The WWS members included in this post published their work in amazing places during September 2023. I’ve included an excerpt from published pieces (if available), along with a link (if available) to where the pieces can be purchased and/or read in their entirety.
Please join me in celebrating our members who published in September 2023!
Congratulations to Desiree Kannel, whose flash “Toast” appeared in *83 Review.
Jackson drops slices of white bread into each of the slots. He checks the dial to make sure it is pointed to medium before pressing the lever down. The toaster’s coils glow red, and he hovers his hand over the toaster’s top and waits for the heated air to rise.
On the inside, the bread, when they got it, was cold, soft, and limp. A bite would dissolve like paste inside his mouth.
Congrats also to Sara Ellen Fowler, whose poem “Black Licorice” appeared in Gigantic Sequins.
Kudos to Sophie Hamel, whose short story “Treasure” appeared in The Summerset Review.
It all started with a call. A proclamation, “I found something,” echoing off the millennia-old stone walls of the dig. CĂ©line had put me in charge of the other archaeology students, while she went to the supermarket, and I wished she’d be back already. This Gallo-Roman staging post was so different from anything I ever excavated. There were stone walls, reassuring in the certainty we’d find them if we dug in the right place, but also deep, endless backfills to empty that required days of heavy labor with pickaxes to get to the occupation levels. Three weeks in, undergrad students with pickaxes in their hands and little to no field experience still stressed me out. There was something counter-intuitive about the process of getting rid of a section of the ground instead of meticulously inspecting it. I was used to prehistoric digs using more sensible instruments like trowels and sieves, not this grueling work of demolition by half-naked people—I’m sorry, bathing suit tops and shorts do not make for a full set of working clothes, even in the South of France in the crest of a summer heatwave. And no, flip flops do not count, Sabine, please put your sneakers on. I know you’ll still lose a toe if you land this pickaxe on it, but closed shoes when you are using it, that’s the rule, remember?
A shout out to Lisa Eve Cheby, whose poems “Dysfunction” and “Mom’s Martini Shot” appeared in TAB: The Journal of Poetry and Poetics. “Dysfunction” is a short jewel of a poem, so please read it in full in the journal. Unfortunately, I’m unable to recreate the inventive spacing and layout of “Mom’s Martini Shot,” so please also read this poem in its entirety in the journal to experience its full effect. To give you a taste of it, though, here’s an excerpt:
I load the trunk with a day’s supply of air. Break down the day into scenes:
from the chair to the door from the door to the car from the car to the bench
by the automatic door where she rests as I park from the bench to reception she grips
the desk, catches her breath from the desk to the chapel-