Category: Uncategorized

October has shaped up to be one of the busiest months for WWS publications! Congratulations to all the women who were published in October.

From Ryane Nicole Granados‘ “Home-Schooling Away from Home” at LA Parent:

Picture a child working on lessons at the kitchen table and you’ve pictured just a tiny sliver of the home-schooling landscape in SoCal.

From “Mimesis” by Maylin Tu at Exposition Review:

I have decided to become my father, to put on his body like a second skin.

I practice rolling my head back and forth around on my neck, like a bobblehead. I put my hands on my hips and shake one finger up and down in front of me. My face tightens into an exaggerated grimace as my finger picks up speed.

From Laura Warrell‘s “I Gave Up on Love, and It Was One of the Best Decisions I Ever Made” at Huffington Post:

At the end of our date in August 2018, Justin escorted me to my car, where he nervously kissed me. When I kissed him back, he cheered, pumping his fists in the air like he’d won something. I walked from the curb to my car, and when I turned around, he was watching me, beaming.

From “documents of light” by Helena Lipstadt at About Place Journal:

when the knock comes on the door
what do we take with us?

do we carry everything in one thin suitcase?
are we walking are we running?

From “The Coyotes of India Street” by Whitney Easton at Animal:

I wake to the sound of yipping in the night. Yipping turns to howling and a chorus of coyote song ensues, echoing throughout the ravine below. My chihuahua perks his ears to stand guard. The pitch and frequency intensify as more join in.

From Mia Nakaji Monnier “What My Name Says about Who I Am” at Zora:

I became Mia Nakaji Monnier in college. I didn’t change my name so much as reveal more of it. While I’d always gone by Mia Monnier before then, the rest of my name appeared on all of my official documents: Mia Gabrielle Nakaji Monnier, a combination of Japanese and French, reflecting both of my parents. In college, I learned that my face alone rarely said enough about who I was.

From Lisbeth Coiman‘s “De Mujer a Mujer” at Lady/Liberty/Lit:

To Venezuela.

Mujer, I talk to you without hair on my tongue
As clear as this blue sky over our heads
Here is a mojito
Take a sip
I don’t have a drawer inside to hold unspoken truths

From “Prayer for a Sunday Morning” by Deborah Edler Brown at Pittsburgh Post-Gazette:

Divine wisdom,
Please show me how

To breathe
When the smell of hatred
Is hot and dank against my cheek

From Lindsey Skillen‘s “Labor Day” at Cosmonauts Avenue:

I’m not the kind of woman who would participate in a threesome, which is exactly why I went. I’m lately trying to be a different sort of woman—one who can pull off an edgy haircut. A sort of Brooklyn-blonde pageboy kind of haircut. I’m Jean Seberg from Breathless in my mind.

From “We are our own Multitude: Los Angeles’ Black Panamanian Community” by Jenise Miller at Boom California:

On a Saturday morning in late October, public workers in downtown Los Angeles block off the stretch of Broadway from Olympic Boulevard to Hill Street. Around 10 am, a crowd gathers, donned in blue and red garments, shirts embroidered with mola, white polleras with bright-colored pom-poms, or Panama flags draped across their backs, to celebrate the Annual Panamanian Independence Day Parade. 

From “An Immigrant Mom’s Push for Understanding” by Tanya Ko Hong at LA Parent:

My children bring magic into my life. However, there is no map to navigate being a parent in a multicultural society, especially when you are an immigrant parent.

Congratulations to Diana Love for having two poems published at Kelp Journal! From “Thrown Back in the Surf:”

Before the sense of self
there must be some surroundings.
In my green blue days of youth
the Valley was a smog-wrapped bubble,
a satellite apart, a cushion-edged suburban haze

Congratulations to Peggy Dobreer for having her poetry published in Aeolian Harp Series, Vo. 5!

Congratulations to Désirée Zamorano whose story “Bobby’s Leave 1968” was published in ¡PA’QUE TU LO SEPAS! edited by Angel Luis Colón!

