by Allison Palmer I remember you from time to time, when I sharpen a pencil and press its new tip to the pad of my thumb to test the sharpness. Ideally, fine enough to leave a mark on the skin for a few moments, but dull enough not to break it. In second grade, I sat at my quarter-sized desk and rubbed the pin prick on my forearm where your graphite No.

by Sarah Seybold for Mamaw who worked at the Chesty Foods potato chips plant in Terre Haute, Indiana Conveyor belts roll by, and she remembers a road— Indiana to California, 1938. Her long, smooth legs and slender waist, her wavy hair ungrayed. Far away from that flat town, her mother’s ghost, her father’s fist. In her pocket, dreams of the West: …

by Jennifer Mills Kerr Here, take these berries on your tongue, taste their tang as a sentinel of grief,and with the sun’s red glare, come intomy meadow to sip the morning air. See my mother, the crushed, crimson flower I handled, relenting to her hot temper,her weeping. It was never enough. And though she is dead, my palms still bear…

by Zach Keali’i Murphy You’ve given the worst birthday gifts, and I’ve kept all of them. There’s the crocodile-shaped keychain that hasn’t left my key ring. Its sharp and pointy tail has torn a hole through the pockets in all of my pairs of pants. Sometimes, the tail even scrapes against my thigh until it bleeds. Then there’s the faulty leaf blower that doesn’t blow any air.

by Stefanie Leigh After Rachel Rabbit WhiteWe found each other’s eyes in the mirror—tendus, jetes, fouettés—for years. Our conversations, leaning over the piano, heldlike hands. Until my ring finger was freeto trace your throat, my whole palmon your jaw. Your gaze erasing our outlines, our limbsinhaling, gliding, like twilight on a lake. Stefanie Leigh…

by Bruce D Snyder Twenty third-graders, six parents, and a teacher all piled into four or five vehicles and headed for Decorah, Iowa. The class camping trip circa 1981. Once there, we got the tents up, the spaghetti cooking, the s'mores at standby alert. The kids were into it and the parents, adrift in a fog of DEET, were taking pictures of anything that moved.

by Heather Emmanuel You slide pescatarian into the conversation like it's your word to claim. “When it counts,” you say, scanning the menu. Across the table, in a crisp button-down and cuffed sleeves, she doesn’t bother pretending to read hers. “And when does it count?” The intensity of her slightly downturned eyes unnerves you. Her voice is light, but her gaze is…

January House Literary Journal is thrilled to announce our nominations for the 2026 Pushcart Prize. The Pushcart Prize: Best of the Small Presses, published since 1976, has become "the most honored literary project in America". Winners are expected to be announced around April of 2026. Congratulations and good luck to our nominees! Bindweed by M F Drummy City Specters…

Mallory Caloca passion is to share the little details, simultaneously bold and delicate, and create an imagined image for others to perceive something beyond conventional understanding. Combined sources that are both organic or natural and geometric shapes and forms create a fantastical blueprint of possibilities. Watercolor is an immediate and mostly unforgiving tool that has kept the art process uniquely grounded.

by Chila Woychik It was the farthest north they had ever been. And time was all Maddie and Saul had left. Hours awash in Maddie’s own thoughts, the strangest memories crept in at even the hint of a connection: an oak tree with a split trunk reminded her of climbing a tree in her back yard years ago with her younger brother.

by Kathy Pon beyond a bunch of discomfort and the slogtowards some sort of body restoration is the delicious act of napping. For ushigh-strung overachievers better suited as boundless Springer Spaniels that flushfulfillment from fields or boardrooms, the notion of turning into a daytime zombieis terrifying. Who allows the brain to surrender its powered thought, commands her voices…

Reena's artworks have been published in several print and online publications, including Magazine-The Perch Magazine (mental health and substance), The Climate Art Collection, Aunt Lute, Judy Magazine, Farm Girl Magazine and Art Axis Project Organizing Committee and won Silver Medal in India Art Contest (Khula Aasmaan).

by Ash Maielle T I T L Eis erosion a good thing?I N T R O D U C T I O N & B A C K G R O U N D● she tumbled into the question.● after tiny hands filled with recyclables and hope scurried with severity. ○ how we depend on our dependents to deliver us from the destruction we’ve dealt.

by Eugene Datta The olive grove next to Hotel Karavostási is full of fruit. I didn’t know how bitter fresh olives taste until I ate one the other day. It took the sharp sourness of a half-ripe mandarin to tame the riot of tannins on my tongue. Two mandarin trees in front of the hotel are also full of fruit, half a crest of blooming bougainvillea above the locked entrance.

