My Hiding Son on the Fourth of the July

by Chris Pellizzari

 

He’s hiding from lost house keys, from curls fallen from homemade haircuts swirling on orange carpet, from unplugged wires seeking their place in the galaxy. He’s hiding from the baseball he can’t wrap his fingers around, dropped and forgotten near the refrigerator in favor of a cherry popsicle. He’s hiding from baby sister’s bottle nipple pointing towards the fuse box that connects clean teeth to itchy fingers and from the steak knives his mother left out on the kitchen table, telling me to stay away. He’s hiding from promises I could not keep thanks to my diabetes, anxiety, insomnia, and cowardice. He’s hiding from the puppy that scratched his hand last week in mutual excitement and from the fireworks outside his window and the windless night carrying sulfur into today.

What is that humming sound coming from the kitchen sink, my boy’s hiding place? Come out, show yourself my son. There is a July cricket in the garage who wants to meet you. His voice is the truce between the earlier explosions of the fireworks and the quiet. Come my son, listen to the cricket, who keeps perfect time, like your heart when the fear is gone.

I hope, for both our sakes, the next decade is not too loud. I hope, for both our sakes, that time is kept perfectly.

 

Chris Pellizzari is a writer from Willowbrook, Illinois. His work has appeared in The Citron Review, Lake Effect, and Hobart. He is a member of The Society of Midland Authors.

 

See what happens when you click below.

His Face

by Roberta Allen

 

This time she will know exactly how he looks. With fingertips, she traces the outline of his face in profile. But lightly snoring, lips apart, he is not anyone she knows awake when his expressions change so rapidly. There is no one way of seeing him except now when he looks nothing like himself.

 

A Tennessee Williams Fellow in Fiction and a Yaddo Fellow, Roberta Allen is the author of nine books, including four story collections, THE TRAVELING WOMAN, CERTAIN PEOPLE, THE DAUGHTER, THE PRINCESS OF HERSELF; a novel, THE DREAMING GIRL, and the writing guide FAST FICTION. Over three-hundred stories have appeared in magazines such as Conjunctions, Guernica, The Bennington Review, Epoch and The Brooklyn Rail. Also a conceptual artist, most of her works on paper are held by The Smithsonian Archives of American Art. Her writing papers are held by the Fales Archive of NYU. robertaallen.com

 

See what happens when you click below.

Taxonomy

by Nicholas Claro

 

I’d gone to look out the window to look at anything that wasn’t Miranda, who I didn’t feel like looking at. Not after she said what she said. She said, “This doesn’t have to be ugly.” And after a minute said that what she’d said was something she had been meaning to say for a while.

Then I saw it out there, lying motionless in the backyard.

I thought it was a dog. But dogs don’t sleep like that, I thought.

Especially not when it’s raining.

My next thought was, Poor dog.

I must have said this out loud.

Miranda joined me at the window. A hand went to her mouth.

“What do we do?” she said through her fingers.

“What kind of question is that,” I said.

She followed me to the door. I stepped into boots and put on a jacket.

I found the shovel on the floor in the garage, below a hammer with a splintered handle that hung from a pegboard next to a saw with rounded teeth and a pair of rusted pliers.

It wasn’t a dog.

It was a large raccoon. Raccoons grew large in this neighborhood. There was a soybean plant nearby. The air always smelled like burnt popcorn. It drove them to frenzy. The raccoons were in the habit of breaking into the silos and eating their fill.

The blade slipped easily into the wet soil. It wasn’t long before I had the thing buried.

Back inside, I filled a kettle with water and set it on the stove.

While it heated, Miranda walked in.

It was really coming down now. Rain thumped against the windows.

“Was it wearing a collar?” she said, her voice breaking a little.

Now it breaks?

I shook my head. “There wasn’t any collar.”

“That means it was a stray,” she said. “Doesn’t it?”

“Would that make you feel better?”

She thought for a moment, her eyes watering over. She sniffed.

“No, actually,” she said. “I don’t think that it would.”

“It was some kind of mutt,” I said. “It looked like a really sweet dog—”

“Stop it.”

“—maybe with a little Border Collie or Australian Shepherd mixed in. You know, something I didn’t notice at first. But became more obvious the closer I looked.”