Congratulations to Liz Harmer whose story, “Decisive Action,” was published at PRISM International!

The leaves are turning as the writers from Women Who Submit continue to get their words into the world. Congratulations to all the women who were published in September!

From Erika Schikel‘s review of Patti Smith’s memoir Year of the Monkey at Book & Film Globe:

It begins on the first morning of 2016, at the Dream Inn in Santa Cruz. Patti has just played a gig at the Fillmore, celebrated her birthday, and visited Sandy, a lifelong friend who has suffered a brain aneurysm and lies unconscious in the hospital. She wanders outside the motel and takes a Polaroid of its googie sign and says to it, “Thanks, Dream Motel.”

From Ja’net Danielo‘s “The Fact of Things” at Frontier Poetry:

I am staring out the bus
window, watching
trees spin green
down a suburban
street. I am looking
for poetry in the blur
of leaves, in the lavender-
blue smear of jacarandas,
which is to say, I am
trying to hold something
without touching it

From “Venus” by Lituo Huang at goodbaad:

I am hungry for you, brown girl.
Spider-like you crawl,
your eyes are milk.
Do not gaze upward with your mouth
open, red.

Also from Lituo, “I Knew a Cat Once” at Recenter Press:

I knew a cat once.
Kitten-yellow
eyes it had.
Egg yolks against the edge of its tongue
purled with hooks
split and released daylight
onto a cooling plate.

From “I Do Not Know Where the Children Are” by Désirée Zamorano at the Los Angeles Review of Books:

I do not know where the children are. I do not know where their parents are. I do not know how our government supports this horror. I do not know what I can do.

Also from Désirée , “Angel Luis Colon: On Writing Violence” at CrimeReads:

My first loves were horror and literary fiction. Being a kid from the Bronx it never really struck me that you could write about the Bronx. I don’t know why; I imagine because when things are too close to home you just don’t see them from that perspective. When I really discovered the newer wave of crime fiction in the last ten years, I got exposed to that from places like Beat to a Pulp, Needle Magazine. So it’s kind of funny to realize, oh, people like this? I can write stories about this?

From Margo McCall‘s “Riverbed” at Pomona Valley Review:

Carrie’s last client of the day was a surprise, although she already sensed that
after a few more weeks in this job, nothing would surprise her. As she viewed the
latest personification of human need slumped in the worn chair beyond her desk,
she saw a guy her own age—and not bad looking either.

Congratulations to Jenise Miller who had two poems published at Cultural Weekly! From “Dolphins:”

Yolanda “Yo-Yo”
Whitaker whipped crimped,
blonde braids and bragged
the earrings I wear are called dolphins
and I became bigger

From Tisha Marie Reichle-Aguilera‘s “Swirling Debris” at Citron Review:

She stands on the corner, only one young man next to her.
His headphone bass vibrates the air.
The signal changes to walk.

Congratulations to Helena Lipstadt whose poem, “Everybody Knows” was published at Free State Review!

Congratulations to Lindsey Skillen whose story, “Labor Day,” was published at Cosmonauts Review!

Congratulations to Colette Sartor whose story collection, Once Removed, debuted this season!

Congratulations to Desiree Kannel whose story, “Running Man” was published in Running Wild Press’ Anthology of Stories!

The Blitz is a nationwide virtual celebration of Women Who Submit’s work. It’s a day when we invite women and non-binary writers to submit to at least one Tier 1 journal. The idea is to have a coordinated effort on one day in which the slush piles of Tier 1 journals get flooded with submission by underrepresented writers. Anyone can join from anywhere!

What is a Tier 1 journal, you may ask? While the title *can* be a little subjective, and the definitions can be slippery, in general, Tier 1 means the journal pays its contributors, has a wide distribution, often features writing that gets nominated for awards, holds contests, and is widely known. We have more information about submitting to Tier 1 here in this blog post written by Xochitl-Julisa Bermejo.

Continue reading “Reportback from the sixth annual Submission Blitz”

The summer has come to an end but that hasn’t stopped Women Who Submit writers from getting their words into the world! Congrats to everyone who had work published in August.

