The Gravity of the Thing

Pink Carnation | Rebecca Suzuki "A mimosa represented chastity because the leaves of the mimosa close at night, or when touched. White carnation meant pure love and good luck, and a pink one, a mother’s undying love..."

"A mimosa represented chastity because the leaves of the mimosa close at night, or when touched. White carnation meant pure love and good luck, and a pink one, a mother’s undying love..."

"Pink Carnation" by Rebecca Suzuki recently appeared in our Fall 2025 issue.

#creativenonfiction

In the Beforetimes | Carrie Nassif "work is a place where some adolescents and most adults spent a good deal of their waking time doing specified tasks or acting in prescribed roles in order to earn money..."

"work is a place where some adolescents and most adults spent a good deal of their waking time doing specified tasks or acting in prescribed roles in order to earn money..."

Genre-bending writing by Carrie Nassif from our Fall 2025 issue.

#crossgenre #experimentalwriting

Fealty and Other Poems | Judy Thorn "If you should ever miss me, take the boat. / If the boat is stalling, jump and fly. / May strong winds float you, levant kids. / I sing for quarters now, into my hat. / Nothing bad I’ve ever done has...

"If you should ever miss me, take the boat.
If the boat is stalling, jump and fly.
May strong winds float you, levant kids."

"The Firth of Forth" and other poems by Judy Thorn recently appeared in our Fall 2025 issue.

#poetry #poetrycommunity

The Birth of Evil | Rob Swystun "Other like me has sky brightness. He showed me. It was like many sky brightnesses, but small. They are in a piece of hard ground. They move like sky brightness on water..."

"I want the small sky brightnesses on the piece of hard ground like I want food, but different. I want to look at it. I want to touch it..."

A new flash fiction story by Rob Swystun from our Fall 2025 issue.

#fiction #flashfiction

Selected Poems | CS Crowe "we have so many words / for the act of sifting one thing / from another / sift, sieve, sort, strain / how many of these words / are gentle and soft / in our mouths / thresh, sever, sunder, winnow..."

"how our distant ancestors
first learned to grind with their teeth

how we have so many words
for the act of sifting one thing
from another"

Our Fall 2025 issue recently launched with two poems by CS Crowe.

#poetry #poetrycommunity

Green, red, and pink screen-printed images of brick walkways and wood picket fences.

"First Steps" by Laurel Prieto for our Fall 2025 issue. New works of defamiliarized creative writing will appear in our fall issue throughout September and October. Learn more at thegravityofthething.com.

How the Fire Must Have Started | Kathleen Hellen "black smoke charring faded floral wallpaper. / they were old, we didn’t know them. call it failure of occupation. the grass untamed. trackless. / the vines that willed a wall. call it failure of atte...

"did he touch a cigarette to synthetic? a single spark igniting. curtains / cabinets furniture. the hot cloud pawing through fusty / hallways..."

Our Summer 2025 issue recently concluded with a poem by Kathleen Hellen.

#poetry #poetrycommunity

Loneliness is a Room | Mykyta Ryzhykh "If anyone knows where this tlanguage of rocks leads then it's a trap / A dead end for people who are looking for something resembling the truth / We drowned like drowned men who have swum out three t...

"If anyone knows where this tlanguage of rocks leads then it’s a trap / A dead end for people who are looking for something resembling the truth..."

A new poem by Mykyta Ryzhykh from our Summer 2025 issue.

#poetry #poetrycommunity

Thank YOU for sharing your work with us!

Selected Prose Poems | Colleen S. Harris "My room is rural dark, back field dark, so dark I can read by the wan glow cast from the kitchen light through the crack under my bedroom door, the same dim radiance as this unhurried burn of inflamm...

"I convince myself that the view of sun breaking over water is what I need, to soothe this body whose pieces were cut with different blades, painted the same color, and built back together..."

Two prose poems by @warmaiden.bsky.social from our Summer 2025 issue.

#poetry #prosepoetry

Re(Evolution) | Nathan Tompkins "you're a fungus expanding your fibrous tendrils across dead skin and decaying organs; sing in the language of hunger, the words an ancestral memory buried in the genetic code..."

"you're a fungus expanding your fibrous tendrils across dead skin and decaying organs; sing in the language of hunger, the words an ancestral memory buried in the genetic code..."

Genre-bending writing by @gorillapoet.bsky.social from our Summer 2025 issue.

#flash #experimentalwriting

Walnut Creek Gas & Co. | Yuna Kang "Malicious, bleary-eyed scammers, payola and crime and all that. It wasn’t a life I knew, was acquainted with at all. But I liked to dream about it anyway..."

"Malicious, bleary-eyed scammers, payola and crime and all that. It wasn’t a life I knew, was acquainted with at all.

But I liked to dream about it anyway..."

Check out Yuna Kang's short fiction story, which appeared this week in our Summer 2025 issue.

#fiction #shortfiction #shortstory

Put Your Lips Together and Blow | Tate A. Geborkoff "A man stands in front of a mirror wearing last night’s makeup. He knows he should have taken it off, but he didn’t. He was having a good time, living his truest self, and he got home so late (so earl...

"A man stands in front of a mirror wearing last night’s makeup. He knows he should have taken it off, but he didn’t. He was having a good time, living his truest self, and he got home so late (so early)..."

Our Summer 2025 issue launches with a #flashfiction story by @adjinntonic.bsky.social.

A teal-green screen print of molecules, seed pods, and air waves on top of gray and blue blocks of color.

"Lichen" by Laurel Prieto for our Summer 2025 issue. New works of defamiliarized creative writing will appear in our summer issue throughout July and August. Learn more at thegravityofthething.com.

