New World Writing Quarterly

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 –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

I fold orange con­struc­tion paper along the lines the teacher drew in Sharpie. My son beside me—six, gap-toothed, entire­ly absorbed—creases his own with unsteady fin­gers, his tongue pok­ing from the cor­ner of his mouth like –more

My old­er broth­er Clay had come to vis­it me in Georgia for my 66th birth­day, but our plans were inter­rupt­ed when a neigh­bor need­ed a ride to the emer­gency room. I couldn’t say no, of course, so we turned off the pre-game analy­sis for an NBA finals –more

Be qui­et and let the poem (unlike life) end on together—Mark Halliday

After mid­night at the Hy-Vee
on First Avenue, sum­mer ‘75,
my moth­er and I, dis­guised as shoppers,
peo­ple-watch the round man in the –more

Phone Call with Mei, Age 85

How did he look? I asked. He seemed skin­nier, she said. People look thin­ner in the cas­ket, I said. And they put so much make­up on him, she said, I don’t like see­ing rouge on the corpse. Me nei­ther, I said. So how was the –more

declut­ter­ing your home –more

Congratulations to Pamela Painter (“When Flashers Meet”) and Nora Wagner (“A Sky Full of Clouds”) whose NWWQ sto­ries have been cho­sen for the Wigleaf Top 50.

Congratulations also to George Singleton (“ –more

Open for sub­mis­sions 4/1/25 — 4/15/25

Western

The hori­zon backs up
the landscape
is full of real estate.
The light is bright
then goes out
alto­geth­er.  Roundup—

it’s time to consolidate.
Trot and gallop
then sag.  Straighten out
in order to circulate.
Red hills pop up
in baby blue air.

The –more

After Math

Were we ever the alge­bra­ic equa­tion we thought we were. Symmetric at each step. A mar­riage of tuxe­do, satin dress. Matched as brack­ets. As paren­the­ses of veil, lapels, clasped hands. A math­e­mat­i­cal cer­tain­ty. At least a par­a­digm for cer­tain­ty. The –more

Matteus told me he believed the dog was stolen. One moment it was with him out­side the cor­ner gro­cery on Mission, on the side­walk where he spends his days wait­ing to see Camila, the next, gone. I’m a store reg­u­lar. I know –more

Delores woke to a wheez­ing sound, float­ing up from the heat­ing vent, a sound sim­i­lar to what she heard when her daugh­ter still lived in the bed­room below and thought no one could hear her cry. Now away at col­lege, Tillie was –more