From Xochitl-Julisa Bermejo‘s “Ghost Interview with a Soldier in the Peach Orchard” at Rivard Report:

Gettysburg National Military Park

In your final moments, whom did you think of?
Was this someone waiting for you to return? 
I worry I will never find that someone waiting

behind a thick front door of a home we made together. 

From Désirée Zamorano‘s “Memento Mori: On Angel Luis Colón’s ‘Hell Chose Me‘” at Los Angeles Review of Books:

Set in contemporary Bronx, moving between the past and the present, it’s a tense and intriguing thrill ride. Sure, we’ve met mordant, conflicted assassins before, like Lawrence Block’s Keller, Barry Eisler’s John Rain, or Bill Hader’s Barry. In Colón’s hands, Walsh hits familiar notes, but in a key all his own…

From Kate Maruyama‘s “Traces” at Magnolia Review:

Seven months after we lost our father to cancer, we were meeting again, Roger, Janey and I, to sort through the arrangements for our mother’s funeral. Who loses both of their parents so close together? Who loses both of their parents so young? I thought they’d at least be around to see a grandkid or two.

From an interview with Carla Sameth about her debut memoir One Day on the Gold Line at Points:

I think that writing as a family member of those struggling with drug and alcohol addiction (both my wife and son are in recovery) provides a unique perspective. I write a lot about the process I went through understanding addiction as a disease, and looking at my own shit (including addictive behavior) and how I interacted with my son who struggled with alcohol and drug addiction in his teens.

Read an excerpt of Carla‘s memoir at Angels Flight Literary West!

From Danielle Mitchell‘s “Not Wolf” at Poets Reading the News:

Not red, not Mexican, not lowland.
                      No bonnet, no white-tailed, bighorn.

Forget black foot, leave the beach
                      the brow-antlered, San Joaquin, San

Miguel, no woodland, no salt marsh.

From “Visit to Makon” by Bo Hwang at wildness:

After a winter of droughts, my childhood friend—my only kind of sweetheart—moves back to Makon. The city we grew up in; the city we all left. She’s there now, in a house with twelve women, only one her age, a high school teacher from another island, the rest are medical students.

“Seven balconies,” she boasts. “You can see the hospital.”

From Liz Harmer‘s “Right to Grapple” at the Malahat Review:

Let me give you an idea of the sorts of discussions we get into here. On the first Sunday afternoon, just after the little blue VW bug scraped out of here on the gravel road with my mom inside it, I managed to get into an argument about rocks. I was standing near this old tetherball post with my three sacks—my backpack, my rolled-up sleeping bag, and my garbage bag full of clothes—waiting for one of the H______s to escort me to my cabin and halfheartedly hitting the ball. Blam. Blam. Blam in one direction, blam in the other. Then this guy whose real name I cannot reveal comes up to me. 

From Cori Bratby-Rudd‘s “Puppyelectric” at Nailed:

I want Indian food, urgently, intensely, the cream of the tikka masala, the flaked fluffed naan, and so I order it because I remember desperation and I refuse to feel it again. I don’t just order it, I order it delivered and I feel something like royalty, for wanting something and then for having it. Strange to want and then get, as though desires can actually happen for someone like me.

From Li Yun Alvarado‘s “Poe Park” at Aster(ix) Journal:

From this cottage,
where he heard
his young cousin
bride, Virginia

Congratulations to Tanya Ko Hong whose poem, “The Crying Game” was published at Birds Fall Silent in the Mechanical Sea!

Congratulations to Amanda L. Andrei whose script, Waiting for a Birthday, was published in The First Five Years Anthology from Thinking in Full Color!

July has been one of the most prolific months for WWS writers with a long list of publications. Congrats to all!

Congratulations to Carla Sameth whose memoir, One Day on the Gold Line, was released this July! Check out this interview of Carla in LitFest Pasadena!

