New World Writing Quarterly

Open for sub­mis­sions 7/1/25 — 7/14/25

The Nap

For so long it wasn’t possible—
although at the cred­it agency
I would dis­ap­pear dur­ing breaks
to a lit­tle cot in the back room until
the timer went off—
but today
no oblig­a­tions no voices
and the win­dow –more

No one knew what to do the day the sun­rise got stuck on the hori­zon. The orb of pink and gold and the pur­ple shad­ed clouds just sort of slouched there, watch­ing us.

The engi­neers didn’t know what to do. The same engi­neers that brought back the wooly –more

When they final­ly let me out of the hos­pi­tal, nobody could find my shoes. Shoes were the first thing they’d tak­en away in the emer­gency room, but now they were unac­count­ed for. My mom didn’t remem­ber bring­ing them home, –more

Things final­ly start­ed to feel okay after I stole the car, paid twen­ty dol­lars for a Slurpee and vowed nev­er to wear shoes again.

The lux­u­ry car was left run­ning out­side the mega church when I hap­pened upon it after decid­ing –more

Yelling at the Baby

So, your baby is stand­ing up in her crib
cling­ing to the rail­ing with her chub­by hands
and squalling for rea­sons you can’t fig­ure out,

and Putin has bombed anoth­er vil­lage in Ukraine,
and Israeli –more

The old woman, nine­ty-five come July, had lived a life of fires.

She used to hear sto­ries about the one in 1903 that ate the ranch nes­tled in the hills of the 13,000-acre Spanish Land Grant that her grand­par­ents bought—Rancho Topanga Malibu Sequit. –more

I often destroy the print­ed drafts of my writ­ing. In part, it’s paranoia—an unre­al­is­tic and ego­tis­ti­cal wor­ry that some­one might steal my ideas. Or, far worse, some­one might read them. It’s the fear of rev­e­la­tion with­out –more

 Three cross­es on a hill made from rusty clothes­line poles watched over the town. The mid­dle one was taller than the two flank­ing it. “What’s a chig­ger?” she asked him once. He had smiled while she scratched her ankles.

“I –more

The baby girl is called Lani because her moth­er, Nell, feels the name escape from her mouth like a child’s laugh when she says it aloud. She first saw the name in the issue of Seventeen, which she hid behind in –more

Morning Swim

Last night I watched the wind and tide car­ry my mother’s ash­es out to sea. And now this morn­ing it seems to me that her favorite cof­fee cup holds an ocean. I can’t help but feel God-like cradling its entire­ty in my hands, even though my mind tells –more

CW: References to suicide 

We men­tioned it now and then, over beers at Red’s, but none of us knew where Rooster’d gone off and dis­ap­peared to. Odds were he’d gone a ben­der. He did that—vanished, then resur­faced with a sto­ry you could’ve just –more

Letter to a Version of Myself in a Dimension Without Insects

There are these crea­tures we have here. Or I guess first of all Hello. Does polite­ness exist in your dimen­sion & is it a good thing? They can have a hun­dred –more

1.

It doesn’t take a rock­et sci­en­tist to fig­ure out how to lose ten pounds but I call NASA any­way. The guy picks up on the first ring. He asks me what I con­sume. I men­tion –more

How the chil­dren lived before they filled the sky—

Wailing under­neath lab tables. Grabbing for the sci­en­tists’ wingtips. Getting their grub­by lit­tle mitts into all the atoms.

There’s slob­ber on the pal­la­di­um! a sci­en­tist would cry.

–more

The daugh­ter took care of her moth­er, as daugh­ters are good to do. She had tend­ed to her well-being for many years, dri­ving her to doc­tor appoint­ments, buy­ing her beer and mak­ing sure it always stayed cold in a mini-fridge –more

It was a Friday late in the season—after Labor Day—and the beach­es were most­ly desert­ed, save for a few fam­i­lies and the fish­er­man on the piers. We got a first floor room at the Seabreeze motel. A bright blue motor lodge from the 1960s with a dis­tant –more

My father’s heavy boot crunched down onto the cheap, plas­tic hood of the RC police car, shat­ter­ing the red and blue lights, splin­ter­ing the black and white body, and col­laps­ing the top, send­ing it inward like a tiny white dwarf star, implod­ing, vibrat­ing, –more

I sat melt­ing into a lounge chair by the com­mu­ni­ty pool watch­ing my wife and young daugh­ter splash around in the shal­low end. We didn’t live in Swaying Pines, but we’d joined the pool as friends of the com­mu­ni­ty. We lived close by in San Anselmo. –more

Mom was sell­ing her house, the house we’d grown up in, me and my five sib­lings. Dad had recent­ly passed; prop­er­ty tax­es were going up. At that point, it was just Mom and my broth­er, Kent, and too much space. My sis­ters remind­ed –more