Hema Nataraju Editorial note from Janus Literary reader, Myna Chang, who asked Hema to submit her work: I love the way humor can heighten the emotional complexity of a story. A touch of levity, or an unexpected quirk, can capture a reader’s attention and lend more power to those poignant “gut punch” moments. “Between The […]
Lynda Cowles 13:44 The last train leaves the station. Rails hiss. Cables buzz. Pigeons flap then float back down. On the platform, a suitcase waits. Ludo drags it into the station office; lugs it onto the desk with a thump. It’s old and leathery, like him. Agnes the ticket seller shuffles over, pokes it with […]
Kim Murdock Her husband worked late and her daughter was made of clothes and music so Miranda decided to arrange the calendar to accommodate herself. That grid of numbers in a sea of unremarkable white space. On Monday, she locked the bathroom door and ran a bath. Taps full open until musky bubbles crept up […]
Kathryn Aldridge-Morris Between 0-6 months babies should coo, begin babbling and mimic sounds Heart rate dipping, something about the umbilical cord around your neck twice, a canula’s pumping pitocin into my hand to restart contractions, but all that’s contracting is my calf with a cramp Manuel says he’s seen grown footballers cry with. When you’re […]
Amy Stone I smile. I can hear those paws in the snow, padding over to where I stand. Sure enough, he’s at my feet. He sits. The pads of his feet are thick but still, it makes me shudder to think of him out in this. Mammy says I’m not to give him the bones, […]
Fiona J. Mackintosh In the crouch of twilight, he hums a single tuneless note under the droop of the rhododendrons. From beyond the hedge, the street air clags his throat with tar and rough metal. Her husband’s probably left for the pub by now and won’t be back till closing, but he has to be […]
Edie Meade I spend a lot of time on the floor behind the deli counter at Buford’s Grocery, watching the top of the case where the heads of customers emerge between big jars to talk to Momma. Most of the jars hold bologna ropes, pickled pigs feet, snouts, ears, liver, giblet slop that old men […]
Marie Gethins He shouted, ‘What the hell?’ filling his boot with beer as I headed towards the exit A first date at the South American Food Fest should have tipped me off. He promised square dancing and a deep-fry banquet. I starched my best blue gingham—fifteen-layers of net under the skirt with lacy bike shorts […]
Rachael Smart The river is black and fast legging it. High up in the bones of the trees, spring comes, pinkly, and every now and then swallows scissor across tin skies. I order builder’s brew, two twists of sugar. Inside his van, the tea man chalks up the new season’s menu. Proper calligraphy, that, I […]
Anika Carpenter I’m saving for implants like delft pottery, porcelain painted with windmills and flowers; teeth I’ll show off at the Kings Head pub, where a young man, a famous photographer as it happens, will be captivated by my smile, beg to take my picture. My portrait, ten foot by eight, will be hung in […]
Constance Malloy He’s dead. Frozen in time. Etched forever in charcoal, posing with his arm on a chair back. But every time I sit down to watch TV, I feel his gaze. Somehow, I sense he’s letting me know She sits on the sofa, all smug, acting like this is her house. this is his […]
Meagan Johanson Your mother was in love with you. Enchanted—everyone was, she says, pulling the hair color box from the bag. Those cherub cheeks, Shirley Temple grins—as she sits you down, drapes your shoulders with a tattered old bath towel. You were born with a head full of black hair. Straight and as thick as […]
Shawn Van Horn I read that they’re finally tearing it down. It has always been there, way before I moved here, way before Ike’s interstate changed everything. It was a place of brief respite for others but for me, the battered and withering staggered shake siding, with its cherry paint peeling like a sunburn, […]
Shawn Van Horn I’ve broken up with the world. Words are my new mistress. You’re my way out of here. Doors open inside you, snapping shut when I look away. Black ink fit along the page, lines like mountains hanging off the face of a bound world. I create my own worlds there, building my […]
Jared Beloff Stare hard enough and still edges will followthe lines of your eyes as you move away,a burst of color revealing absence in silhouette:my grandfather’s watch, tulip stalks candle thinalready loosening their skirts, glass luminousas a lit wick, shadows rimming a skull’s sockets. Tonight, my daughter sleeps still enough––I hesitate to check her breath, […]
Jared Beloff That summer pink flowers gave the least promise,their heads bowed down out of the vase’s slender rimrevealing green stalks shivering to expandbefore we registered the shock of purple pushing upward,crowded by sweet williams’ and asters’ stilled propellers;before we halted at the blue salvia still standing at attention,their cobalt swelling up from the porcelain […]