From “I Bow to the Lessor Teacher” by Thea Pueschel at Medium:

I’ve noticed a tendency in life at studios and online of this idea that some teachers are more worthy of students, of classes or calling themselves a teacher. This little box has been around since I can remember. We’ve all heard the dismissive tone “oh, that’s not yoga” or “they’re not a real teacher.”

From “A Quarrel with the Village of My Birth” by Helena Lipstadt at Porter House Review:

which is not a village but
a shivering capital
of Europe, may she rot and be
reborn with heart. Even her
birthday song is martial. Even
her avenues are lined with
pikes. 

From Jacquelyn Stolos‘ “Wide-Shot” at Bodega:

There’s been something going on with the cat’s left eye for about a week now, this cloudy gray ooze leaking out of her tear duct. I’ve been swabbing it away with a cotton ball, once in the morning before I leave for work and once in the evening when I get home. She doesn’t let Owen do it. We’ve been trying to hold off on another trip to the vet. Poor thing is already on five daily medications, and at some point you’ve just got to consider quality of life.

From Noriko Nakada‘s “Threatened Abortion” at SFWP:

I didn’t realize I was pregnant until we were moving out of the duplex and into our new condo. After a long day of hauling boxes, I collapsed on the new hardwood floors and tried to understand my exhaustion. It was a new kind of tired—like I couldn’t get up off the floor—and I tried to remember the last time I had my period. That was when I asked my partner to pick up a test. It was New Year’s Eve. The test came up positive.

From Lituo Huang‘s “Lemonade” at Bethlehem Writers Roundtable:

Lanie looked over the table at her little sister. Cherie was having a fit, ripping her pink sundress, stomping her bare feet on the grass, pulling her frizzy braid. “I hate chocolate cake!”

From Deirdre Hennings‘ “Making Her Night” at Pulse:

In Central Park twilight,
we drop our holiday mood
like a heavy sweater in the heat
when that call sends us reeling
as leukemia sucks us
into its bell jar, rings
    our ears, jangles
          minds, reverberates 
              into bone.

Congratulations to Natalie Smith Parra whose essay “Eviction Blues,” Sakae Manning whose poem “Oakland” and Jenise Miller whose poem “Ode to the Mamas Who Make Language Beautiful” were all published in Dryland!

Congratulations to Sabrina Im who had 3 poems – “Love Letter for a Lotus,” Body Memory,” and “An August Musing” – published in Angel City Review!

Congratulations to Victoria Lynne McCoy whose poem “Dispatched from Home” was published in Tahoma Literary Review!

Congratulations to Gerda Govine Ituarte whose poem “Temple of Courage Chance Change” was featured in the Bahvna Mehta exhibit catalog!

And, finally, congratulations to Arielle Silver who launched Tidal Journal!

What an amazingly long list of publications! Congratulations to all the Women Who Submit published in June.

Congratulations to Elline Lipkin, who published two poems, “Fingernail Moon” and “Pleine Lune” at Apricity Press! From “Fingernail Moon“:

This moon is a thin cusp that cups the vast black,
a silver rim thimbling stars into strewn seams.

From “What I Learned When I Visited Adelanto” by Lisa Cheby at Writers Resist:

the high desert stretches     hours west of airbnbs and selfie backdrops    here Joshua Trees weep

Congratulations to Cherisse Yanit Nadal who had two poems, “It hurts less when I case us in history” and “Benevolent Assimilation,” published at Marías at Sampaguitas. From “It hurts less when I cast us in history“:

1898
You are America; She: Paris;
All of my white boyfriends: Spain.
The difference, you said, Was liberty,
Was protection, Was solidarity,
A common enemy. A common bed.

Congratulations to Mia Nakaji Monnier, who had three pieces published in the Washington Post‘s local guide columns about Los Angeles, Atwater Village and Little Tokyo. From “A Local’s Guide to Los Angeles“:

Ask any Angeleno to describe the city to you and they’ll do it in a different way. There’s beach city L.A., literary L.A., the L.A. of ethnic enclaves and public art and serious sports fans and amateur foodies.

