New World Writing Quarterly

Carol brought the baby home and put him in the bassinet, then sat on the edge of the bed star­ing at him. He slept peace­ful­ly while she toyed with a loose thread on the flo­ral quilt. She was young, but not fool­ish, and she, along with her hus­band, Dan, –more

We were half way through the sec­ond course before she men­tioned it. Quite in pass­ing. Not that she came out and said it direct­ly. Just in pass­ing as if it was some­thing I already knew. Something like oh my hus­band would have done such and such or my –more

Like a Tranquil Island

Of course I ran out of time, just barely
begun before I had to board, right as
I dis­cov­ered at last the best part of
the city, the place where the artists were
thriv­ing, paint­ing their win­dow frames pur­ple,
–more

It’s my nine­teenth birth­day and I’m swim­ming with ten friends in a quar­ry when this old man with a big beard comes charg­ing across the lawn. He’s one of those tall guys who makes him­self seem taller by walk­ing stooped, like he’ll become gigan­tic –more

THE HEART IS A JUNK DRAWER

Each sec­ond can be a new begin­ning. Let’s crawl into the back seat and make rough sense to each oth­er. Read epis­to­lary love nar­ra­tives by the oven light. Tell you my sto­ry using let­ters? Sounds like every sto­ry to me.

I haunt –more

He mea­sured life in years and fifty-two had gone. Sometimes he thought, on a dif­fer­ent scale, one dri­ven by a num­ber that val­ued rich­ness and ful­fill­ment, but that num­ber was too low for his lik­ing. He had done lit­tle worth remem­ber­ing, and since it –more

We are pleased to announce that effec­tive imme­di­ate­ly, writer Tamara Grisanti will be tak­ing over all NWW social media activ­i­ty, chiefly on Facebook and Twitter. As a for­mer and future con­trib­u­tor, we are delight­ed to have her with us going forward.

The White Sheet

The dead come to me vul­ner­a­ble, shar­ing their sto­ries and secrets. Here is my scar. Touch it. Here is the roll of fat I always hid under that big sweater, and now you see. This is the per­son I’ve kept pri­vate, afraid of what peo­ple –more

Mattie clutched her bag. She clutched her bag so hard her arms tensed and ached. Her bag was a sea foam green that she want­ed to squeeze the col­or out of. The pain in her arms from the squeez­ing didn’t com­pare to the ache, the throb in her temples.

She –more

I was meet­ing the man who pre­vi­ous­ly owned the house I now called home. After mov­ing out of the house, almost imme­di­ate­ly, his wife died of a brain aneurysm. His chil­dren were now grown and at col­leges on dif­fer­ent coasts. It had been a few years. –more

Drop City

It was the mid­dle of the night, or it wasn’t. Do you remem­ber how that works? Now, the psy­choac­tive drugs por­trayed on each new series seem to be about mad­ness, as if that were an end to every­thing. But you remem­ber the day when we wad­ed into the –more

I need to speak out about death and humanity,
don’t I? The world ends in three hours. All
I have is you, a limp car­rot, and a change bucket
on the kitchen counter. The flesh on my elbow
is ragged and hood­ed. I can almost pull –more

Leslie squint­ed at the menu and willed her stom­ach to coöper­ate. She’d done her reg­u­lar half hour on the stair mas­ter, and sat in the steam room for a good 20 min­utes. That had always worked before to sweat out a hang­over. Maybe she was get­ting old. –more

In the Carl’s Jr. park­ing lot across the street, two teenage boys in hang­ing-open red Carl’s Jr. shirts were argu­ing with a square woman who was stand­ing in the dri­ve-through lane. Parked at the pick-up win­dow was a dingy white mini­van with a punched-out –more

I woke up miss­ing my big toe, my hair in a mul­let, and with a half-eat­en donut on the bed­side com­mode. A shep­herd preached in the court­yard and the witch had parked her broom in the mid­dle of the dri­ve. Some kids were smack­ing each oth­er sil­ly with –more

One of the men men­tions buoy­an­cy, and that’s when I know: they’re talk­ing about me.

I had sus­pect­ed. This is our third day in the same hotel, the third day I’ve ven­tured down to the pool in ear­ly evening to catch what gold remained from –more

        in mem­o­ry of José Saramago

I don’t remem­ber when I stopped being able to hear. That makes it worse. There’s no moment I can hold up and point to and say Look. It hap­pened to me also.

I know the day that it hap­pened, I do. When the whole –more

Jethrob Macromanni’s only real friend was a name­less horse. He would take the horse on long walks to the town lake and that was nor­mal. He would also ride the horse to and from the bar—because of that the horse had a rep­u­ta­tion around town.

Jethrob –more

Nell hung up the phone and turned to her sis­ter. “I need you to dri­ve me down there.”

“You still haven’t learned how to dri­ve?” Agnes had just come in from the storm. She had an umbrel­la, but she was still soak­ing wet.  “Where did they –more

I did too much for her, but Pnina emailed to say the lamps would be ten dol­lars for the pair and she had to have them.  Small, steel, bed­side lamps with cat-print shades.  Pnina had asked me to exe­cute the deal, because she wasn’t –more