October 2025 | fiction, Pushcart nominee
Crawlspace
Veronica opened the paper bag of tomatoes, inhaling their earthy scent. Big Rainbow, Early Girl, Jubilee. Her favorite, heirlooms, were stacked at the bottom. They always had such beautiful cross-sections. Outside the window, a trail of birdseed stretched to the banks of the creek, raspberries clustered in rows along the hill. A thunderstorm was building at the horizon, clouds so dark she estimated ten more minutes before the rain fell.
A man cleared his throat behind her. Veronica jumped, dropping the lone Brandywine on the floor. She braced for it to erupt, but it landed with a dull thud and a minor leakage of seeds. Grabbing the tomato, she dusted it with her shirt. Jonah was back from errands. “Sandwiches?” he asked. “Sandwiches,” Veronica answered. They worked in a team, slicing the rye and the bulbous red fruit, spooning wads of mustard onto the bread. As they added their finishing touches, the clouds burst, emptying into the creek. This was good, Veronica thought. It had been so dry, and the animals needed the water.
As they ate, Jonah fiddled with a chisel he’d left on the table. Blue rust spanned its length like moss. “What’s up?” Veronica queried. “Nothing,” Jonah said. “Just, you know. Long day.” Veronica nodded. One of the goats had wandered to the door in the storm and was battering its horns against the wood. Rolling her eyes, Veronica shooed it from the entryway and back out into the yard.
As she turned back to the kitchen, Jonah was nowhere to be seen. His plate lay empty in the sink, save for a thick stream of red juice. The goat attacked the door again, incessantly now, as if timing its pummeling with the thunder.
Curious, Veronica climbed the stairs to their bedroom. Maybe Jonah had laid down for a nap. As she reached the landing, she startled. The hidden door to the crawlspace was open, its darkness a still column. Jonah looked up at her with a terror so naked she nearly felt a brief current of remorse pass through. The body inside was partitioned perfectly, limbs stacked in neat rows. Veronica thought of the tomatoes. Sighing, she lifted the chisel from her side and slowly positioned it in front of her chest. A floor below, some of the cattle had joined the goat, hooves striking the floor in tandem. With her eyes closed, Veronica could almost imagine the sound of applause.
Meggie Royer
Meggie Royer (she/her) is a Midwestern writer and the Founder and Editor-in-Chief of Persephone’s Daughters, a journal for abuse survivors. She has won numerous awards and has been nominated several times for the Pushcart Prize. Her work has been published in The San Antonio Review, The Rumpus, The Minnesota Review, and other notable publications. She thinks there is nothing better in this world than a finished poem. Her work can be found at https://meggieroyer.com/.
October 2025 | poetry, Pushcart nominee
Why Thinking About Taxis Makes Me Sad
I could never trust an Uber or a Lyft,
and I have my own car anyhow.
But should I have the need, I’d prefer
a taxi with bright colors or checkers
and the wide, bulbous car body, as if
other car bodies or frames are underneath,
so the taxi can shed one, like a cicada does,
and move on to its next destination or passenger,
someone waiting streetside and almost desperate
for a ride and to get somewhere safely
in a city where the passenger knows nobody
and needs to get somewhere that may look like
a home for one or two nights and where
there may be the potential for a face that
might make softer the darkness and the unknown
of an unfamiliar city or maybe even someplace
in the country where without a full moon or any
moonlight, the darkness feels like a seal of wax
on the back of an envelope that will never be
cracked by anyone I know or love but only by
a stranger in the night behind a desk with keys
hanging on hooks on the wall and he can’t or won’t
find mine, so I keep walking in the dark
in some cold warehouse district like those
on TV where they find the dead or barely
alive bodies in an old tractor trailer, or
in some cornfield just beyond the edge of the lights
on the highway where the arms of those I love
have become the stubble left long
after the harvest, and the sun
has gone down on my life.
Buzz Lightyear Won’t Forgive You,
nor will the ceramic cat
with the Felix tick-tock eyes.
It’s the people far down
on the street that matter, those
we can barely see for our being
so far up in this silver skyscraper
that makes us forget and not care
about who’s below.
But we can get close again, and the people
can get large, so we don’t forget who and what
they are, so they don’t have to flee
when the hammer drops and the sparks fly.
Doug Funnie we know
is your hero, so quiet and unassuming.
He knows what’s important: the weave
of the living room rug, the fine-enough cotton
sheets that make up your bed, the doctor
who once made house calls and popped
the cork at your wedding.
These are the people who call
your name, who will pat your shoulder
when you need it, who know that magna tiles
gather even more color in the late morning
sun on the porch floor where toys tell
the stories, where playtime is the
supreme value that we should talk about
in church and political speeches,
so we never forget what it’s like
to be pushed on a swing, to have the touch
on the back that keeps us going,
so we don’t forget that hand and those
fingers when we let go and throw ourselves
into the air, assured of the balance
the arms will find and gather
to stick the landing and make sure
the heart is everywhere
the blood flows and may want or think
to go.
