New World Writing Quarterly

Soon

I didn’t say any­thing to Naomi about the old man at the restau­rant. I was in town for a con­fer­ence, telling myself the usu­al lies. That this soli­tary meal was not lone­ly or bor­ing, but a valu­able exer­cise in mindfulness.

The –more

1. Heavy Cream

I decide to mem­o­rize one new word from the dic­tio­nary each day, so I sit in the cen­ter of the liv­ing room and stare at the heavy book in my lap. Gunshots and train whis­tles burst from the tele­vi­sion behind me. Insectoid let­ters –more

My Problems

are so much more intriguing
than your problems.
My prob­lems have heft,
(although heft is not one
of my prob­lems thank God,
my genes, and my fine
metab­o­lism). Your problems
are a clus­ter of lofty –more

became –more

A young Christian cou­ple sell­ing pie slices. As you approached their table, the woman swept away a lit­tle card­board tent, one that you were pret­ty sure said $3, tucked it behind her back, stood up straight next to the young –more

Marcus swipes right. Thumb against crys­tal, that pres­sure. He’s look­ing for a woman. He’s fast. He clicks, he winks, he sends.

The bus stops at a light. No one looks up. Only the dri­ver looks, because she is for­bid­den to use her phone.

–more

On the cor­ner adja­cent stood the bank, the super­mar­ket diag­o­nal­ly oppo­site and bus stops the oth­er side of the street. The planned new shop­ping precinct where Forges had been since Federation had stalled well before –more

The young Shakespearean lived in a shot­gun house near the small town’s oak and cypress shad­ed lake, not far from the cam­pus where he taught.  He was excit­ed to host the vis­it­ing writer for an eru­dite evening of cock­tails.  –more

                                                                                    ‘Blow some my way’ – Chesterfield

Do you smoke Kools?

‘For –more

NWWQ April 2024 sub­mis­sions close 4/14/24. We will next accept sub­mis­sions July 1–14, 2024. Note that we do not accept sub­mis­sions between issues. We thank all who sub­mit­ted to this –more

The clown sang from a kitchen chair she moved in front of our piti­ful water­fall, a rivulet, not a riv­er, and shoved air into her accor­dion in whin­ing accom­pa­ni­ment. O‑ee, she sang, or some­thing in French, her not-native lan­guage but one she affect­ed –more

Before the Mojave, when the uni­form peo­ple came to take Mom and Dad away, we lived in a dif­fer­ent kind of desert—still in the California no one thinks about when they think of California. Everyone called this desert SB, –more

There’s a girl out walk­ing her dog. I’m out walk­ing myself. I live in the sub­urbs at the foot of the San Gabriels. I don’t rec­og­nize her. She’s not one of the usu­als. I don’t see many peo­ple when I walk. She’s –more

When I moved back home I had noth­ing to do, nobody to see, nowhere to go. In the apart­ment over mine some­one vac­u­umed at night. At first I thought it was an insect that lived between the floors, but there was no sense in that, –more

(A short sto­ry suite)

1. Except for Love

When I WhatsApped my moth­er ear­li­er today, she did some­thing she hadn’t done for years, ever since the onset of her demen­tia. She was try­ing to recite a poem. This poem was old­er than even her nine­ty-three –more

The last time they’d inves­ti­gat­ed one of these it had end­ed well enough, the offi­cers dis­cov­er­ing that the elder­ly occu­pant wasn’t dead at all but instead had run off to a bun­co tour­na­ment with a hair­dress­er –more

Cannon Fire

My father’s wise words swung through the air like claw ham­mers hop­ing they might find a nail, might build some­thing. I kept out of the way of all that star­tled air, always hop­ing for “miss­es.”  My mother’s –more

In 1848, when gold was dis­cov­ered at
Sutter’s Mill in the foothills of the Sierra
Nevada, that fact attract­ed thousands
seek­ing to sep­a­rate min­ers from their
nuggets: a more cere­bral type of sifting.

Petite Eleanore Dumont, whose origins
are –more

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