedtime to ask about boxing matches I remembered watching when I was a kid. As we would talk, he’d look up the fights on YouTube to see if any were posted. If he found one, we’d watch it together, and I’d tell him stories about watching fights like this live with his grandfather. These times spent with my son brought up so many great memories of watching matches with my father that I really wanted to document as many of them as I could. by Zero Laforga when i die, i don’t want to be anyone else’s problem, not like the just dead horse in a forklift i saw today, on my run out in colma, halfway to the serbian cemetery, where no one there has made it past fifty and it feels suspicious that no one has ever reflected on the apparently short lives of serbians in san francisco, but anyways, the horse’s legs stuck straight out, the body so newly stiff it made me wonder if they just ran out of gas carrying the damn thing over or thought it belonged better in the pet cemetery but they didn’t have the space, and maybe they’re waiting on that one guy they know to pull a deal on its cremation since i think it’s technically illegal to do that to a horse but god i don’t know how you’d get rid of a thing so big, i’ve never had to personally get rid of a human body, but i feel like it’s easier than some horse, but can you imagine my body, like that, i can hardly look at my face in the mirror as it is, i don’t need anyone to look at my lifeless face, so i guess they have to burn my body to a crisp and leave it at that and really, no offense to you claudia, but when i die, i don’t need my ashes to be turned into a tree or become a coral reef or a preserved skin suit or a star you can’t even see from the roof of the house because really don’t we all end up in the same place as the worms or the gophers or like shakespeare says i think, that the fish who feeds the pheasant who feeds the king ends up feeding the — doesn’t matter, i just can’t become my father, a mess on the beach spilling out of a yellow sand pail that surely wasn’t full of human remains, but i think everyone else on the beach knew because my wife kept yelling at me to have more decorum, but god, can’t you just let a man not deal with the death of his father, but, oh lorna, i’m sorry that your cat’s gotta get e-u-t-h-a-n— you know what i’m saying, but i guess death just won’t stop staring us in the face, that greedy rat bastard. Bio See what happens when you click below. What surprising, fascinating stuff can you tell us about the origin, drafting, and/or final version of “hamlet act 3 scene 1”? aaa by Edward Thomas-Herrera She’s the scrappy showgirl from the Zanzibar Room. She’s the dizzy high school sweetheart from back home in Lake Esther. She’s the fast-talking working class gal, holding out for a knight in shining armor. She’s the pitiful wallflower in need of an emergency makeover. She’s the madcap heiress to a fortune in steel who won’t take But Madam, we can’t possibly accommodate a walrus at this restaurant! for an answer. She’s the plucky editrix-in-chief of Modern Miss magazine. Until the right kind of guy comes along, of course. He’s the streetwise tough. He’s the cynical reporter for the Daily Times-Mirror. He’s the jailbird on the lam with a bum rap, trying to clear his name. He’s the incorrigible playboy who needs to grow up. He’s the silver-tongued sea captain with a girl in every port south of the Equator. He’s the high society blueblood who’s had everything handed to him gift wrapped extra special. He’s the uncompromising idealist with an invention that’s gonna knock your socks off. Just you wait. All he needs is someone who’ll believe in him. They meet in a ritzy nightclub. They meet on the subway when she takes a seat on his hat. They meet on the moonlit deck of a trans-Atlantic ocean liner. They meet in an elevator car stuck between the 21st and 22nd floor. They meet in a hotel room, waking up in the same bed, registered under the names of Count and Countess de Carlisle. They take an instant dislike to each other. It’s love at first sight. She decides right then and there he’s the man she’s going to marry – only he doesn’t know it yet. Say, I’ve got an idea! You scratch my back, I’ll scratch yours. But this partnership is strictly business, get me? Nothing funny! A bet is made. A deal is struck. A plan is hatched. An identity is mistaken. Hijinks. Shenanigans. Complications. He’s sailing for Panama the day after tomorrow. She’s out to save the family farm. He’s not ready to tie the knot. Her parents want her to marry the flat tire who works for the post office. He’s already engaged to a beautiful blonde with a permanent sourpuss. There’s a hundred-fifty-pound Great Dane who goes nuts whenever he hears the trombone. There’s a delivery guy out here just trying to do his job, Mac. Now where do you want this Steinway? There’s a society matron who’s never heard of um… what was that delightful game called again? Pinochle? There’s a hard-nosed mob boss looking to collect on a past due loan. There’s a prize fighter who’s one chicken short of a pot pie. There’s a real stuffed shirt who mans the front desk. There’s a secretary with a fresh mouth. There’s a phony Bulgarian princess. There’s a set