 

Nicholas Claro holds an MFA in Fiction from Wichita State University. His work has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and appears or is forthcoming in Louisiana Literature, Necessary Fiction, XRAY, Write or Die Magazine, and others. He is the author of the story collections This Is Where You Are (Roadside Press, ’25) and Sedgwick County (Roadside Press, ’26). He lives in Wichita, Kansas.

 

See what happens when you click below.

My Left Thumb

by Michael Mirolla

 

It starts as a gentle weakness in my left thumb. Like a slight pinching that won’t allow me to use the full strength possible when matched to my right thumb. That prevents the thumb muscle from achieving its full potential. Nothing serious, mind you. Nothing visible when placing the two thumbs side by side. Nothing that I need to bring up to my family doctor on our rare Zoom meetings. (Not wanting to waste her time with trivialities when I know I an fortunate to even have a family doctor despite her office being several hundred kilometres away and thus awkward for face-to-face.) It does worry me, however, that nothing I do by way of exercise improves the strength of that thumb. And is it getting worse? Hard to tell. For some reason, my mind goes to the thought of the opposable thumb theory of human intelligence and ingenuity. And how now, when twisting off the top of a vacuum-sealed jam or olive jar, I can no longer make full use of one of my opposables – and need to switch to my right hand. Is this going to lead to a loss of a percentage of that intelligence or ingenuity? Well, I guess that would have had to depend on measuring the difference between pre- and post-left-thumb-weakness intelligence and ingenuity levels. I had never thought of doing that before my left thumb showed this weakness. Would have shown incredible foresight if I had done so. In any case and not crying over spilled milk (not that I would ever cry over milk as I don’t drink it), I am able to simulate that pinching and loss of strength by holding the base of my diminished thumb between right thumb and index and squeezing. Being somewhat still intelligent, I check to see what can cause thumb pain: trigger thumb, thumb arthritis, DeQuervain’s tendonitis, carpal tunnel syndrome, skier’s thumb. None of these pains describe the weakness and pinching in my left thumb. Next, I check the muscles included in the thumb: abductor pollicis brevis, flexor pollicis brevis, opponens pollicis, adductor pollicis. This is all Greek to me. Perhaps my intelligence is already starting on that downward slippery slope. Tom Thumb, while interesting as the first fairy tale printed in English, doesn’t help all that much – especially the part where a cow swallows him and is then expunged via a cow pat! But I digress. Is that another symptom of diminishing intelligence? I fear it might be. Well, look on the bright side. Unlike many others, I can trace this lessening to a specific cause. Hopefully, I can hold onto that as I fade away.

 

Michael Mirolla has had the fortune of publishing more than two dozen novels, plays, film scripts and short story and poetry collections. These include award winners such as a novella, The Last News Vendor, winner of the 2020 Hamilton Literary Award, and three Bressani Prize winners: the novel Berlin; the poetry collection The House on 14th Avenue; and the short story collection Lessons in Relationship Dyads. Michael is also a veteran writer-in-residence, including: a three-month residency at the Historic Joy Kogawa House in Vancouver (fall 2019); Olot, Catalonia (September 2023); Barcelona (Can Serrat residency, July 2024); Regina Public Library Writer-in-Residence (Sept. 2024-June 2025); Virtual writer-in-residence (Saskatchewan Writers Guild, September-October 2025). A symposium on Michael’s writing was held on May 25, 2023. Born in Italy and raised in Montreal, Michael makes his home on a 30-acre farm (along with five dogs, a cat and sundry humans) outside the town of Gananoque in the Thousand Islands area of Ontario.

 

See what happens when you click below.

Interview Erasure

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.

First Woman

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.

About Time

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.

Dépaysement

by Mathieu Parsy

 

My coat isn’t warm enough for Toronto’s winter. The consulate man said, “Layers are key,” but he had a beard and the kind of face that doesn’t feel cold. My breath fogs like speech bubbles in a language I don’t read. Every time the subway doors open, the air bites a little harder. This city wants me to flinch.

I live in an open basement with a futon and a microwave that smells like melted plastic. The ceiling is low. I bump my head on edges I keep forgiving. My landlady is an old Greek woman who calls me “France” and warns me not to use the washing machine at night because it frightens the cat. There is no cat. There is no explanation either. I nod and try not to dream of water.