Joel LeBlanc The man in the moon sat down on my bed and started smoking a twisted cigarette between yellowing teeth and fingertips, while murmuring wild stories to the dark. Of men who prayed to find themselves, and turned into stags, into dogs, into owls. Of wandering salesmen who gave their hearts to the moon […]
Joel LeBlanc The business of witches is one of harvesting truths like plants of predicting babies and midwifing divorces, taking midnight phone calls from love haunted sisters and keeping omens of death to ourselves. We are not of our parents; the land made us, and cats and rats and rabbits dance in our footsteps. Young […]
Joel LeBlanc I opened my mouth to say something sweet, but you may notice the briny sea that lives beneath my throat, and all the sea monsters swimming off-map inside my belly. I wanted to say that I love you, but what comes out is horseshoe crabs in their full moon mating, thumping and […]
Jamy Bond I’d lost my lover to heroin: lips like small blue balloons, skin like frosted glass. I needed a new life. A purpose. So I quit my job and volunteered to teach English at a boys’ school in Mozambique. I boarded at the school in a small room at the end of narrow hallway […]
Christina Kapp she held an orange / probed her thumb / with enough force / to wrench skin / from flesh / nail threading / through pith / like a body / shedding skin / like the quilts / a handmade shroud / of skin / peel muscle / from membrane / a puncture / […]
Simon Lee-Price My dog takes no interest in other dogs or bones. But if I have to write poetry he sits in the corner with his eyes fixed on me. I hurl bottles and pens at him to drive him away, but he always skulks back to his post and takes up watch again. I […]
Katie Piper Grandad sat in the chair he always retired to after Sunday dinner. It had slender, polished arms and his fingers would curl over the ends of them. He was always a little poised, as if he was on the verge of getting up – perhaps the war did that? Mum and […]
Jolene McIlwain My wife leans into her pappy―Macon, she said yesterday―in this photo we found folded in a hankie in a box next to a creased paper and envelopes of dried seeds. We’d agreed she’s five then, though she didn’t need me to concur, since she still had baby teeth and it was before […]
Rebecca Bailey Rude as dandelion seeds, yet you still grow, The dock leaf to my thistle counterpart. For years I reaped, could not un-sow, The perennial of my fallow heart. The bloom of time won’t stop me Crying your name (in Latin) to the others. But if bulbs don’t thrive, then let them be. Remember, […]
Geraldine Clarkson He gave me a gift of needles bound round in banana leaves, fragrant, folded in coconut wood. He came to me first in wafts of October storm, a hard-nosed North wind who sliced sideways at new growth, shook cone-buds, rocked me till, maddened, I smelt my own fragrance flying high around. I was […]
Philip Charter Are you sure you want to reopen this application? [Yes] X [No] C:\Users\Steve\Business\Tax Returns\2017-18 £19,446.40 in expenses even though you never spent more than twelve pounds at the barbers. You drove everywhere in fourth gear to save fuel. […]
James Garza Q: is there something erotic about destroying the environment? A: yes we roll up our sleeves past the shoulder & impishly plunge arms into the cow our fingers meet by chance (in the reticulum) & we look […]
Sarah Green Gamber Sally looked from the cluttered sink to the window ledge where her sister’s diamond ring sat in a soap-dish. Outside, the setting sun flared like a solar blade and Sally stood on tip-toe to avoid its blinding glare. A ray lit the diamond solitaire and flashed a prism. That ring taunted Sally […]
Gaynor Jones Your mother used to tell you stories about the witch who walked the shore. A gnarled, mangled woman with mossy seaweed trailing from her scalp and claws where her hands ought to be. A woman who had been trapped underwater for so long that her putrefied skin rippled across her body as she […]
Interview by Sudha Balagopal The witch in your story is a powerful, albeit unseen, character. How did the idea of a witch that haunts the sea come to you? Did she arrive fully-formed or did she develop and grow as you wrote the story? Was she the figure from whom your story began or did […]
Philip Charter When Richie McManus lost his hand in the hydraulic winch, he said he screamed like a banshee, but the North Sea winds whipped the noise away. I was hauling in gear on the port side and the alarm light was the only thing that snapped me out of my own thoughts. McManus was […]
Interview by Neil Clark Saudade, the concept, really got us editors gabbing away and going on all sorts of tangents when we were discussing your piece during the judging. It was a lot of fun! Could you tell us a bit about how and when you came across the word? Was it your starting point […]
