• NWWQOCTOBER 2024

    October 2024 sub­mis­sions close 10/14/24. We will next accept sub­mis­sions January 1–14, 2025. We do not accept sub­mis­sions between issues. Thanks to all who sub­mit­ted to this issue and spe­cial thanks to our Senior edi­tors –more

  • George Singleton. ~ Gerald’s Last Girlfriend

    Finally, after a full year of col­lege on cam­pus his junior year, Gerald came home to find out that his par­ents secured him a job work­ing for his uncle Leo, a wealthy man who’d oper­at­ed a small engine repair shop for thir­ty years—Gerald’s –more

  • Steve Deutsch ~ Poker

         It is noth­ing to me who runs the Dive.
         Let’s have a look at anoth­er five.
               –Robert Frost in Dive’s Dive

    My grand­ma taught me.
    She wasn’t some namby-pamby
    who’d let her grand­son win
    to build his self-esteem.

    Nah. –more

  • Michael Salcman ~ Poems

    IT’S ONLYQUEEN-SIZED BED

    It’s only a queen-sized bed and I’m sleep­ing on the right-hand ledge because you broke your wrist when you fell with your arm out­stretched on the con­crete skirt of our neighbor’s pool and it rests in a splint on a –more

  • Ora Alcorn ~ Poem Without Anesthesia

    I’m sor­ry if this poem hurts
    and here is a piece of ster­ile gauze

    to bite down on
    if it caus­es pain.

    You say, by email, that Miriam’s son
    came through his surgery fine

    though there were a few hours after that
    his pain meds did not kick in.

    He’s in –more

  • Andrew McLellan ~ Poems

    Spolia

    What remains for me: your books, war
    relics, and pho­to albums.

    With your books, you were quiet.
    Trawling their depths
    for under­lined pas­sages, marginalia,
    I found only the cold
    Victorian inscrip­tion from your father:

    Many of my sen­ti­ments are –more

  • Gary Fincke ~ The Wrath of God

    My cousin Sid Morrow told me he’d wok­en up, just yes­ter­day, from a dream that showed him how to get into a triple-locked box with­out ever open­ing it. To con­vince me, Sid said that he’d bought a crate, locked it, tied rope –more

  • Martha Highers ~ Two Poems

    They taught me the col­ors of the enemy

    They taught me the col­ors of the enemy.
    On a map they are red, and we are black.
    Our uni­forms, of course, were camouflaged,
    some­times the mixed col­ors of a forest,
    some­times the mixed col­ors –more

  • Bryan D. Price ~ Five fragments from Dystopian Summer

    24.

    The world has gone dark. No one reach­ing out to me from out­side the sphere or the great beyond. Just silence. I check the anten­nae and satel­lites. I check all the wires. Everything seems more or less in line with how it –more

  • Michael Lauchlan ~ Five Poems

    Poem Following a Line from Philip Larkin

    On the day of the explo­sion, cows
    kept chew­ing and we went to work,
    cough­ing out dis­may in pro­sa­ic bursts
    and scrolling news, weigh­ing the chance
    of an ear­ly win­ter. On the morn­ing
    –more

  • Pavle Radonić ~ Solo

    Six hours alto­geth­er. Rp300k taxi fare; 10k was return on the train.

    We had cho­sen the date bad­ly. Muslim New Year and a long week­end meant a queue at the sta­tion tick­et-office, seats sold out. The stand­ing option was declined; –more

  • David Gilbert ~ The Singed Hair of the Commentariat 

    1. More Days Than Nights

     Tiresias sits alone chew­ing gum like Lolita. Her dog, Little St. James, sleeps on her lap. Even though her implants are hurt­ing, she sol­diers on and will tease the dis­as­ter out of the moment.  The oth­er pas­sen­gers have –more

  • Lynn Mundell ~ Beautiful Things

    Treasures

    You are eight when on a vis­it to your father’s aunt you see beau­ti­ful things. Great Aunt lives alone in a tiny red cab­in on the edge of a small town. Before her hus­band died, he built shelves through­out to dis­play –more

  • Michael Credico ~ Bulk

    We would come to blows we got so bored. On bulk pick­up day, we rum­maged the tree lawns and the alleys. We plucked a water­logged gui­tar. It had two rust­ed strings that broke. We snapped them against our wrists until we broke –more

  • Soramimi Hanarejima ~ The Validation of Social Bathing

    1

    Outside the kitchen win­dow, the wind is whip­ping, jostling the tree branch­es with a vig­or I havent seen for a while. So of course I have to stop wash­ing the dish­es and dri­ve to the hill­top park.

    Standing on the grassy peak, I avail –more

  • Glen Pourciau ~ Two Stories

    Roundabout

    Mike looks at me like I make him sick. I may have done some­thing to make him mad, but I can’t remem­ber what. Maybe I did and maybe I didn’t, or maybe he wants me to believe I deserve to be scorned with his eyes. –more

  • Francine Witte ~ Niblets

    In the Price Chopper, and I am about to grab a can of Niblets, quick Thursday din­ner, when Dow, who is teach­ing Bio this semes­ter, sneaks up behind me. There is all kinds of Phil Collins around us in the air, and Dow is his usu­al sweat on his upper –more

  • SE Wilson ~ Hot Air

    A trop­i­cal storm had formed some­where off the coast and was fore­cast­ed to turn into a hur­ri­cane, so we cut our vaca­tion short and drove home in silence. My wife Kate caught me hav­ing eyes for oth­er women at the beach. I had for­got­ten my –more

  • Steve Gergley ~ Two Stories

    Hats

    I got fired from my job at CVS for steal­ing Prilosec OTC to alle­vi­ate the hor­ren­dous side-effects of my chron­ic GERD, so I start­ed buy­ing nov­el­ty base­ball hats from China and sell­ing them on the side­walk in front of my apart­ment build­ing. My girl­friend –more

  • NWWQ ~ JULY 2024

    July 2024 sub­mis­sions close 7/14/24. We will next accept sub­mis­sions October 1–14, 2024. We do not accept sub­mis­sions between issues. Thanks to all who sub­mit­ted to this issue and spe­cial thanks to our Senior edi­tors –more