New World Writing Quarterly

John Cheever’s Cameo in The Swimmer (29:33–29:39)

Incognito at the pool­side party,
the gin-soaked wreck steps for­ward to greet you,
his hearty and hale son. A dry kiss
on your date’s cheek is all the frag­ile fool
can man­age before you steer her away to chase
more sun –more

The women who took shifts car­ing for Margaret wore tulip-pink scrubs, cardi­gans, and round-toed shoes that squeaked on the pol­ished floors beyond her room.

“How are you today Mrs.—” they asked, glanc­ing at the white board.

Margaret could see her –more

I was on my way to the office one morn­ing, walk­ing up August Avenue, wear­ing my gray suit cut so nar­row I had to take short steps. With my pais­ley silk scarf tied in a bow, I sup­pose I looked like any oth­er bank man­ag­er in the city. I –more

Sometimes these days when I first awake, when the room is still dark and shad­owy, I find I do not always know where I am. I try not to let this both­er me. The home is still new, my lit­tle cell here is new. Not remem­ber­ing –more

Fall

In the kitchen some­time before sev­en in the morn­ing, after wak­ing before sun­rise to the fig­ure of his three-year-old-daugh­ter, their youngest daugh­ter, pulling him out of bed by grab­bing his arm and say­ing, pull, pull, pull, –more

NWW will be open for sub­mis­sions July 1–14. Please see our sub­mis­sions link above for details.

Dear Readers and Writers:

Effective today New World Writing becomes an online quar­ter­ly. We will be pub­lish­ing four issues year­ly, accept­ing sub­mis­sions in the first –more

Born to a Syrian father and a Russian moth­er in St. Petersburg, Russia, Elina Katrin cur­rent­ly resides in Appalachia. She holds an MFA in Creative Writing from Hollins University, and her poet­ry has appeared or is forth­com­ing in –more

I once con­sumed 33 turkey legs in an evening. I was an extra, one of the flesh-eat­ing zom­bies, in the 1968 ver­sion of Night of the Living Dead. The cam­era pans in from a hill­side and there I am, gnaw­ing on what is sup­pos­ed­ly a human limb. Throughout –more

LiLi Fre on Tears

She doesn’t care the man she turned down for
being so self absorbed is now famous.
What she remem­bers is he brought himself
to tears, think­ing if he cried, she’d give in.
He chased her hair and ass and the little
scar –more

In the last moments before wak­ing, Keli was a tour guide at a sheep-shear­ing plant. During a shear­ing demon­stra­tion for sev­er­al fam­i­lies, the adults broke away to tin­ker with a row of rust­ed back­hoes. Keli knew she’d get –more

I had just arrived in Manhattan and was still wary of the sub­way, espe­cial­ly ones that scur­ried under­ground beneath myth­ic neigh­bor­hoods that I didn’t know, couldn’t imag­ine; I wasn’t only new in town, but had nev­er –more

So the oli­garchs want their own space race? The old, when young, were actu­al pio­neers. They came from every­where to set­tle new land and some­times they got lost. My own great- grand­par­ents once plant­ed the American flag on –more

I looked into the sun that came through the glass door of the Beauty House and did not think about any truth while I wait­ed for my grandmother’s perm to set. No one made small talk with me in the plas­tic wait­ing chairs. –more

Tuesday you’re the girl who was raped and stabbed and stuffed into trash bags with­in eye­shot of two exec­u­tive high ris­es on the Upper West Side. The trash bags will lead Briscoe and Green to a sus­pect, a parks employ­ee whose –more

Uncle Biff ordered
five five-gal­lon buckets
of slime
and a sack of rainbow
cap­sules from a Chinese
cat­a­log. A rack
of quar­ter machines were dumped
in the creek behind
Bowl-a-Rama.

“Bernie says I can post
them up in the vestibule,”
goes –more

Throw in a woman. Throw in a man. Throw in a broke­down Chevy. Throw in a body in the trunk.

Throw in a gas sta­tion. Bramble and brush. Hopper pumps and rat­tlesnake shiver.

Throw in the hot armpit sun.

Throw in the woman’s hus­band, –more

Finally, after I got my offi­cial dri­vers license and could dri­ve at night, my friend Randall Meeks’s father hired me out to tough­en his son, or at least get the boy inter­est­ed in some­thing oth­er than musi­cal the­atre. –more

The Incident

The neigh­bor­hood seems most­ly safe, although
at night one can often hear a lot of gunshots.
At least there hasn’t been a dri­ve-by shoot­ing today,
no police cor­don­ing off the block, ask­ing all
the neigh­bors what they saw and –more

Ethel’s Pot Belly

A beguil­ing, hat-wear­ing woman of forty, Ethel once liked the way she could appear skin­ny or roly-poly to oth­er women, depend­ing on how hos­tile they seemed. The slope of Ethel’s pot bel­ly was so flex­i­ble –more