The city is wide and gray and not ugly, just undecided. Glass, concrete, a skyline in mid-thought. I walk west on Queen Street with my hands in my pockets and pretend I’m in transit. Everyone here walks like they’re late for something beautiful. They carry coffee like weapons. I buy one too. It burns my tongue, and I’ve been branded.

I came here for reasons that sounded better in French: Épanouissement. Indépendance. Opportunité. I recited them to my mother to reassure her. Now I say: “I’m just settling in,” and “It’s an adjustment,” while watching the water heater in my room click at odd intervals, like it’s learning Morse code. Sometimes I answer it. “Yes,” I say. “I know. Not yet.”

At the French bakery on College, the woman behind the counter asks where I’m from. I want to say something wry and memorable. Instead I shrug and say, “Marseille,” like I’m offering a confession. She says she’s from Nice, and her mouth twists when she says it, like it used to be something she was proud of.

On Sundays, I call my sister and tell her things I think will travel well across the Atlantic: a guy on the streetcar was beatboxing into a sock, a squirrel stole a whole sandwich, there’s a bar that serves nothing but cereal. I don’t tell her about the silence. How it follows me through daylight like a patient dog. How sometimes I whistle and wait for it to come.

Today I applied for a job folding clothes in a store where all the music sounds like someone exhaling. The manager had hair that looked expensive. She asked if I had Canadian experience. I answered, “I’m working on it.” But I was dying to tell her: I fold my own laundry. I fold into this city like origami—smaller each day. Isn’t that experience?

I’ve started naming pigeons out the window. One of them has a limp. I call him Alain. He comes most mornings and stands at the same crooked angle. I leave him crumbs shaped like letters. Sometimes he eats the ones that spell “okay.”

In the evenings, the upstairs tenant practices the same piano song—slow, with one note slightly off. I pause. It sounds like someone learning to stay.

 

 

Mathieu Parsy is a Canadian writer who grew up on the French Riviera. He now lives in Toronto and works in the travel industry. His writing has appeared or is forthcoming in publications such as Flash Frog, MoonPark Review, BULL, New World Writing Quarterly, and Bending Genres. Follow him on Instagram at @mathieu_parsy.

 

See what happens when you click below.

And Flecked with Copper

by Justin Ocelot

 

One day, I daydreamed a stone, veined with calcite and flecked with copper. It felt heavy in my hand, just like a real stone. I had no doubt that, if I dropped it, it would fall to the ground. But I put it in my pocket instead. I wanted to show it to my wife, but when I got home it was gone.

One day, I daydreamed a wife. She was exactly like my real wife, except that she was a Formula One race car driver with a crowded mantle of trophies. I felt a little intimidated in her presence. Tragically, she perished a month later in a fiery crash.

One day, I daydreamed a funeral. The people who came were mostly race car drivers. It was disconcerting to see such hardened men weeping like babes. When the ceremony was over, I gathered their tears off the grass. They were just like real tears, but hard like diamonds.

One day, I daydreamed that I found some diamonds and became a millionaire. I gave most of it away to friends and family and random people on the street. I kept only one dime, which I used to place a call from the payphone that used to stand on the corner in front of the old drugstore. “Hello, mom?” I said.

One day, I daydreamed a mother. I was walking by the harbor, where the boats come in and out, and she waved to me from the deck of a catamaran. She had a tan and her hair was dark again and the wind blew it wildly, like the tail of a horse that would never tire of running.

One day, I daydreamed a horse. I looked in his eyes and I felt that we understood each other perfectly. We were brothers, divided into different species by some cruel trick of nature. “Ride on me,” he seemed to say, “and we will reach the very ends of the earth.”

One day, I daydreamed I was galloping to the very ends of the earth. A storm was chasing us, spitting lightning and belching thunder. We reached the edge and kept going and tumbled hoof-over-head into sky, endless and blue. When we stopped spinning, I saw the earth below me like a stone, veined with calcite and flecked with copper.

I took it home and showed it to my wife. “It’s beautiful,” she breathed.

 

Justin Ocelot collects unsolvable puzzles and invisible maps. He writes stories without training wheels (they aren’t safe and you might fall off). He lives with his wife and two boys in a tropical forest somewhere along the coast of California. More info at justinocelot.com.

 

See what happens when you click below.