Pete Follansbee
Pete Follansbee likes writing in the early morning dark and lives in Richmond, Virginia, a good place to survive climate change and political uncertainty. This summer, Pete’s poems have appeared online in Humana Obscura, the Rockvale Review, and Autumn Sky Poetry Daily. In the past, Pete’s poems have been finalists in contests and have found publication in The North American Review, Barrow Street, The New Guard, About Place, New Millenium Writings, and elsewhere. An MFA graduate of the University of Iowa’s Writers’ Workshop, Pete was a T.A. for poet Tim Seibles at the summer 2017 edition of The Writer’s Hotel and a Faculty Assistant for their 2021 Virtual Poetry Weekend. And this coming June 2026, Pete looks forward to being a Director’s Assistant at The Writer’s Hotel in Maine. Pete has a website of his published poems at petefollansbee.com.
July 2025 | nonfiction, Pushcart nominee
My New Exercise Bike
Herman is going to restore the vigor of my youth. Herman is going to prevent me from traipsing through the discount store when I am bored. Herman is going to remind me why God created hip-hop music. Herman is going to lend purpose to my soles. Herman is going to memorize my cat tattoo. Herman is going to become a shaman specializing in blood glucose. Herman is going to grant absolution if I miss a morning. Herman is going to do hand-to-hand combat with anxiety. Herman is going to sing Rod Stewart’s “Hot Legs” to keep me motivated. Herman is going to acquire decals of cats in spacecraft. Herman is going to learn the feel of God’s hands over my hands on the handlebars. Herman is going to be a secret for twenty-one days, the gestation for a habit. Herman is going to find out whether I can keep faith with Herman. Herman is not going to tell anyone that I get out of breath on speed #3, “moderate.” Herman is never going to experience speed #7, “vigorous.” Herman is going to smell like Lemon Cupcake hand soap. Herman is going to mesmerize my cat. Herman is going to inspire me to name a future cat “Flywheel.” Herman is going to hear hymns and Creedence Clearwater Revival. Herman is going to provoke the purchase of jaunty sweatpants. Herman is going to learn the names of all the West Wing characters. Herman is going to merit a five-star review urging others to obtain Hermans. Herman is going to celebrate day twenty-one with a congratulatory pat on my buttocks. Herman is going to hear me shriek, “was that you, Herman?” Herman is not going back to the Herman factory, even though returns are free.
Angela Townsend
Angela Townsend is in her eighteenth year of working at a cat sanctuary, where she gets to bear witness to mercy for all beings. This was not the exact path she expected after divinity school, but love is a wry author of lives. She is a five-time Pushcart Prize nominee and the 2024 winner of West Trade Review’s 704 Prize for Flash Fiction. Her work appears or is forthcoming in Arts & Letters, Blackbird, Five Points, Indiana Review, The Iowa Review, Pleiades, and SmokeLong Quarterly, among others. She graduated from Princeton Theological Seminary and Vassar College. Her poet mother is her best friend.
April 2025 | poetry, Pushcart nominee
In your kitchen, we find three long deep shelves filled
with dozens of jars of dill pickles, and in your
freezer a half dozen bricks of weed wrapped in cling
wrap and tied with string.
I think of standing next to you at that counter, a bowl
of flour and butter in front of us as you tried
vainly to show me how you make perfect pie crust
every time. You were also beside me in
my kitchen, both of us stoned and silly long before
it was legal, you grinning as I explained
my theory about BLTs as we made bread, mayo
and bacon sandwiches.
In your bathroom, I reach for your toothbrush and
can’t touch it, because I see you holding
the headshots a director had asked you to get and
murmur sadly “I’m all teeth…”
bemoaning your own wide bright smile. I leave
the toothbrush on the counter and go out
to your desk, where I find and begin packing your
journals, stopping once in a while to
read the entries you wrote as letters to me, and one
you wrote to your old friend, telling her
that I was “the one who always took care” of you.
I think how the letters to me were rehearsals
for calls to me you actually made, delivering to me
your rehearsed lines and monologues, and I
wish the lines about taking care had been rehearsed
for me instead of for her, giving me the cue
to speak the lines I should have, the lines that would
have been taking care of you, even if I’d
only been able to deliver them
in a stage whisper…
don’t go back don’t go back
don’t go back
to him
Judith Mikesch McKenzie
Judith Mikesch-McKenzie is a teacher, writer, actor, and producer living in the Pacific Northwest. She has traveled widely but is always drawn to the Rocky Mountains as one place that feeds her soul. Writing is her home. She has recently placed/published in two short-story contests, and her poems have been published or are upcoming in Calyx, Her Words, Plainsongs Magazine, Cirque, Wild Roof Journal, Clackamas Literary Review, and over 40 others. She is a wee bit of an Irish curmudgeon, but her friends seem to like that about her.
January 2025 | nonfiction, Pushcart nominee
CNN: American reality show contestant kills, eats protected bird in New Zealand
Clad in their best, their most expensive, Lululemon, Nike, P.E. Nation, Versace, or Adidas, flexing their abs on national TV, traipsing all over and screwing up the last protected wild places on this planet. A so-called reality show, and it makes a hell of a lot of money. What can they tell you about the amur leopard, the western lowland gorilla, the vaquita, the Sumatran elephant, box turtles, orang utan, the black rhino?