of identical twins. Maybe two sets. Somebody takes a pratfall on the rug in the lobby. Somebody swipes the Razumovsky diamonds. Somebody slings a cream pie. Somebody call the cops! What are all those reporters doing outside the window? Tell it to the judge, Sister! Now see here! Well, I never! Follow that taxi! Turns out that lousy mug knew the whole truth all this time. Turns out that boyfriend of hers was only interested in her stock portfolio. Turns out that toothless old bum’s really president of the First National Bank. Turns out the lady who writes the advice-to-the-lovelorn column is that mousey dame who works at the library, hiding behind a pair of cheaters. Turns out he’s got a rich uncle who left him everything in the will hidden in the antique clock on the mantelpiece. But it’s not until she gets jilted at the altar and the evening edition hits the newsstands and the show’s a big hit and he spots her waiting for him on the train platform, shivering in the rain, does he realize they’re meant for each other. Close-up. Big kiss. Cymbal crash. Music swells. The end. Roll credits. Edward Thomas-Herrera is a Salvadoran-American poet, playwright, and performer living and working in Chicago. He has a very long resumé of stage credits with which he refuses to bore you, but he’ll be happy to tell you his poetry has appeared in Tofu Ink Arts Press, Beaver Magazine, and The Account. See what happens when you click below. What surprising, fascinating stuff can you tell us about the origin, drafting, and/or final version of “Screwball”? “Screwball” was inspired by one of my favorite Jorge Luis Borges stories: “Pierre Menard, Author of the Quixote.” Just as the fictional Menard sought to immerse himself in “Don Quixote” so thoroughly that he could re-create the Cervantes novel word for word, I challenged myself to re-create a classic screwball comedy after watching dozens of Hollywood films from the 1930’s. by Max Kerwien Google “big toe pain.” See where that takes you. Perhaps to a long chain of YouTube videos of bunion removal. I have seen how rail workers fare in Norfolk’s care, and there are more bunions than paid sick time. I was the Leave Management Officer. To deny their requests for time off were little deaths. Now I coordinate projects for health insurance. I quit making guns to manufacture bullets. I remember a meeting with the Product team last month about making the Claims Denial UI more accessible for the hearing impaired. My VP Kevin made this excellent point about captioning where we can and getting that tech from Brazilian contractors, limiting the financial responsibility of providing benefits for US FT employees. It made me think, what am I currently doing to increase Western productivity in a time of excellent suffering? But the paycheck. My manager and I talk about climbing a ladder. I keep a loose grip and hope I fall. Anyways, I’m rambling. So your profile said you’re from Colorado? Max Kerwien is a disabled poet and comedian. In 2016, he won the Joan Grayston Poetry Prize. His work has been published in the decomp Journal, the DASH Literary Journal, and more. Most recently, his chapbook “Whirs, Snaps, Clicks, and Clacks” was published by Bottlecap Press. See what happens when you click below. What surprising, fascinating stuff can you tell us about the origin, drafting, and/or final version of “So what do you do?”? “So what do you do” is a poem about a date, and a job I had. A few years ago I worked for a software company that provided contractor leave management services to big corporations. They hired us basically to review their employee’s requests for medical leave and such. A ton of bureaucracy, corporate interest, and greed made the job feel dystopian. I felt very self-conscious as a 28 year old sending a letter to a railroad mechanic that he couldn’t take time off from his debilitating injury because he didn’t fill out his paperwork properly. When on a date, the question “what do you do?” inevitably comes up, and I thought, what if the answer to that question is the burden of being a cog in our broken system? The poem is the answer to that question. by Dania Jamal I am waiting at the bus stop. I am allowed be nervous, I say; there is hope to meet. I try to distract myself with the people around me. There is a father waiting with his daughter. He is playful and she is nervous as I. It looks like something my father pretends to have done with me or it looks like something my father did when I was young and I can’t remember. The little girl will dream big. She will try not to dream too far. But at the end she won’t help it. She is a little bird in a nest. Her father wants to push her out, off the road. I catch myself before jumping to save her. How could he do something like that? The bird is beautiful. My bird is intelligent, collects silver and anything that glimmers. I keep it for when I need it. It keeps me company instead of a conversation. In the glass turned mirror by the poster on the other side, I am reflected a crow. I lower my head down in shame. I put no call. I don’t act the omen. Let the girl live. Let her dream. I turn to the other side. There is an older woman, hunched back with small eyes. She is no longer