From Karin Aurino‘s “Daisy” at 50-Word Stories:

She loves me… She loves me not.
I visited her at the cemetery, laid daisies at the base of her headstone.

From “Pleated Skirt (Tante Fela)” by Helena Lipstadt at Visitant:

I am not as tall as I was
when I looked like Polly Bergen
and strolled down the shady
Warsaw sidewalk, a leather bag
in the crook of my arm.

From “Amsterdam Long Window” by Donna Sprujit-Metz at The Los Angeles Review:

What does it mean
to owe someone? A cocoon
a small blue egg, a chrysalis?

From “Chicana in New York: Gloria Anzaldúa on Spirituality and the City” by Li Yun Alvarado in MELUS:

Born on 26 September 1942, Anzaldúa became a leading Chicana feminist poet, writer, and theorist before her death in 2004. Raised near the Texas-US Southwest / Mexico border, Anzaldúa features the region prominently throughout her groundbreaking mixed-genre book Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza(1987). In the preface to Borderlands, she notes, “The actual physical borderland that I’m dealing with in this book is the Texas-U.S. Southwest/Mexican border.” 

From “Andy’s Alliance” by Noriko Nakada at *82 Review:

The absence of the Japanese Americans from Emerson Junior High leaves a massive void. Once the winter ends and the weather grows warm again, nearly a third of their classmates are gone. That is when Andy forms the alliance, to stand guard over friendships and memories until their Japanese classmates return. 

From Tammy Delatorre‘s “I Am Coming for You” at Winning Writers:

I am coming for you. My mother might have said those words the night she went after him—the bearded man, the one she took to her room all those nights. He would come over after I’d gone to bed. She carried me from her room—the only place I could fall asleep—to the room across the hall. In the sticky Hawaiian heat, I’d wake to their loud moans and groans in the middle of the night and sit straight up in bed. At six years old, the only thing I knew of sex was a glimpse I got on TV: two bodies moving under a white sheet.

Congratulations to Flint whose poem, “This Is (Not) A Love Letter: A Poem for Two Voices & M/any Ears,” was published in Our Poetica: An Anthology of Ars Poetica by Cathexis Northwest Press!

Congratulations to Tanya Ko Hong (고현혜) who published her Mini-E-Book, 유월의 눈 June Snow, this month!

April showers bring May flowers…and WWS publications! Congratulations to all the Women Who Submit who had work published in May.

From Anita Gill‘s review of Debra Gwartney’s I’m a Stranger Here Myself at Brevity:

Gwartney’s second book veers from the traditional structure of memoir, using a lesser-known historical event as a springboard for her own personal narrative. In I Am a Stranger Here Myself, Gwartney juxtaposes her memories with the story of Narcissa Whitman, one of the first white women settlers to journey westward. This genre-bending manuscript won the 2018 River Teeth Nonfiction Prize and publication this past March.

From “Marvels of Representation” by Ryane Nicole Granados at LA Parent:

While they are 5 1/2 years apart in age and are opposites in many ways, one thing my sons have in common is that they have struggled to find toys – in particular, superheroes – that look like them.

From “The Quiet on the Other Side” by Hazel Kight Witham at Mutha Magazine:

The quiet stops when they call my name from the waiting room at Labor and Delivery. I open my eyes, balance my six-month baby belly in my arms as I shift to standing. I need a quick check in, a blood pressure reading, some reassurance. I am not here to labor or deliver.

From Mia Nakaji Monnier‘s “Kokoro Yasume” at Longreads:

I inherited the porcelain ghosts from my neighbor Amy, whose parents’ house was filled to capacity with everything from shrimp figurines to polished-wood Noh masks. After her mother died and before the estate sale crew swept through the house, I walked the rooms with Amy, cataloging the contents of cabinets, sorting documents from recyclables. “If something like that catches your eye, take it,” she said about the ghost dolls. “I don’t want to see them becoming someone’s Oriental tchotchkes.”

