The sky chose to wear blue and the dog put on her boots and we went out walking. She sniffed the ground for scat as the sweet scent of lilacs wafted into her nostrils and mine. We walked down to the river running through the park. As geese paddled
He’s been on my back for three days. You’d think a shrunk
104 pounder wouldn’t be so heavy. But the Nevada desert
is brutal even in March and he wants to hit the Strip — should
be fun, an honor but he keeps steering me off the
.… MEDCAT. The Bar. Driver’s license knowledge test. Jeez! It’s like prepping for an exam. But can you prep for death with twenty parlor game questions? … Twenty Questions. You remember— oh, of course not. Well before your time.
Not much to see in Tascadora, Texas. Rough strip of road, two liquor stores, three churches. The Happy Harvest Grocery, its parking lot smooth as buttercream.
Tessa holes-up in her minivan next to the cart return cage. Red velvet is the cake of the
I. Friction
When they kick her and Ethan and baby Rose out of the hospital, Iris thinks how could they be so irresponsible? She has no idea how to care for a baby. Look at the fucked up way Ethan installed the car seat. First home, Rose vomits breast
Sonny and I are looking for floor mats for his car. Store after store, hundreds upon hundreds of mats. No luck. Finally, I take out a knife, tell him I’ll cut myself in two and Sonny can use me as a floor mat. We’ll star
Antibody
Where did this helicopter think it was headed? To a protest. Wildfire. High-speed pursuit. This is New Los Angeles. I almost wrote wildlife for wildfire. That’s where I’m headed, I think, soon.
For Dexys Midnight Runners
One day after school, on a sidewalk in Northern Kentucky, three hicks beat me up. Earlier, in the lunchroom, a cheerleader named Dawn asked me to smell a jar of Noxzema. When I bent to sniff, she
People took to us but whispered. We talked to everyone. No anxiety. Free. Clowns in a medieval play, reaching like new blooms in beat summer sun. We feigned opera in leather jackets, drank cranberry cordial from plastic cups. Cross-dressed at happy
Thanks to all who submitted. NWWQ will accept submissions again July 1–14, 2023. Special thanks to our Senior editors Elizabeth Wagner and Kim Chinquee for selecting much of the work published in this quarterly issue.
The red-haired Polish teacher, Kasia, stood up at the front of the room in chic white pants with the white chalk in her hands. Today we would talk about food, she said. Pomodory: tomatoes; ziemniaki: potatoes.
I knew my father would come for me eventually. But I’m determined not to let the nick-nick of lock picks shake me off the mid-century modern settee I bought on my own rather than accept his bequeathed oversized sofa. I set my jaw tight.
More than once, but only a few times,
I set an alarm for 5 a.m.
and blew off my high school essays
to watch TV. It rang
and I left my warm bed to shiver
at the desk in the living room window.
Nervous about finishing, no chance to revise,
I double-spaced
Too blustery and wet to go out, I sit down with a box of old photos. Here’s one of Aunt Esther in a spiffy hat with my brother Bob in 1940 or ’41 on the stoop of a house in Detroit where he was born, a couple of years before she gave birth to her
What is your form? Solid? Liquid? Gas?
Are you afraid of heights?
Have you ever left the atmosphere?
Can you keep yourself occupied in thought?
Are you able to take on a lifespan of a few hundred million years?
Do you want to explode
Weeks had only one Friday. Life was simpler as there was less to anticipate. The grass was no greener but had beautiful tints of deep blue. It did not snow often but when it did some were awed by its silence. The shadows of the day were the ordinary
For Troy, Brian, Alexandria, Arielle, Guadalupe, John, Nate and X
The flower pod hung
low and heavy,
a gorgeous appendage
dangling
two feet below
the bunch.
If left to nature,
it would ooze
its latex, clear at first,
then crimson
The lawn chairs rose in the air as if the Rapture was leaving the righteous behind. When the townsfolk saw their pastor in a chair, they wondered why they were standing in their backyards. They shouted for an explanation but
I sat with a poet I loved like a father, reading poems. They were my poems, and I wanted to know what to do. Let me say this kind of dream has never come to me before. I passed manuscript pages to the poet I loved like a father, and he passed them
On a very sad night—sad because Donna leaves early the next morning and that is exactly the kind of thing I’ve become less and less able to bear with any grace—I sit hunched forward in the recliner in the guest room