beautiful. She no longer needs to be. This is a relief. Does she get lots of visitors? Is she loved? Had she done enough? She looks lost, all alone. Perhaps she saved herself. Perhaps she saved others. Maybe that is where all of her strength went. Maybe her lips withered out by kisses. Her cheeks hollowed from smiling. Her legs weakened by dancing. I have to save myself. When I am her age, I won’t be alone in a bus stop, I will save my kisses to still have my lips. I won’t move my hips. You can’t know what the future hides. Perhaps for the better. I want to see her cry. I want to console her and unveil her secrets. I want to know if it is worth it to become like this. I want to know where she wasted it. I want to know better. But I will save it. I turn my head away from her; she started smiling happily and joking with some kid. Me, on the other hand. I will save it. I look back at the blackened mirror. I am a crow again Dania is a middle-eastern woman. She always enjoyed crafting stories and writing since she can remember. Her poem, I always prefer the future to the present has been recently published in Vita and the Woolf literary journal and was featured on the online magazine The Raven’s Muse for the third issue See what happens when you click below. What surprising, fascinating stuff can you tell us about the origin, drafting, and/or final version of “xxx”? Faced by every reason to be pessimistic toward the world, I wrote the crow as an endeavor to be optimistic and reproach myself for not considering the best out of the world and allowing my imagination to always take the darkest of turns. I consider this poem as the first step of my path toward optimism as a crow myself. by Eddie Cassidy We lived in a yellow house on top of a hill. It was old and steadily losing ground in a battle with the woods around it. It was pretty in the conventional sense when we moved in. Azaleas lined the stairs. It was pretty in an unconventional sense thereafter. The azaleas and everything else gave way to green overgrowth. My father tended to everything until he felt the place was his. My mother came to believe the house was cursed, the source of all our problems. One day, old enough to feel shame, I mowed the lawn of my own accord. Before I had finished, my father came out and watched me from above, saying nothing. I felt his presence and let go of the gas. He shrugged as if to say, “what for?” I shrugged as if to say, “just cos.” He went back inside. Before I took a shower, I ran into my mother. She asked me why I mowed the lawn. I shrugged as if to say, “just cos.” She smiled as if to say, “thank you.” My father died a couple years after that. We had no insurance and no savings. To impress potential buyers, I did my part and mowed the lawn. I ran out of gas shortly into it. I went upstairs to check the red container of gasoline we kept under a bush. The liquid within splashed when I shook it. My father must’ve filled it sometime before he passed. At the top of the stairs, I saw a patch of cut grass and what our home used to be. A quarter way through the lawn, the mower died. The lawn and everything around looked conventionally uglier than it already had. I managed to borrow a lawn mower from an acquaintance. He asked me if I needed extra gas, but I told him I had plenty. Halfway through the front lawn, I needed the red container. I filled up the mower, primed it, pulled the cord, and continued. Five steps in, the mower died. I tried everything. I emptied the cut grass. I played with the primer. I unwound the blade. I took a cursory look at the motor. I went upstairs with the red container and placed it where it belonged. I looked at it for a minute before unscrewing the top. When I smelled the contents, I did not smell gasoline. I smelled nothing. The container had been filled with water. I felt his presence, looked to the sky, and shrugged as if to say, “what for?” Eddie Cassidy is a high school English teacher who lives with his wife and newborn son in the Bronx. When he isn’t planning lessons, he stops overanalyzing art for just enough time to produce his own. This is his first published work. See what happens when you click below. What surprising, fascinating stuff can you tell us about the origin, drafting, and/or final version of “Just Cos”? I wrote “Just Cos” lying in bed while my son slept in his crib across the room. My wife and I always point out which of his features belong to either of us. My eyes, her lips, a combination of our hair. We hope he grows into his ears as I eventually did. In the dark, with no features to look at, I wondered what of my personality he’d inherit. Every now and then my wife points out unconscious habits that, until then, I didn’t know my parents had planted in me. The habits are quirks at best and flaws at worst. When she points out the latter, she usually does it in the form of a question. “Why do you do that?” It feels like an accusation. Growing up, I tried not to be like those people as much as possible. Grown up, I am those people in ways I didn’t think possible. Then, before I say anything in response, the guilt floods in. At the end of the day, my parents weren’t those people. They were simply people. And they were mostly