I Give the Angel Chuck’s Watch, and He Recalls the First Night of Creation | Zachariah Claypole White "We had no language, you understand, / only the possibility of it; / three strands of hibiscus arranged / left to right would mean grandmother; / it could also mean subway or wheelchair."

"We had no language, you understand,
only the possibility of it;

three strands of hibiscus arranged
left to right would mean grandmother"

Our Spring 2025 issue concludes with a poem by Zachariah Claypole White.
@zachariahcw.bsky.social #poetry

Getting Personal with Dr. Phil | Nadia Kalman "Did you ever think you’d end up here / Those times you went on Oprah, talking tough / To teenage moms? You never quite became a star." Nadia Kalman is an NEA Literature grantee and the author of The ...

"Did you ever think you’d end up here
Those times you went on Oprah, talking tough
To teenage moms? You never quite became a star."

New #poetry by Nadia Kalman from our Spring 2025 issue.

Call to Order | Heikki Huotari "In the beginning not yet sacred all is apropos. As I traverse a simple closed curve counterclockwise the interior is always on the left. I'll gaze in wonder only at that which I've gazed in wonder at...

"In the beginning not yet sacred all is apropos. As I traverse a simple closed curve counterclockwise the interior is always on the left."

A prose poem by Heikki Huotari from our Spring 2025 issue.

Death Trap | Henry Stevens "He sits back down in his throne of bone and ebony, admiring his phylactery. He wants to be excited, but there is something empty in his victory. No one to tell."

"Out of sight of the hero’s dead eyes, he brushes his bony hands and gets back to the very important work of writing his treatise on the condition of the undead..."

New fiction by Henry Stevens from our Spring 2025 issue.

Ten-Course Chicken (Adobo) Dinner | Elica Sue "I was told growing up 'you’re a quarter' of each thing, like a dollar bill, but with the weight of making sure you can keep all the pieces together, to be able to buy what you need at the dollar stor...

"I was told growing up 'you’re a quarter' of each thing, like a dollar bill, but with the weight of making sure you can keep all the pieces together, to be able to buy what you need at the dollar store."

Creative nonfiction by Elica Sue from our Spring 2025 issue.

The Fearsucker | Johan Smits "Something wraps your ankle in a tight grip. A sharp end presses into your lower back and threatens to pierce your skin. A claw? A sting? A beak?"

"Something wraps your ankle in a tight grip. A sharp end presses into your lower back and threatens to pierce your skin. A claw? A sting? A beak?"‪

Our Spring 2025 issue recently launched with a short story by @johansmits.bsky.social.

A multilayered screen print that features a yellow, brick walkway on top of purple and green flowers and bulbs.

"Pathways" by Laurel Prieto for our Spring 2025 issue. New works of defamiliarized prose and poetry will appear in our spring issue throughout May and June. Learn more at thegravityofthething.com.

Selected Poems | Panika M. C. Dillon "the Valkyries predicted we would crave quake, that the stars existed to shine down on our teeth embedded in sidewalks like ivory sequins / there’s a crack in the bruised sky of Ymir’s skull—that’s ho...

"the Valkyries predicted we would crave quake, that the stars existed to shine down on our teeth embedded in sidewalks like ivory sequins..."

Our Winter 2025 issue concludes with three experimental poems by Panika M. C. Dillon.
@withoutreports.bsky.social

The Emperor's Mirror | Alex Zhao "The seeds of my prison were sown in the third century when a drunk calligrapher scrawled an impromptu poem. On a spring afternoon beside a stream, the calligrapher Xizhi composed the Orchid Pavilion ...

"The seeds of my prison were sown in the third century when a drunk calligrapher scrawled an impromptu poem. On a spring afternoon beside a stream, the calligrapher Xizhi composed the Orchid Pavilion Preface..."

A new short story by Alex Zhao.

For Your Self-Defense | Shanti Chandrasekhar "Within a nanosecond, we are alert, guarded, equipped. We multiply into a huge army, ready for action. Not for nothing, we’re called your first line of defense. We charge with one goal. To protect you...

"Within a nanosecond, we are alert, guarded, equipped. We multiply into a huge army, ready for action. Not for nothing, we’re called your first line of defense. We charge with one goal. To protect you."

A new short story by Shanti Chandrasekhar from our Winter 2025 issue.

Mourning and Highways | Amy Allison "when you were tucked in your grave, / neat as a napkin in a lap, / all words soared off to / some shining tree, / bereaving me / now they’re transforming / into things that hurl by..."

"when you were tucked in your grave,
neat as a napkin in a lap,
all words soared off to
some shining tree,
bereaving me..."

Two poems by Amy Allison from our Winter 2025 issue.
@byamyallison.bsky.social

Selected Poems | Noah Anthony Mezzacappa "Says once she tripped that she was her own mother giving birth to herself. She was in labor for forty-eight hours and remembers every second of it: the bed of ice they laid her on as they tried to br...

"Says once she tripped that she was her own mother giving birth to herself. She was in labor for forty-eight hours and remembers every second of it..."

New prose poetry by Noah Anthony Mezzacappa from our Winter 2025 issue.

Paper Trail | Jason Fraley "I’m different than other babies. Their gemstone eyes, chubby everythings, innate ability to wiggle. Me? I’m one legal-sized sheet of paper, blue lines barely visible..."

"I’m different than other babies. Their gemstone eyes, chubby everythings, innate ability to wiggle. Me? I’m one legal-sized sheet of paper, blue lines barely visible..."

Our Winter 2025 issue recently launched with prose poetry excerpts by Jason Fraley.

Beeswax batik that features dark purple circles painted on a light purple cloth background.

"Beeswax Batik Swatch" by Laurel Prieto for our Winter 2025 issue. New works of defamiliarized prose and poetry will appear in our winter issue throughout February and March. Learn more at thegravityofthething.com.