The 2022 National Book Award winners
HarperCollins workers strike
Judge blocks PRH-S&S merger
What counts as a bestseller?
James Scott Bell’s 10 Commandments for writers
Annie Ernaux wins Nobel Prize in Literature
Five Poems
by Simon Perchik
Though it’s familiar this flower / doesn’t recognize the breeze / wriggling out the ground / as that distance without any footsteps
Threnody for Paul Morphy
by Brian Glaser
The flowers are everywhere, pungent and bright. / It could be autumn, eighteen-fifty-seven.
Fragments of My Rape
by Janna Vought
It began / with the Stain. / The Stain, my Stain / red on a white bedspread / covered with bristles / of nylon thread.
Precision
by Carol Hamilton
Scarlatti’s sheet music lies / on the floor near the piano / and a catalog for later perusal / is sprawled in full color / near the computer.
Death Poems
by Laura Madeline Wiseman
I don’t know why death wants me or why death wakes me to press her bones against my backside. The ringing is incessant now. She has to know this.
Eyes of the Day
by Tim Craven
I recall as kids when our obsession would / lead us into the thick backwoods / next to the decommissioned railway / line, our pockets stuffed with ribbons
Nightfall
by Victor Hugo (1802-1885)
translated by Jacqueline Michaud
The sun slept this evening in clouds of mounting gray / Tomorrow will bring the storm, and evening, and night
Waves
by William Ogden Haynes
That bowl, whose waves long ago gently caressed / the scent of Sunday dinners, finally washed up / in the swampy cul-de-sac of my kitchen counter.
Lilac
by Alexis Misko
I feel the kind of sticky / I should feel if this were Georgia, / if I were in an Alice Walker novel / with a fist full of blackberries / staining my southern grin.
How to Pay Respects to a Serial Killer
by Robert S. King
Follow the script and the scripture. / Even the biography of the damned / is told with sobbing compassion.
It all began around a campfire…
Beautiful language
is meant to be heard as well as read, and in fact words were vocalized eons before they were ever committed to clay or parchment. Storytelling began around campfires. We seek prose and poetry that continue the tradition.
Contributor Spotlight:
River Woman, River Demon
by Jennifer Givhan
Open Contests
Lascaux Vol 9
by Stephen Parrish, with the editors of The Lascaux Review