good people, albeit flawed and quirky. I project my youthful disdain towards my parents into my wife’s question. I feel attacked. The bullet goes through me and hits them, too. It’s neurotic and insecure and, rather than unpack the baggage unearthed by the question, I diffuse everything with a shrug. “Just cos,” I say. With the story, I tried to communicate how much went unsaid in my family, how lack of communication between too proud people led to unnecessary strife. And, I suppose, by writing it I hoped to pave the ground for a more communicative home for my son to grow up in. by Roberta Allen They are the largest slugs she has ever seen. Spotted and over eight inches long. Every evening she waits for them to emerge from their dark damp tunnels under her cottage in the country. Her enthusiasm is so contagious her neighbors have become interested. But her friend in the city says he’s seen enough bugs. “But slugs are not insects!” she tells him. “They’re related to snails though they don’t have shells. Slugs are mollusks like octopuses.” He is silent. She doesn’t say slugs saved many soldiers in World War 1. They detected harmful levels of mustard gas before humans could. Nor does she mention annual slug races on an island in Canada. What would’ve been the point? Every evening at this hour neighbors gather in front of her cottage, bend down, and look closely at the soft slimy creatures but they aren’t allowed to prod them. Slowly crawling along the ground, the slugs leave trails of mucus. The neighbors cry out, “That is so disgusting!” Still, none of them can look away. They make gargoyle faces to emphasize their revulsion. She is the only one who does not make faces. In truth, she likes the slugs better than the neighbors who come to watch. A Tennessee Williams Fellow in Fiction and a Yaddo Fellow, Roberta Allen is the author of nine books. Her latest story collection is The Princess of Herself. Her many stories have appeared in such magazines as Conjunctions, Guernica and Bomb. Also a conceptual artist, very active internationally through the 1970s-early 80s, her art papers and her works on paper have been acquired by The Smithsonian, her writing papers by the Fales Archive at NYU See what happens when you click below. What surprising, fascinating stuff can you tell us about the origin, drafting, and/or final version of “Slugs”? I saw these slugs in Virginia but I love research and was inspired by the little known facts I learned about them though these facts play a very small part in the piece. by Daniel Seifert What my high school English teacher was thinking when she told me to Stop Being Such a Bloody Boy. What a sixteen year old Bloody Boy should make of this request, delivered with such fervent heat. How sometimes the best thing to be is the ice cracking, like a broken promise in my G&T. Where twenty years have slunk off to. Where the boy will be ten years from now, when the ice caps have boiled away. How Salinger got the idea for Holden to keep asking where the ducks go when the pond collects a skin of ice. Why ducks seem capable of a happiness entirely richer than mine. Whatever happened to the interrobang, the upside-down one in particular (⸘). How come helter takes its rest in shelter, and what it means to see chaos in everything. A word within a word. And who coined the phrase a murder of crows and what they had, precisely, against crows. Why when I see a happy duck I want to scream into its face Stop being such a bird. Daniel Seifert’s writing is published or forthcoming in The New York Times, Consequence, The Sun, and Gulf Coast. His work has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize, and twice shortlisted for the Bridport Prize. He lives in Singapore, and is working on a novel. Wish him luck on Twitter @DanSeifwrites. See what happens when you click below. What surprising, fascinating stuff can you tell us about the origin, drafting, and/or final version of “Helter Skelter, Or: Things I Write Down So They Stop Perplexing Me”? The best part of writing is collecting my little thoughts, oddities and fears like pebbles, stacking them up and seeing what kind of shape they make. In this case, the quote from a teacher (a lovely woman, which made her fierce non sequitur all the more baffling) has rattled around in my brain for years. But now it reached out and linked hands with my favorite, most haunting image from Catcher in the Rye. Why? Who knows, but if I’ve learned anything it’s that strangeness is where things start to cook on the page. The emergence of an ice motif then offered a way to introduce my gnawing fear of the climate crisis, the comfort of my daily sundowner, and a love of typography. I love that if I had written this piece another day, or another hour, the pebbles that swum to mind would have been entirely different. Hey presto and helter skelter, I had a strange, crooked tower of pebbles. One that perplexed me in the best possible way. by Jodi Cressman Have I told you about the time my mother mentioned that, as a teenager, she trapped the barn cat and drowned it, flayed it, and boiled its bones to study anatomy? It was murder with purpose—to get off the farm and into nursing school, but the story of the murder