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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!

Congratulations to all the women who were published in February – a wonderfully long list!

From Carla Sameth‘s “Making Love to My Toes” at Anti-heroin Chic:

Girl glares sullen for a moment, thinks: this shit job, this hotel, these people make
so much noise about nothin’ and I bet no tip gonna be left 

in my room tomorrow. 

Also from Carla, “Mourning Morning” at Entropy Magazine:

I remember her breath quickening, holding her breast while she touched herself; I was too selfish to make love to her because I was already off and running, ruminating. As if I was on the ride: Soarin’ over California in Disneyland, California Adventure. I take notes like I’m already remembering the embrace I’ll never feel again when she’s gone. Something will take her away; I’ll think about how far away I floated, as she stroked my body in the morning, just behind me, as she leaned into my labia, my clit (I write these words as if I always had, but they come out awkwardly).

From Ava Homa, “Theatre review: A Gentleman’s Guide to Love and Murder at the Cerritos Center for the Performing Arts,” at Signal Tribune:

It is only in a musical that brings to life caricatures of British snootiness that the horror of several consecutive murders can turn into jolly entertainment.

One of the best examples of this comic portrayal of ignorance, in this reviewer’s opinion, was the lofty lady Hyacinth D’Ysquith, who was desperate to find “a place so low that hope itself has been abandoned.” 

From Antonia Crane‘s “Secret Life of a Stripper Who’s Also a Social Worker” at narratively:

It’s slow as shit at Showgirls. Summer in the Coachella Valley is a sadistic blow-dryer you can’t turn off, and business comes to a screeching halt because all my regulars leave for their other houses in colder places or go on fancy European vacations with their wives. I’m “Candy” here but my regulars call me “The Lady in Red.” Riley and I always work on Tuesdays, waiting for the rare drifter to pop in for a happy hour beer and a quick blast of AC so we can talk him into a twofer and pay our bills. Riley’s the best pole dancer here by a long shot — she can do the Running Man while suspended in midair. Right now, she’s a superhero perched to fly, but there’s no one to dangle upside down for, so she leans on her fists with her elbows on the bar and talks, while her long, toned legs drip off the barstool. She tells me about her recent relapse and her anxiety disorder while our buns stick to the vinyl barstools.

From Diane Sherlock‘s “The Inedible Footnote of Child Abuse” at The Manifest-Station:

There was no bodily autonomy in the house I grew up in. No privacy, no warm baths without ice water dumped from above, no agency over my body, and my brothers and I had no say in what we ate. Three seemingly random vegetables were force-fed.  Why those three? Why not? They were the favorites of the reigning narcissist of the house. They were our mother’s favorites. Reject them, reject her. The essence of narcissistic abuse.

From “Water Tank” (and other poems) by Sehba Sarwar at Paper Cuts Magazine:

we are fish
swimming
below the surface

in our aquarium
beneath broad
banana leaves

From Janel Pineda‘s “In Another Life” at wildness:

The war never happened but somehow you and I still exist. Like obsidian,
we know only the memory of lava and not the explosion that created

us. Forget the gunned-down church, the burning flesh, the cabbage soup.

From Xochitl-Julisa Bermejo‘s “‘A While’ Means January,‘” at The Acentos Review:

“It’s like you fell from the sky,”
he said mystified, but he didn’t know
I conjured him in a new moon.
Bees buzz in his ears ordering
him to work till callouses grow
into houses for their dreams.

From Soleil Garneau‘s “Shaking the Magic Eight Ball” at catheXis:

i went out lookin’ for something
like i go out every day
i walk
the broken concrete
and think of what else won’t be fixed

Congratulations to Ryane Nicole Granados whose “Kids Gym Provides Inclusion for Children – and Its Owners” was published at L.A. Parent!

Congratulations to Toni Ann Johnson whose story, “The Way We Fell Out of Touch,” was published at Callaloo!

Congratulations to Lituo Huang whose story, “The Climb,” was published at Bosie Magazine!

Happy New Year! And happy Women Who Submit publications! Congratulations to all the writers who were published in January.

From Ryane Nicole Granados‘ “Course Offers Specials-Needs Moms a Mindful Return to Work” at LA Parent:

Having a baby is a transformative experience, bringing intense physical changes and engulfing emotional ones due to the pending needs of this new human. The mind races from nesting to nursing to concern over who will care for this bundle of joy once parents return to work. These concerns are heightened when a child is born with a disability of medical condition.

From Noriko Nakada‘s “People Don’t Strike for 6%; We Strike for Justice” at United Teacher:

…this weekend was not like all the others, because I’m an LAUSD public school teacher, and like every other year, I had many papers to grade and many students on my mind as I made my way through the weekend, but unlike other years, this year held an added stress. All weekend I carried the weight of a looming work stoppage and very
public contract negotiations that put my colleagues and me in the crosshairs of public conversation on the sidelines of sporting events or gathered around a table waiting for the cake to come out.

Also from Noriko, “Lessons from the Picket Line,” at Cultural Weekly:

We are both UTLA members and we had been bracing for this day since December 19th when our winter break was interrupted by the setting of the strike date. Over the holidays we talked with friends and family about the strike and made plans for our kids during the work stoppage. Then, we worried and waited. After the new year, we went back to work at our school sites, and the strike was postponed, and maybe wouldn’t even happen, but that Sunday night, when the strike was definitely happening, new levels of anxiety rose to the surface: Would all of the teachers who had committed to strike show up to the picket? Would the lines hold? Would the community support us?

From “Yesterday Small Voices” by Donna Spruijt-Metz at Poets Reading the News:

whispered to me through the day
slick-nosed, nudging
demanding my elusive attention

I looked up from my
busy ephemera, startled,
as if caught in mid-slaughter

From “The Promotion” by Karin Aurino at Literary Orphans:

His eyelids fluttered. There was a ringing in his left ear. He didn’t think he would be nervous, but maybe he was.

It was the fifth city in six days. The audience had settled into their seats. It was a large crowd, maybe a hundred and fifty people at the Westfield Mall. He had done these over a hundred times before. He could do it in his sleep.

Congratulations to Anita Gill whose essay, “Hair,” was published this month in the Iowa Review!

Congratulations to Nina Clements whose poem, “Our Mother of Sorrows,” was published in Prairie Schooner!