New World Writing Quarterly

Children’s Game

I want­ed to write about our trip to Paris:
Seventy-two hours, with­out sleep — unless
you count pass­ing out in the Louvre,
against The Borghese Vase, until a guard
nudged us awake with the toe of his well-pol­ished
–more

I was prob­a­bly eleven when my father start­ed spin­ning plates. He’d been watch­ing The Ed Sullivan Show and in between Petula Clark and Sergio Franchi, there was a man, all tuxed-up, spin­ning fif­teen plates, five –more

I peer up and down the cere­al aisle at Piggly Wiggly to make sure I’m alone.  Then I lift down the oblong box of Corn Flakes and tuck its noisy con­tents deep inside the pock­et of my late husband’s trench coat.  –more

The first time you go to the hos­pi­tal, there is much to learn. I don’t mean how to knock the bub­bles out of your insulin syringe, although this is use­ful information.

I mean the def­i­n­i­tion of “grits,” a gig­gly noun that –more

Notes: Most peo­ple do not know how to tell the dif­fer­ence between the male and female robin. The female has a black head. Think of some­thing so black your foot might be sucked into its void, like oil or oily –more

 “…pre­tend you’re a bar­tender in the tav­ern of life. “ – James McBride, Guernica

I. Natural Causes

Accident, Suicide, and Murder walk into a bar. The bar­tender says: hey, you look famil­iar. Especially, you, ges­tur­ing at –more

Hogweed

His unbuck­ling of belt
Her buck­ling of knees
Buckles around my horse’s girth
His clever bloat
The slow slip of saddle
that some­times top­ples me
How easy I fall
to land in a field among
lace of –more

Ever since she left her hus­band, Kit has been rid­ing the train. She gets on at the sta­tion down the street from the one-bed­room she can’t real­ly afford, in the direc­tion of New York City. The train is already quite full –more

We wait­ed for the trains. The stolen match­es we struck burned out across the tracks. Our father packed sleeves of crack­ers in a plas­tic bag and told us to come home in the morn­ing. Mother was away again. This time, maybe Memphis. –more

They kept the cir­cum­stances of his dying to them­selves: what he said and what he did. The way the nurs­es looked at each oth­er. The way the anti­sep­tic air hung heavy in the room. Who was clos­est when they gath­ered in a cir­cle –more

He was hun­gry for news. It was cold and he was read­ing Wittgenstein. Wondering if a weed was a tree. If all hous­es were hous­es. If he, in fact, was him­self. Some peo­ple had been avoid­ing him. Refusing his entreaties. Leaving –more

Build

 “Where are they liv­ing now?” my mem­o­ry-impaired broth­er asked. “I’d like to get in touch with them.” Whenever I vis­it­ed Dave he talked about our par­ents. “Do you remem­ber being in that house? Do you remem­ber –more

The House Beneath the Highway

At 3:30 a.m., my wife and I wake up ful­ly clothed and clump into the walk-in show­er in the crawl­space. There we step over the bronze skele­ton on the floor and scarf our sog­gy break­fasts amid the –more

NWWQ January 2024 sub­mis­sions close 1/14/24. We will next accept sub­mis­sions April 1–14, 2024. We thank all who sub­mit­ted to this –more

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 –more

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 –more

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 –more

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, –more

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 –more

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 –more