Bayveen O’Connell Manifest. Dad is the captain of my imagination. I’m from coastal people who say the sea is a gateway to other worlds. The Atlantic, the colour of shifting dragon scales, gives me something to dream of: a life beyond our little Ballyscannell crossroads. High tide, all hands on deck, set sail. Heave away! […]
Interview by Edward Bassett Why do flash and microfiction appeal to you as narrative forms? I love paring stories back to their essence, telling a tale in the most condensed way while creating movement and emotional resonance. My favourite thing about writing in this short form is the natural high of (sometimes) being able to […]
Nuala O’Connor To call the merrow-man to the shore, you must shed seven drops of eye-brine into the sea. This is what lonely fisherwives do, when their men are away after swordfish and beluga, away for year-halves and more. The merrow swims through your dreams, his body offering rare comfort and, on waking, you long […]
Melissa Bowers VII. Afterward, every beach is vacant. Our children still race for the sand, rip at the fluttering caution tape, ignore our frantic warnings, and we scoop them up and haul them away before they can tell what has become of the ocean. The rest of us know better—we’ve seen the horrors up close, […]
Ian O’Brien The slowboat heaved on the black ocean. The weather seemed to have followed her from Dublin, lashing the deck, the windows, the roof. A baby was crying and she forced her way out onto a sheltered part of the deck. She tried to light a cigarette and gave up, found a bench to […]
J.L. Willetts It’s not my first time. There was the time I tried to hang myself but got it wrong and spent weeks wearing a polo neck jumper in the dead of summer. Then there was the paracetamol that wouldn’t stay down, came up like I’d been force fed a box of chalk. You said […]
Amy Barnes My father sleeps skeleton-folded in a closet box. His face is pressed against his knees, a jumble of paper bones and battles, neck bone connects to the thigh bone connects to the hand bone. We unfurl him on holidays, a faded tribute laid on an empty dining room chair while his flag hangs […]
Sutton Strother In her last life, your mother was a whale. She makes no secret of it, so you grow up carrying this knowledge like you carry the birthmark on your left shoulder. She raises you on grilled octopus, chilled calamari, fish with all their little bones left in. “Whale food,” she calls it, though […]
Sara Hills 1. En caul babies are as rare as giant squid and underwater cairns. En caul means born inside the amniotic sac; a mermaid birth. En caul babies are the luckiest humans on earth. When you’re old enough to read, you find such facts in books. You repeat these facts as a mantra, the […]
Ed Barnfield “You have ancestors. Remember them, their names. The Moken, the Sama-Bajau. Lives before yours, expended on the water. Follow their example through the storms.” The children nod, although they can barely see Mayer Franken in the fuligin gloom. His voice is cracked, parched, but the words keep pouring. We say, when an old […]
Lorraine Thomson Alabama, Alaska, Arizona. Ever been thirsty? I’m talking about a thirst as deep as the ocean. A thirst like that – a real thirst – drives a person crazy. I don’t know if it changes them, could be it just coaxes out the evil that’s been lurking there all along. There is one […]
Katie Oliver Being a narwhal with two tusks sounds fun, doesn’t it? Special. That’s what I thought too, once. Granted, it’s better than the crushing embarrassment of being a male with no tusk. You don’t see many of those round here, cast off as they are, frigid water and darkness their only companions as the […]
Jess Moody “I know an island.” The words that saved the lips that spoke them. The Captain had no time for my opinions, he’d said. His men, no love for my songs. Harpy, sea-witch, a hex for such a girl as I to be on board. So they’d muttered, louder with each bloody sunset. Anyone […]
Jason John Kahler The oars broke the water as the morning sun broke the horizon. The first hours of the summer solstice woke slowly. Tomas navigated the two-person skiff away from the dock and toward the open water beyond the mouth of the bay. The row to Hirvosurry Rock would take half the day. He […]
Kate MacCarthy On Maundy Thursday in 1911, Ruaridh waded out waist deep into the water. The Atlantic was a glaucous grey-green in the dim light before dawn and mist obscured the horizon. He dragged heavy legs through the swell with both arms raised above his head, careful not to spill a drop from either bowl. Once the […]
Lauren Foregger This house is more like a ship. If it weren’t for the chimneys and the pitched roof, I’d consider calling it that. I think the house would prefer it. The five bedrooms teeter on the edge of the cliff, the slate-colored waves slicing at the craggy shoreline below. The spray just barely reaches […]
Amber Garcia I name every nick, cut, contusion, like children, as I rub my shorn head and when I come to the cut above my right ear, the body of a man falls over the cliff, flailing. I watch his cloak hood flap like a wing as he falls, sucked under with green drops of […]