From Carla Sameth‘s “Mother’s Day Triptych” at Mutha Magazine:

The picture is of my son, Raphael, as a newborn. The bright royal blue color of the onesie complements his looks. Like now, his look is racially and culturally ambiguous, similar to the rest of our family. His eyes dark-dark almost black, his hair barely curly, brownish, which will get darker and thicker and curlier as he grows. At birth, there is a bit of blond. Like me. For a second. Family lore has it that my mom called out when I was born, “Oh my God, the Milkman, a blond” in a family of dark haired olive skinned people.

From Xochitl-Julisa Bermejo‘s “Invisible No More: How ‘Fade Into You’ Reflects the L.A. Chicanx Experience” at Los Angeles Review of Books:

In an interview with the popular feminist podcast Call Your Girlfriend, Darling said she named her character Nikki because “being in the interiority of a teenage girl is not something readers are always familiar with.” InFade Into You, Darling gives us more than an intimate view of a teenage girl; she gives us an intimate view of a young, mixed-race Chicana living in the suburbs of Los Angeles, the kind of portrait that is nearly nonexistent in L.A. letters.

Also from Xochitl, “Kenji Liu Is Using Frankenstein as a Metaphor for Toxic Masculinity” at bitch:

Much of the work in Monsters I Have Been is what Liu calls “Frankenpo,” a style of his own creation that chops and mixes multiple texts into one body. The poem “Stomach me, delicious world” is a Frankenpo, and according to Liu’s notes at the back of the book, combines “the screenplay of Wong Kar-Wai’s Happy Together (1997) + screenplay of Alice Wu’s Saving Face (2004) + article ‘Confucius on Gay Marriage’ in the Diplomat + New York Times article ‘Court in Hong Kong Invalidates Antisodomy Law from British Era.’”

From Désirée Zamorano‘s “Much More to Investigate” at Los Angeles Review of Books:

From the opening pages of Miracle Creek, Angie Kim creates an intense atmosphere of foreboding and suspense, building swiftly to the event that triggers the rest of her debut novel, unraveling so many lives and lies.

From Rachael Rifkin‘s “How to Honor a Loved One’s Memory” at nextavenue:

When my mom passed away, having established guidelines for my early grieving process was a relief, giving me concrete steps to take and tasks to do. Several years on, my grief is different — less sharp, but still punctuated with unexpected moments and feelings that catch me off guard. I’ve found myself wishing for more traditions and rituals for this stage, and more opportunities to remember and celebrate her life.

Also from Rachael, “29 Siblings and Counting” at 23andMe:

Shauna tested to learn more about her health history, and found herself instead in the middle of the plot of a movie (The Delivery Man, to be exact). Thoughts about potential susceptibilities to diseases receded as she discovered first one, then eight, and now at least 29 donor siblings.

As someone who grew up as an only child and really owned that identity, receiving an email that began “It looks like we are related” was pretty disorienting.

Congratulations to Minal Hajratwala whose poem, “new world literature, or, we’ll be together in the end,” was published in WSQ: Asian Diasporas! Minal also won residencies at Pond Farm and Clarion West workshops.

Congratulations to Tanya Ko Hong whose poems, “The Cost of Breath,” “Confronting My Father’s Mistress,” and “Journey” were published in Women’s Studies Quarterly! From “The Cost of Breath:”

Talk about the wood
stacked high in the living room
what it costs
to breathe in my home—
raw wood, oak
so long and thick—
a dead elephant stretched wall to wall

What a great selection of published pieces to celebrate in April. Congratulations to all!

From “Panama” by Donna Sprujit-Metz at SWWIM:

wings, the hummingbirds— 
part of one thousand 
species of birds here—they sip sweet
sap, beaks bright,
the lush forest shows, greens

Further congrats to Donna for publishing her poem, “Tiny Hammers,” in Smartish Pace!

