New World Writing Quarterly

1. 77‑Y.O’s New [Perhaps Clichéd] Organizing Principle

Understanding
Life’s entropy
State
     After
Making trek
Higher up into
Age’s
      Himalayas
Where near air gets
–more

As a defen­sive mea­sure, Cullen had taped garbage bags to his win­dows. Black ones. Double lay­ered. He’d been awake since Tuesday. Hadn’t left the house since Friday.

He told me all this in a calm voice. Maybe a lit­tle amused –more

After the Plague

Dandelions rock­et­ed up
from side­walk cracks,
joy­ous, unrestrained,
seeds of sun­light in
fields of quiet.

And the fish multiplied
expo­nen­tial­ly, like
God promised in some
irra­tional book
of ancient fiction.

~

Encouragement

A mes­sage for the horse-faced boys and girls
–more

I missed the bus to Tapachula by 15 min­utes. There wouldn’t be anoth­er until the fol­low­ing morn­ing, the robot­ic woman at the tick­et counter told me. I was try­ing to cross before dark, remem­ber­ing the fright­en­ing scene at –more

I was just off my valet shift, 3 a.m., and I’d gone to a pan­cake house. This was in L.A., forty years ago. An old man land­ed in my booth, ka-thud.

He was one of the most famous movie actors of all time.

I didn’t –more

A boy loved a girl, and when he could no longer live with his secret, he reached into his chest and pulled out his heart. The task wasn’t easy, the crack of bone, the cleav­ing of meat and ten­dons. The heart lay in his hands, –more

EVERY ANIMAL

It’s a zoo with­out obvi­ous cages, the ani­mals run­ning wild. People warned to stay in their cars, keep the win­dows up. But the lions are sleepy – one falls like a sack in the grass. It’s the ante­lope who watch us through –more

Load

On a brisk, windy Friday night I’m stand­ing out­side a resort hotel’s entrance where Betsy and I have just had din­ner, wait­ing for the valet to bring our car around, Betsy inside away from the wind, all three lanes jammed –more

NWWQ invites sub­mis­sions in the first two weeks of Jan, April, July and October and pub­lish­es in those same months.

Many thanks to all who sub­mit­ted to the October issue.

We watch some­thing burn until we notice it’s our apart­ment. It’s where we’ve been liv­ing for the past few hours. Fortunately that means most of our stuff is still boxed up in the truck. No skin off our backs. We’re out on the sidewalk.

–more

To break down is what we’re designed for. Lungs, lan­guage, ele­va­tors. A per­son can only climb sev­en floors before they grow old, before extinc­tion, and it’s me they call. Shaman, doc­tor, repair man. An ele­va­tor is a machine –more

Randall Morgan pre­ferred to sit in the back row, whether it be
in air­planes, cars, even the mega-whop­per-dare­dev­il roller coast­er at the
Little Heaven amuse­ment park.  He was a cool play­er, didn’t say much,
–more

Truck Stop

We were dri­ving across coun­try back to Denver and lost Odie’s leash. He need­ed to go for a walk and was young then and would run off. I pulled over at a Love’s Truck Stop in the mid­dle of nowhere Kansas think­ing they might –more

We had spent many hours watch­ing peo­ple talk on the T.V.

Well, Joan said. So we drove back.

The hills were down to the earth. Each was a bare dirt heap, or a com­pli­cat­ed geo­log­i­cal jut.

The trees—which we had known and liked –more

MURMURATION OR BOONDOGGLE

The meat in the pool—
The rodent pecks the cat—
The cat bleeds the bird—
The bird drinks the dew—

We’ve all seen this episode before.
The cook­ie is red, the cook­ie is blue.

The meat is actu­al­ly bread.
The bread’s beet red.
Red –more

Rumor

If you speak of me, I’ll be sneez­ing. The devil
is spo­ken for, and so am I. Each gos­sip, each
rumor: if only it were true. Usually no one
cares enough about me to say any­thing, kind
or cru­el. Since I sneeze so many times in –more

English, cock­ney at that, the squadron of chil­dren are killers with their for­eign tongues. A new school for the American… At sev­en, she under­stands scarce­ly a word of what they say.

The man in the black suit is her father. –more

ANCHOR HOTEL

a four-sto­ry brick hotel
at 90 Alexander Street in Gastown,
the orig­i­nal settlement
and old­est part of the city,
close to the Port of Vancouver,
was built in 1905
to serve the itin­er­ant male pop­u­la­tions
–more

Went down the Colorado River, got out and camped along the way. A two-per­son tent for the group wasn’t large enough, so instead, we stored all our belong­ings inside the tent, elect­ing to sleep out under the stars. Our bod­ies –more

It was a slow day at the hotel. I kept check­ing my walkie-talkie to make sure it was on. I went down to the laun­dry room.

“What’s up Mr. Moneybags,” Olivia said. She thought it was fucked up I got tips for doing a job –more