Two Flash Fiction Pieces by Beth Sherman

Solstice I hadn’t let my mother near a stove in months. Not since she was forced to move in with me. Dinner was usually anything I could microwave – frozen burritos, mac & cheese, fettucine Alfredo, single-serve pizzas. I’ve never been all that interested…

Me or You

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…

Chips

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…

Kissed Stain

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…

Your Gifts

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…

Becoming Swans

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…

Roping Steers with Milton Erickson

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…

line and sinker

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…

2026 Pushcart Prize Nominees

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…

Artwork by Mallory Caloca 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.

Artwork by Mallory Caloca

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…

Dry

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…

What they don’t say about recovery

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…

Artwork by Reena 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).

Artwork by Reena

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…

The Effects of an Erosion Lesson on a Public Educator and her Students

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…

Seen

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…

Untitled by Sabyasachi Roy 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.

Untitled by Sabyasachi Roy

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…

Gursha

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…

Ode to My New Fence

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…

Notes From the Frontier

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…

Sunrise, Isle Lake, Burma by Roger Camp 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.

Sunrise, Isle Lake, Burma by Roger Camp

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…

Against Overpopulation

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…

Artwork by S.C. Sharp S.C. Sharp is an artist from Texas.

Artwork by S.C. Sharp

S.C. Sharp is an artist from Texas.

Two Poems by Sara Eddy

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…

Concession

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…

Ghost Wedding

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…

Directive 23

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…

The Trophies in the Brother Mausoleum

by Emma Lagno wink their gold heads and smooth mouthless faces and flat fingerless hands. On the shelves, softback books on baseball and the wilderness crackle. They say how to be a boy when the plane goes down in the woods. How to hold a hatchet. How to swing…

Two Poems by Charlie Brice

Winter Walk in PittsburghBlizzard so bright the sky turned dark.Pleasant-sting of flakes against cold-flushed cheeks. A parka-bundled neighborshovel-scrapes his front walk. We gesture to the snow, palms up, as if in prayer. I love it, I yell. Me too, he says. Cold-mist…

Wish List

by David Rodriguez Whether it’s one year or five decadesbefore we board an ark of silica ceramics,of flexible insulation blankets or whateverwe have (oak timber and tallow, like do-it-yourself Vikings), may I be donewith all my pettiness and grief,all my lists of tired resentmentsand…

Contributor Book: M F Drummy Contributor M F Drummy, another of our Best of the Net nominees, has a debut poetry collection coming out in September/October. The book is available for pre-order at a discount through Main Street Rag bookstore: Advance praise for M F Drum's Perdido: Now and then you read poems that remind you how irreducible and necessary poetry is.

Contributor Book: M F Drummy

Contributor M F Drummy, another of our Best of the Net nominees, has a debut poetry collection coming out in September/October. The book is available for pre-order at a discount through Main Street Rag bookstore: Advance praise for M F Drum's Perdido: Now and then you…