New World Writing Quarterly

We’re pleased to pub­lish today a short fea­ture on Lori Ostlund, includ­ing a won­der­ful sto­ry and a short inter­view. Please look on the FEATURES page or just click here.

I just wish you didn’t feel the need

You are most­ly silent but when you do speak you take that tone with me.

My bones break eas­i­ly. You see me as frag­ile, watch where I walk, wrap my ankles in cot­ton when it rains. The doc­tor pulls my bones apart, bends my wrist back, push­es in a way –more

iPad users might see BLIP in the Onswipe mag­a­zine theme, spe­cial­ly set for tablets. We’re just try­ing it out at the moment so it gets turned on and off.

Opposite of Succubus?

The Asian girl was a graph­ic design­er. I stole her ideas when I could. She said she gave them to me. She had a thing about gifts. You couldn’t take any­thing from her. That was what frus­trat­ed me the most; she made every­thing I stole seem like a favor. –more

We’re look­ing for 100–200 word pieces of fic­tion, non­fic­tion, or oth­er, key ele­ment that they be inter­est­ing and not run-of-mill fare.  If inter­est­ed, send to us using this email link: Send me to BLIP at once!

Our fine staff of edi­tors will –more

Transparent Horse (I)

Equine anato­my fills the room,
a muz­zle at the edge of the rug,
its pastern between the coro­net and fetlock,
you are hap­py it is evening.
The can­non bone is spec­tac­u­lar and sharp,
and I hold the left one
to the light. –more

— unused fragment
It crossed my mind, this one’s view­point, but he has dry hands, bony wrists.
He drinks toma­to juice from a paper cup. I sip on my cof­fee, read this mag­a­zine from back to front.

–more

Ancient

“What’s the mat­ter with you?” she asks.
Years ago I had a lot of time and would answer such idi­ot­ic ques­tions.  She was thin then, and used mas­cara, blush.  Now everything’s loose and nat­ur­al and I don’t like it one bit.  Even the –more

Gri-Gri

Early in our asso­ci­a­tion, the Warrior Poet said, “I’m a war­rior poet.  Before I walk into a place, I look around to make sure I can kill every­one in the room with my bare hands.”

Now the Warrior Poet is dead.  Self-inflicted.

My father.  WWII.  U.S. Army, front­line infantry.  Battle of the Bulge.  Bronze Star.  Purple Heart.

Before he shoots him­self, he tries to take a cou­ple of peo­ple out with him.  My evil ex-step­moth­er, her cur­rent hus­band.  The bul­lets graze the hus­band, but miss the step­moth­er.  She hits the floor, plays dead, and prays and prays to her snow-globe Jesus, her cow face pressed against filthy carpet.

It came to him him that ten of his thir­ty face­book friends had breast can­cer and were run­ning run­ning races.
~
Margaret Benjamin is the author of “Turtles and Magic,” a chap­book. She lives with her part­ner in Fresno, California, where –more

Ended up in SF head­ed back to BART after mid­night — girls in their teens and twen­ties in tight shiny dress­es, high heels, make­up, care­ful­ly coiffed and sexy a few hours before but now stum­bling, hair­dos com­ing apart, dress seams split­ting on the heav­ier –more

Nurse Normal

“Nurse nor­mal,” the swain says every time the baby cries. “Like the cows do.”

Nurse nor­mal with the naïve genius of the squat.

Nurse the mere­ly dumb who can nei­ther mum­ble nor squeak.

Nurse the bland and faint who –more

Scott Wright: Impact trau­ma is a term that we use to dif­fer­en­ti­ate dif­fer­ent things that might have caused the birds to appear the way they do when we con­duct the necrop­sy, which is an autop­sy of ani­mals. And what we look for are spe­cif­ic –more

Please check the new poet­ry fea­ture with Kara Candito. Poems present­ly, an inter­view and video to come.

We have been alert­ed that some folk who wished to com­ment on var­i­ous pieces in the new issue were unable to com­ment because com­ments are closed. This is site pol­i­cy–we have nev­er inten­tion­al­ly encour­aged piece-by-piece com­ments. We –more