Blond, somewhat unkempt locks curl from under an expensive baseball cap, carefully trimmed three-day beard, blue mirror sunglasses. I HAD to Google the man: Spencer ‘Corry’ Jones, an American white water river guide.
An iconic, large, flightless bird, the weka, is famous for its ‘feisty and curious personality’. It has become virtually extinct over large tracts of the mainland because of changing climatic conditions and rising predator numbers. The predators, a species until recently unknown: the second-hand Kardashians and those who would love to be as famous and as rich. The show is called “Race to Survive” no less.
Spencer Jones said he was hungry.
Rose Mary Boehm
Rose Mary Boehm is a German-born British national living and writing in Lima, Peru, and the author of two novels and eight poetry collections. Her poetry has been published widely in mostly US poetry reviews (online and print). She is a ‘Pushcart’ and ‘Best of Net’ nominee. The most recent poetry collections: Do Oceans Have Underwater Borders? (Kelsay Books July 2022), Whistling in the Dark (Cyberwit July 2022), Saudade (December 2022), and Life Stuff (Kelsay Books November 2023) are available on Amazon. A new MS is brewing. https://www.rose-mary-boehm-poet.com/
January 2025 | poetry, Pushcart nominee
I get asked to be on a podcast
and he’s never read any of my poems, ever,
doesn’t even know my name, asks me, “So,
what’s your name?” as if this is a thoughtful
question, and I wonder how much research
he’d have had to do to find out my name,
especially when we’ve already exchanged
multiple emails, and he says, “So, what are
you? A poet? A fiction writer?” And I
realize he’s going to ask me my height next
and weight after that and maybe we’ll get
into sports and weather in a bit, and I realize
how much I ache to have a person who just
simply sees me, how I was just on an elevator
yesterday with two people, one on my left
and one on my right, and how they talked
through me, as if I am a ghost, and I get
ready for the podcast host to ask me if I’m
a phantom and I get myself ready to say,
“I don’t know. I might be. I feel like
I’m fading.” And I remember seeing
an interview with Norm Macdonald
when it was nearing the end of his life
and no one knew it was nearing the end
of his life, except him and a few other
very select people, and it feels like that
for me, like I’m near the end, and when
I write, sometimes I think, “Is this my last
poem?” And I remember talking to Donald
Hall, who was always so kind to me, and him
telling me that he was too tired to write poetry
anymore, that he could write non-fiction, but
that poetry just took everything out of him,
the exhaustion, how he felt tired just telling me
this, how you could hear the enthusiasm lessening
in his voice, how frightened I was to get the sense
that someone was leaving before they were leaving
and, thank God, his words have stayed . . .
A friend asked me what kind of a poet I am and I said,
“a horror poet” and he asked what that means and
I showed him the statistics of murders in Detroit and
I showed him that we have a murder every day and
I took him in my car and we drove one block and
I pointed and said they murdered him for his watch.
Who? I told him who they murdered and about his
watch and we drove and we were in front of a restaurant
and I told him about the bodies and in the last three days
we’ve had shootings on Minden Ave and on Jefferson Ave
and on Moross Rd and on Joy Rd and on Biltmore Rd
and I think of joy and not-joy, of how we keep mastering
anger, how online’s a storm, how I’ve seen footprints made
from blood, how I looked down after the riot near
my home and the footprints led to a tree and I looked
up, expecting to see someone up there, but it was empty,
and my mother used to be a therapist and she told me,
“The more symptomatic someone is, the more severe
the depression or the anxiety, the more guns they own.”
She said she could tell someone’s mental health by
the amount of guns in the home, that the people
who were the most unstable would have ten, twenty,
thirty, more guns. That it was like the guns were this
screaming of how they needed help. That their houses
were made of guns. Gun-walled. We drove by abandoned
homes and I’d think of abandoned people. And my
mother said angels are anyone in this life who makes
people hurt less. She said that we get a rush in our blood
when we hurt people, but that it is the evil of everything.
She said that the calm comes when you try to protect
the hurt. She said this while smoking. She smoked like
a chimney in a house that was on fire. She’d get mid-
night calls from people who were suicidal and I remember
hearing her whispering in the other room when I was little.
I remember asking her, “What is suicide?” and it was near
Christmas and the lights were blinking behind her and she
started crying, not saying anything, just bawling, and I was
so little that I thought that was her response. I thought that
the answer to “What is suicide?” is a brutality of tears.
And maybe that is the only true response. I wish I could
paint it for you, the pain, how beautiful those lights were,
the music on softly in the background, something promising.
Ron Riekki
Ron Riekki has been awarded a 2014 Michigan Notable Book, 2015 The Best Small Fictions, 2016 Shenandoah Fiction Prize, 2016 IPPY Award, 2019 Red Rock Film Fest Award, 2019 Best of the Net finalist, 2019 Très Court International Film Festival Audience Award and Grand Prix, 2020 Dracula Film Festival Vladutz Trophy, 2020 Rhysling Anthology inclusion, and 2022 Pushcart Prize. Right now, Riekki’s listening to Holy Fuck’s “Lovely Allen.”