From “Visitation” by Cybele Garcia Kohel at New American Legends:

La Virgen materialized to me- Me!
on a car bumper a medallion of divinity
appeared
where a US Army Seal had been
small
but not impotent

Also from Cybele, “Moon’s Shadow” at New American Legends:

her buxom breadth
her waning flow
true comfort
in this wicked world

From Stephanie Abraham‘s “Telling Stories that Matter for an Increasingly Influential Generation” at My PRSA:

Thanks to the social-media sharing habits of their Gen X and millennial parents, most Gen Zers have had social-media footprints since conception and learned to swipe before taking their first steps. Although the youngest in the age group won’t be eligible to vote until 2030, the oldest have already graduated from college. Starting next year, Gen Z will make up 40 percent of consumers.

Also from Stephanie, “‘Ramy’ Will Get You Laughing — and Thinking,” at Ms.:

The 10 episodes, 22 minutes each, are designed to be binge-watched—which Youssef called the “most 2019” part of the production after a screening in Los Angeles last week. Episodes are not resolved neatly, he added, because “that would be sci-fi.” The plot’s primary tension comes from Ramy’s grappling with believing in God and wanting to be a “good” Muslim, or what he perceives as such, and everyday life in the U.S.—including navigating dating and sex, peer pressure and Islamophobia.

From Romaine Washington‘s “A Thriving Writing Workshop in San Bernadino” at Poets & Writers:

Our workshop participants range in age from mid-twenties to eighties, from college students to retirees. The octogenarian from Germany and the dancer in her twenties who works with at-risk youth have a mutual admiration for each other’s poetry and joie de vivre. The creative process, natural flow in fellowship, and mutual respect makes each meeting memorable.

From “The Button Maker’s House” by Sakae Manning at Carve:

At the center of the front garden, a Deodar Cedar, taller than any tree for blocks around, broad-branched, and regal, planted for shade, a children’s swing, a place for family gatherings. The tree reminded Mari of the flat-topped cedars growing at the edge of her grandfather’s village in Japan. Bending to the ocean’s whims, shaped by monsoons and tsunamis, but never breaking. The four intertwined trunks created a perfect spot for marrying up to the big-nosed man Mari’s mother believed held so much potential. 

Congratulations to Sakae who won a 2019 Summer Fishtrap fellowship!

From “Four Days: A Provocation” by Deirdre Hennings at Litro:

“Papers! Papers!” Shouts of armed soldiers wake me as they tromp through my train in long coats and helmets. So this is East Germany, 1972. We scramble for our passports, watching passengers exit under machine guns aimed at our train from atop nineteenth-century iron catwalks arching above the tracks. One blond, Nordic-looking woman is pulled from her seat in our car at gunpoint, crying and pleading in German, broken English and some other language I cannot understand. She looks to be twenty, the same age as me.

From Rosa Navarette‘s “A Busted Window or My Observation of Luz Moreno, mi Tia Paty” at Label Me Latina/o“

Luz Moreno, also known as Paty in our family, was born in 1979. She was the last of the Morenos to emerge, and she stood out like a sore thumb with her lighter complexion and short legs. A small suspicion wandering the halls of my grandmother’s house, that no one in the family was brave enough to confront. Her older sister, Magda, had become a kitchen helper in the family and home business — the indoor garage was turned into a restaurant, that once belonged to the eldest, sixteen years Paty’s senior. The eldest was at the time of Paty’s childhood, crossing the border to be reunited with her husband. Paty only remembered that her sister’s husband used to
bring her toys, but that those presents stopped when he moved away.

Congratulations to Arielle Silver, whose lyrics for “The Calling” won second place in the March/April 2019 Lyric Contest at American Songwriter:

Freight train’s in the distance
Hear that whistle blow
See it slipping like a serpent
Beneath the sunset glow
Further out, the clouds
Are building up a storm,
Throwing bolts of lightning
They say it’s gonna pour

From Flint‘s “The Clubhouse” at Bending Genres:

The golf cart got a flat 20 yards past the eleventh hole, and three-quarters of a mile away from Frank’s now warm vodka Martini waiting for him at the clubhouse bar. They were only supposed to play nine, and Shirley always had his drink out of the shaker and fogging up the glass at 12:15pm on the nose, not a second before or a minute later, not even if she had to stop mid-pour, leaving some luckless bastard’s Black Label

A great month for Flint who also published “A Villanelle by Any Other Name Would Smell as Sweet” at Arts & Letters and “Ink” at Unchaste Readers. Congrats!

