NWWQ January 2024 submissions close 1/14/24. We will next accept submissions April 1–14, 2024. We thank all who submitted to this
-
NEW WORLD WRITING QUARTERLY ~ JANUARY 2024
-
Glen Pourciau ~ Two Short Stories
Slice
Eight of us at a dinner party, four couples, nothing left to eat but dessert. Cathy, one of our hosts, has ordered a Bundt cake decorated with a large frosting flower and petals from a local bakery, and our friend Ruth volunteers
-
Mikki Aronoff ~ The Sniffer of Spices
Not so long ago, you felt the fuzz of pussywillow against your skin, spring rain on your face. Then, the hit of hard times, the rush and drench of gutter-flood, and The Woman you once thought kindly lifted you up, tucked you
-
Yuna Kang ~Seventh Story
They had made a purity of his age.
That’ll show em, the old, storied, lament.
The streets he meandered upon were stoneless. A long time ago, before asphalt perhaps, they might have been tiled with weeds and indecision. A
-
Carol Alexander ~ Poems
Migration
This year, the potatoes rot. The wind’s full of malice.
The judge notes among certain birds unhinged movements
a hardwired loop braided from instinct and forecast.
Threaded saffron crocus bloom
deliberate crowds dyeing the flagstones.Across country,
-
Kathryn Silver-Hajo ~ Blue Silk
Soraya’s lips curl in a satisfied smile as she nears the front door and looks at her watch—9:33 pm. Baba won’t be home from his late shift at the pharmacy for nearly a half hour. Mama will have fallen asleep watching
-
Kevin Spaide ~ Ezra
Cara came home one morning with some kid in tow. He looked around fourteen maybe – hard to tell sometimes – but his eyes were those of a man who’d spent his whole life in a warzone with nothing much to eat. He stood
-
Julie Benesh ~ Unsuitable Things 2024 (after Sei Shonagon)
Wearing the hot pink faux fur coat yet receiving compliments only on the hot pink sequined sneakers one intended as mere complement.
Eating a food, the ingredients of which one cannot identify; it scarcely matters if the
-
Peter Ramos ~ No One Here Gets Out Alive
The day after the talent show, my brother and I got on a Greyhound to visit our older cousin, Reynaldo, who attended Frostburg State University in western Maryland, a good three or -
Julian George ~ The Servant
The weasel under the cocktail cabinet. – Harold Pinter
How queer.
‘The Man from Brazil’ a no-show.
Those cities of the plain in the jungle so many castles in Spain.
Dishes pile up. Bills go unpaid. The master of the house sinks into -
Elizabeth Kerlikowske ~ Six Wild Man Poems
Private Zoo
The keepers and a giraffe have the only keys. No one much comes anymore. Just the Wild Man’s other old friend, the camel. The public doesn’t even know it’s open. The grass in back is so tall that your knees
-
Susan E Lloy ~ Time Out
The wind rattles the trees that envelop her house deep in the near impenetrable woods. It’s her home, but the structure is more like a camp really. She burns wood for heat and fetches water from the nearby stream to drink
-
Oli Peters ~ Pony Girl
“20 G’s, can you believe?” Mrs. Digby jabbed her finger at her face in a harsh point. The sunglasses—diamond-encrusted with gold trim, lenses a pink ombré—glinted in the sun, which I swear, up here in the Tops, is candied.
-
Matthew Roberson ~ Kept
She set the bags on the steps and then sat. A car passed and then another, and up the street the sound of kids playing carried and faded. The steps were dirty under her skirt, and she told herself to get up, that she should
-
Mary Ann McGuigan ~ The Party Favor
The pocketbook is blue, a dark hue more like a chemical spill than a sky. It has traveled with us from one apartment to another, withstanding every rushed exodus, every eviction. Always we find it nestled safely between sweaters
-
Dave Newman ~ The Last Thing That Happened Before I Became a Med Tech
I ran into Dawn Reedy at the Big Lots in Beckley. We’d dated when we were teenagers but I hadn’t seen her since high school. I was buying canned pasta. I was buying fish sticks and bread. I’d just blown my nose into
-
Parker Tettleton ~ Five By
All Fires
The thrilling sound is quiet most of the time. The second sentence is working remotely. We were together, in the bathroom, last. You said something. I stepped out of the shower. I am a man with a soon-to-be ex-wife.
The First Time Buying Beer After You Died
We are
-
Kelle Groom ~Hurricane World
My afternoon shift is about to start, and the red-haired assistant manager 15 years older than me, with a beer gut the size of a six-month pregnancy under his short-sleeved aqua scuba shirt, is asking me, What size are
-
Mona Kirschner ~ I Clean the House
The house is large.
There are animals and a damaged man and curated plants and old floors that bend. There is furniture and dust and good light from the south side of Williamsburg.
I clean the house to restore order. The house
-
Sean Ennis ~ Five Notes
WHAT HAPPENED TO YOUR CHARM
and your horniness? my friend Shadow’s wife Wanda blurted out during Thanksgiving dinner. They had invited me to join them because I was a lonely widower, but Wanda was talking to her husband.