Sabyasachi Roy is an Academic writer, poet, artist, and photographer. He regularly contributes craft essays to Authors Publish as a guest writer. His poetry has been published in The Broken Spine, Stand, Poetry Salzburg Review, Dicey Brown, The Potomac, and other print and online magazines. His photograph has appeared on the cover of Sanctuary Asia.

by JK Miller We played with our fingers over the surface of thespongy, moon-like sourdough, rovers dippinginto the Misir Wot, the Kik Wot, and the Shiro Wot,roaming around the teff mons, and it wasn't longbefore, in Lalibela's on Fairfax, sitting across from each other at the small, square table,with the moon in front of us, we tried to perform the act…

by Cecil Morris Seven-foot high redwood, board-on-board, the usual gaps overlapped, every view blocked by new wood gloriously bright in shades of red and blond, the fine fur of splinters waiting on ungloved hands, for skin as bare as the boards and ready, the gentle open arcs of rings, giant fingerprints fragmented, divided, and the knots, the hundred dark eyes of nature still solid, tight, …

by Benjamin Patterson The year was coming to a close, but it hadn’t closed, right at that moment when the scales shift and autumn begins to tip into winter (think grayscale images, shavings of frost sticking to spent grasses). Car ignitions sputtered. Every few months, a woman, or an occasional man, claimed to be a psychic. Word spread, as predictions miraculously came true.

Roger Camp is the author of three photography books including the award winning Butterflies in Flight, Thames & Hudson, 2002. His documentary photography has been awarded the prestigious Leica Medal of Excellence and published in The New England Review, New York Quarterly and Orion Magazine. He is represented by the Robin Rice Gallery, NY. More of his work may be seen on luminous-lint.com.

by Michael Blumenthal I’ve never liked novelswith too many characters in themjust as I’ve never liked partieswith too many guests. What I preferare intimate engagements between me and just one other person: Madame Bovary over War and Peace, The Metamorphosis over One Hundred Years of Solitude. Too many people between the same covers always confuses me-- I’m perpetually forgetting…

S.C. Sharp is an artist from Texas.

MonsterAt the end of the horror movie, when our person has killedthe monster-villain, she–and I’m thinking of heroines here,Sigourney or Jamie Lee–looks to the camera and we feel delight for her, we know she deserves this relief from all the hard work of killing and life.We relax a little, we undo some fears and let ourselves imagine…

by Robert Schiff The speech is drafted—brief, polite, gracious. Tradition calls for writing two. One for victory. The other for this. Two are not necessary tonight. Twenty five years ago: The last Fall practice wrapped. Jordan packed up gear. That was the freshmen’s job. Coach coming over. Jordan saw and walked the other direction. Coach trotted to catch up. “We’re going in a different direction.

by Xingyu Zhao After Boey Kim Cheng’s Clear BrightnessApples, persimmons, and orange sponge cakesShining under halogen glare, and mother and IWatch Bai Wuchang toss his divining blocks, Inviting the spirits to enter papier-mâché Dolls dressed in red silk robes. Peachwood Tablets sway above their heads in humid wind, Pregnant with the scent of lilies and peonies,And the dragon and phoenix candles wink…

by Jack Tisdale Belknap House. The Abner L’Argent Psychic College for Pantisocracy, Aspheterism, Benevolence, and Civil Liberty DE DESPERATIONE, FORTITUDO Staff Directive 23, October 5. From: Director Barringwell Re: Certain Items. Certain items have been brought to my attention. I address them here in no particular order. Were you therefore to read this from the bottom up, or start in the middle, or indeed, turn it inside out like a glove, the meaning would be more or less the same, and the narrative equally informative, if not entirely compelling.