From Judy Gitterman‘s “Money for Nothing” at The Wild Word:

As I stood in line to reload my Metro card at the station, a man in front of me turned around and stared. It took me several seconds to recognize my old lover. It wasn’t as though he’d aged. He was as gorgeous as ever, a silver-haired Richard Gere look-alike with an irresistible smile. Eyes so dark they resembled bottomless black wells. No, what threw me off was his attire. He wore the most exquisite charcoal grey suit, so sharply tailored he could have been a model for GQ. In the three years we were together, I’d never seen him wear anything other than ripped jeans and faded tee shirts.

Congratulations to Janel Pineda, whose “When the Death Squads Come” was published at Latina Book Review!

Finally, the winter chill has started to thaw into a warmer, sunnier spring. Making the days even sunnier are these amazing publications from the members of Women Who Submit. Congratulations to all!

From Lisa Cheby‘s “Roof Clearing” at Ruminate:

At 9:30 that morning, I climbed onto the roof of my church, thankful for the overcast sky. I had committed to help at our church work party a few weeks before the government openly started separating and imprisoning families at our borders and criminalizing refugees seeking a better life, like my father did 60 years ago when he immigrated from Hungary. I had considered going downtown to an occupy protest, but I chose to be on the roof among an array of brooms and rakes, a leaf blower, and five other church members. Our task was to clear pine needles from the roof.

From Erana Leiken‘s “Retail Therapy” at *82Review:

What I thought would be a summer job in a small, college town in Indiana, became a time of unexpected and sometimes tragic encounters with other women’s lives. In my early twenties, I just finished my first year of teaching and needed work for the summer. 

Also from Erana, “What I Learned from a Cockroach,” at Women for One:

Like most people, I find cockroaches disgusting and repulsive, but one cockroach taught me a lesson just at the time I needed it. I’m afraid of bugs…always have been. I still remember them knocking and buzzing at the screen as I tried to sleep on a hot night without air conditioning in Chicago when I was a young girl.

From “Testament” by Lituo Huang at The Grief Dialogues:

On the day of your passing
I watched your friends
scatter—

some, to high places—tops of trees
to wave their branches in winds that waved yours,
tips of staves, ascending keening notes—

Also from Lituo, “My Neighbor, Who Has a Mail Order Bride,” at Recenter Press:

Gosling-waddling,
skinned peach eyeballs
in a blown-glass bulb
lodged atop a golem of clay.

In honor of National Endometriosis Awareness Month, we share Marnie Goodfriend‘s “9 Endometriosis Symptoms You Shouldn’t Ignore” at SheKnows:

Many endometriosis symptoms have been normalized by our culture, hovering under the golf-sized umbrella with the label “female problems.” The injustice in this is when the invisible illness is diagnosed and managed earlier, women have better options and better help managing their pain. Even though there is no known cause or cure, a diagnosis is critical in creating a care plan with your doctor to help mitigate these symptoms and puts an end to the question, what on earth is wrong with me?

From Carla Sameth‘s “Spinning” at Mutha Magazine:

She has begun to spin. Thirty minutes on the bike, thirty minutes on the weight circuit, trying to follow along. Keep her body moving, round and round.

The gym sits in the little town of Sierra Madre where her older sister lives with her family.

She is the middle sister who lives nearby. Like the Rose Parade floats, she makes the trip from Pasadena traveling on Sierra Madre Boulevard, but the floats only go once a year on their voyage to their holding spot near Sierra Madre, on Orange Grove Avenue.

Congratulations to Lisbeth Coiman whose essay, “Grey Hair of Desire,” was published in Unchaste Anthology Vol. 3!

Congratulations to Lisa Richter whose essay, “Flood,” was published in Joomag!