had no purpose. Not confession, scare tactic, science lesson, just memory unearthed, like somebody’s favorite dinner plate amidst the empty juice bottles and old sofas upturned by a bulldozer. Her voice flat as that plate, her body flat as that bed she lay in, four years after a stroke. Jodi Cressman teaches writing and literature at Dominican University, just outside of Chicago. She is working on a book-length hybrid memoir about disasters that have taken place in U.S. towns called Centralia. See what happens when you click below. What surprising, fascinating stuff can you tell us about the origin, drafting, and/or final version of “Barn Cat”? The story inside of “Barn Cat” was told with a flat, quiet voice in a tiny room off the kitchen, where my mother spent ten years after a catastrophic stroke, and then it hibernated in my memory for a half-decade, surfacing nearly whole in the ten minutes before a workshop at Kenyon College. by Alison Watson I sometimes wondered if my mother regretted adopting me. Over the years, I put her through so much: drug addiction, psych wards, suicide attempts. Bipolar Disorder, OCD. Despite all the trauma, she never gave up on me, even when other family members reached their breaking point. Sometimes her attempts to help me were misguided, such as having my childhood piano shipped to me in New York, as if that was going to save me, or paying for me to move to rural New Mexico, thinking that New York was the problem. But ultimately it was thanks to her support that I finally got the psychiatric help I needed. She paid for medications and psychiatrist appointments when I lost my insurance. She visited me in almost every psych ward I was incarcerated in. She believed I could get well, even when I didn’t believe it, myself. “Please take care of Ali when I’m gone,” she asked my sister a few years before she died. Then she succumbed to Alzheimer’s, and ultimately ALS. The little dynamo who had always been my best cheerleader faded away, leaving a corpse-like shell who seemed to have no idea what was going on around her. In her final days, I sat by her bedside. By now, the ALS had rendered her paralyzed. She had a Do Not Resuscitate order, and had made it clear that she didn’t want a feeding tube. So, we watched her slowly dehydrate to death over a gut-wrenching two weeks. Alone with her, unsure if she was still somewhere in there and could understand me, I spoke to my mother as I held her hand. “You can pass without worrying about me,” I whispered. “I’m clean and sober a long time; I’m stable on meds. I’ll be okay.” And even though she was paralyzed, somehow, she squeezed my hand. Alison Watson is a memoirist who writes about overcoming mental illness, addiction, and being an adoptee. She is currently shopping her full-length manuscript, “A Psychotic’s Journey Through Eastern Seaboard Psych Wards,” with publishers. Alison’s work has been published in The Sun Magazine, Please See Me, Bright Flash Literary Review, The Writer’s Journal, and MoonPark Review (which nominated her essay to Best of the Net 2025). In addition to writing, Alison feeds her soul by working in an animal shelter. To read more of her writing, please visit her website, alisonmorriswatson.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 “No Regrets”? A couple of years after my mother died, I began having comforting dreams about her. I believed she was visiting me in my subconscious, letting me know she was still with me. I was inspired to start writing about our love for each other, as part of my healing process. I was thrilled when the Journal of Compressed Creative Arts accepted my homage to my mother, “No Regrets.” But the editor wanted to cut my last line. At first, I had a hard time letting go of the ending. But I’m learning that sometimes writers can be too close to their own work, and it’s prudent to listen to editors who know what they are talking about. I do have a tendency to wrap up the endings of my stories in a nice bow. But I’m working on letting the reader draw their own conclusions. The most exciting aspect of being a writer is, there is always room to grow.CNF: I am here to lay my body down
I am here to lay my body down;
I love them, yes—this is the correct word, love, my love.
there’s no tracing or touching me now, here at this arrival. I am here to lay my body down.
forty or a hundred days.
forty or a hundred days for my body forty or a hundred days for my home. Finding My Story
CNF: I’m the Teacher They Make Memes About
CNF: Night Shift
Game Over
The Descent into Decline
If Only The Great Thinker Knew it Wasn’t that Bad
CNF: Please verify that you are human
Knots and Braids
CNF: Revision
CNF: hamlet act 3 scene 1
Screwball
So what do you do?
The Crow
CNF: Just Cos
Slugs
CNF: Helter Skelter, Or: Things I Write Down So They Stop Perplexing Me
CNF: Barn Cat
CNF: No Regrets
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
09/15 • Abbie Doll
09/22 • Karen Regen Tuero
09/29 • Amy Speace
10/06 • Jennifer Edwards
10/13 • Joseph O’Day
10/20 • Carolyn Zaikowski
10/27 • Sunmisola Odusola
11/03 • Sara Cassidy
11/10 • Liz Abrams-Morley
11/17 • Alison Colwell
11/24 • Lucy Zhang
12/01 • TBD
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