Your body knows things you never could

by Catherine Bai

 

Not everything needs to be seen by the love of your life. Just because they want to kiss you doesn’t mean they want to peer into your fallopian tube, and look for that one fragile, fading memory. You know the one. I never said you couldn’t show them all the words you’d never say out loud. Say them to your mother, who would’ve loved you anyway. Except you wouldn’t do the same for her. Yeah, I said it. ‘Cause I’m that way too. The leaking yawn of your mouth looks so stupid now, but it was celestial, when you couldn’t imagine that one day, everyone you know will die, and so will everyone you didn’t know, who died anyway. Picture the pomegranate tree, in the underworld. They’re not red but green. I bet you thought of the fruit ripe and heaving, with scars on the skin that someone made when the branch was still an embryo. The dark traffic swimming, in the pale bit of bone.

 

Catherine Bai is the recipient of a Vermont Studio Center Fellowship and a residency grant from the Helene Wurlitzer Foundation. Her fiction was longlisted for the 2025 Disquiet Prize, appears in Best Debut Short Stories 2022, and is forthcoming in AGNI. Her poetry is forthcoming in Luna Luna Magazine.

 

See what happens when you click below.

Goblin Toes

by Isabelle Ness

 

“Goddammit, can’t you keep your feet clean? Can’t you learn how to wash them with soap like a big girl?” Mother is raising her voice over the ch, ch, ch of the peeler against the carrot. “Look at those things, you got dirt all over them. You got toenails like a goblin. Aren’t you embarrassed?”

 

I tell her I do keep them clean, but the truth is I don’t. They are so far away in the shower. They are so far away they are their own entity, I tell them to take care of themselves.

 

“I’m embarrassed enough for the both of us. Having a daughter with goblin toes.” Shhhhhh, the faucet over the carrots. “Hand me that pot, will you?”

 

Mother is talking mad but she’s not really mad. She is making jokes. I hand her the pot and she fills it with water, sets it to boil. Then she slides a knife from the drawer and chops like the wind. Like she is racing herself to the finish, like she is just a little bit excited she might catch up to her fingers and take them right off. Shht!

 

“Your toes aren’t any better,” I say, and I point to her big toe, the one with the ingrown nail the doctor had to dig out. Left nothing but a nub behind. “Talk about goblin toes!” I cry, and I run from the kitchen, but I hear her laughing behind me. She is laughing that good-life laugh. I’m laughing, too, and my feet slap, slap, slap down the hallway.

 

In the living room my brother is watching the news. Always he is watching the news, or listening to it, or reading it. I think if they found a way to put it in a cup he would drink it.

 

“You see this shit?” he says. “Crazy. People are crazy.” He is shaking his head and I can hear in his voice how much it hurts him, the people. When he looks at me he sighs, and I feel him thinking I won’t ever understand. Maybe he is right.

 

Bang, my foot comes down on the coffee table. “Do you think I have goblin toes?”

 

He takes a look at my grubby nails. “Yes,” he says. “Yeah, you got goblin toes, for sure,” and he cracks a smile. For all his hurt, my brother’s smile is the kind that bunches around the eyes, that makes you think everything is okay—that it’s better than okay, that it’s marvelous. I huff like I’m mad and turn away quick before the smile goes. I find the sliding glass door and I slip out into the yard.

 

It is twilight, I think. Gray. But the cicadas still zzzzzzz in the bushes. And my goblin toes step through the grass. Push into the earth, crack a few sticks. I watch them taking me somewhere—it’s true, see, they are their own entity, even if Mother doesn’t believe me. They take me around the house, over the fence, out into the field that borders the cemetery. They take me, and take me, and take me, until I am tired of all the taking, and we stop beside a hickory tree and a tombstone. They seem to be talking to me, my goblin toes, from down there in the grass and the dirt. Take a good look, they seem to be saying, Take a look, girl.

 

Isabelle Ness is a fiction writer from Wisconsin. Her flash fiction was shortlisted for the Bridport Prize and appears in Atticus Review. Her short story, “Celestial Bodies,” was a finalist in the Sixfold Fiction Contest. She currently lives in western Massachusetts, where she is at work on a novel.

 

See what happens when you click below.

Eve writes a letter to God

by Rowan Tate

 

First of all, the ground here is different. Not bad, just different. More stubborn, like a child who won’t answer unless you call more than twice, or a scab. I’ve learned how to plant the seeds of a fruit, how to tell when the water is clean enough to drink, how to hold a chicken still to slit its throat clean, and how to salt a fish so it won’t go soft by morning. We mark time now by the state of our feet. Did you think it would come to this? I have learned which ribs from the carcass of dead animals break easiest for tools. Is that the lesson you wanted me to learn? I made fire. With flint. Thank you for fingernails. And sweat glands. And clay that hardens into something useful. I understand decay now: the things that die help us live. You and I don’t have to wonder what it’s like to be the first of anything. To be without precedent. You made me from absence and called it help; I make bread from stones and call it dinner. I don’t miss it, in case you’re wondering. I don’t need paradise. I need a decent rain now and then. I need one child to come home clean. I need fewer dreams where I taste the fruit again and wake up with a mouthful of dirt. The animals have become unkind. The children are loud. Abel watches ants take apart a fig and doesn’t interfere. Cain bites his nails and strangles snakes in the grass when he thinks I’m not close enough to see. He is trying to understand. Why did we have to leave? Why did He stay? When can we go back? Adam breaks the bread unevenly. He looks at me now the way you did the last time I saw you, like I’m part of the wilderness to be tamed. I write so you cannot pretend you do not hear me. I want you to know what it costs us to live in the world you abandoned. Do you remember when you taught me how to swim? When we put stories in the skies and gave the stars names? Please stop sending the snakes, as if we need the reminder. I know what you’re doing. I haven’t forgiven you yet. Read this aloud in your silence. I invented this alphabet from what you left us in order to say I remember everything, I will not let you be the only one to tell this story. I can still name things. You didn’t take that from me.

 

Rowan Tate is a Romanian creative (poet, essayist, visual artist, songwriter). She reads nonfiction nature books, the backs of shampoo bottles, and sometimes minds.

 

See what happens when you click below.

Breach

by Lucy Zhang

 

My mother-in-law claimed that my work caused my breech baby, and the only way to flip him was to drink white peony tea and quit, never mind that I couldn’t quit my job else we’d be down half an income—although trust me, I’d love to have quit. My baby ended up punching his way out, a mutant breech unwilling to contemplate the notion of being cut out from the top. Not even too high a cut. Bikini cut style so scars remain hidden even when stretch marks reign free. But he lived and I lived and I thought that was the end of it.

Except my son kept getting lost. Or, I kept losing him in this placenta-exterior era. I found him sitting in cupboards, crawling by the window sill, sleeping on the car hood. An aimless wanderer who I feared would one day slip through a crack in the asphalt and find himself in another dimension. Because you let money win over your heart, my mother-in-law chastised. A baby can’t find its way back to a heart void of maternal devotion. I disagreed: getting lost simply meant knowing where to search, when to give up. Even vanishing through a space time continuum couldn’t deter my son’s intuition to find home: the smell of vinegar and garlic, the feel of a tousled carpet in patches of bald and clumped tufts from the dog’s nails, the taste of microscopic drops of breast milk squeezed from sore, tender nipples bubbling with blebs. A baby who had ripped his way through me would never struggle to find the tear and stretch it until there’s enough space to fit a mother’s “heart of devotion” and then some.

 

Lucy Zhang writes, codes, and watches anime. Her work has appeared in Virginia Quarterly Review, Shenandoah, The Massachusetts Review, and elsewhere. Find her at https://lucyzhang.tech or on Instagram @Dango_Ramen.

 

See what happens when you click below.

Game Over

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.

The Descent into Decline

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.

If Only The Great Thinker Knew it Wasn’t that Bad

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.

Knots and Braids

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.

Screwball

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.

So what do you do?

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.

The Crow

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.

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

05/04 • Leath Tonino
05/11 • Chris Pellizzari
05/18 • Chris Clemens
05/25 • Clayton Eccard
06/01 • TBD
06/08 • TBD
06/15 • TBD
06/22 • TBD
06/29 • TBD
07/06 • TBD
07/13 • TBD
07/20 • TBD
07/27 • TBD
08/03 • TBD
08/10 • TBD
08/17 • TBD
08/24 • TBD
08/31 • TBD
09/07 • TBD
09/14 • TBD
09/21 • TBD