Saudade (2nd Place)
Philip Charter When Richie McManus lost his hand in the hydraulic winch, he said he screamed like a banshee, but the North […]
Interview with Philip Charter, Second Place Winner
Interview by Neil Clark Saudade, the concept, really got us editors gabbing away and going on all sorts of tangents when we […]
Lyrics For a Life at Sea (3rd Place)
Bayveen O’Connell Manifest. Dad is the captain of my imagination. I’m from coastal people who say the sea is a gateway to […]
Interview with Bayveen O’Connell, Third Place Winner
Interview by Edward Bassett Why do flash and microfiction appeal to you as narrative forms? I love paring stories back to their […]
Seven Tears (shortlisted)
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 […]
All the Broken Things (shortlisted)
Melissa Bowers VII. Afterward, every beach is vacant. Our children still race for the sand, rip at the fluttering caution tape, ignore […]
A Hole in the Wing (shortlisted)
Ian O’Brien The slowboat heaved on the black ocean. The weather seemed to have followed her from Dublin, lashing the deck, the […]
An Aversion to Popular Amusements (shortlisted – CW: SUICIDE)
J.L. Willetts It’s not my first time. There was the time I tried to hang myself but got it wrong and spent […]
Origami Wars (shortlisted)
Amy Barnes My father sleeps skeleton-folded in a closet box. His face is pressed against his knees, a jumble of paper bones […]
Leviathan (shortlisted)
Sutton Strother In her last life, your mother was a whale. She makes no secret of it, so you grow up carrying […]
A Baby Born En Caul Can Never Drown (shortlisted)
Sara Hills 1. En caul babies are as rare as giant squid and underwater cairns. En caul means born inside the amniotic […]
Last Boat
Ed Barnfield “You have ancestors. Remember them, their names. The Moken, the Sama-Bajau. Lives before yours, expended on the water. Follow their […]
Thirst
Lorraine Thomson Alabama, Alaska, Arizona. Ever been thirsty? I’m talking about a thirst as deep as the ocean. A thirst like that […]
Two Tusks
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 […]
Flint’s Left-behind Girl
Jess Moody “I know an island.” The words that saved the lips that spoke them. The Captain had no time for my […]
Sea Mother
Jason John Kahler The oars broke the water as the morning sun broke the horizon. The first hours of the summer solstice […]
Put Weed in the Drawing Wave
Kate MacCarthy On Maundy Thursday in 1911, Ruaridh waded out waist deep into the water. The Atlantic was a glaucous grey-green in the […]
Amelie
Lauren Foregger This house is more like a ship. If it weren’t for the chimneys and the pitched roof, I’d consider calling […]
Account of the Sea Lady as Told by a Servant Girl, 1597
Amber Garcia I name every nick, cut, contusion, like children, as I rub my shorn head and when I come to the […]
Salt Tears
Sue Dawes He never takes his shoes off to walk along the beach, says he hates the way sand invades every crease […]
The Last Prophet
Lisa Blackwell The bird stands at least a foot taller than any of the other birds on the rocky outpost. It’s head […]
Sea Animals
Sharon Boyle I am a butcher by trade. That’s what I tell my fellow passengers of merchants, their wives, soldiers, and able-bodied […]
The Sea Change
Jan Kaneen When hunger’s making your insides growl, and rain’s a-rattling your midnight window, and you’re lying in your driftwood bunk waiting […]
It Had Been Calling to Her
Peggy Riley It had been calling to her. She could hear it from the water. Revenge, it said. Take back what was […]
A Celestial Undoing
Sara Dobbie Henry is obsessed and there is nothing Celeste can do about it. She emerges from below deck, fraught with disappointment. […]
Winter 2020
by Anuja Ghimire A wintry Texas morning, I wait for the sunThe full moon, a star, or two by the windowGolden Pothos […]
Grief Is A Story I Was Told On Rosary Beads
Electra Rhodes Mam was laid out cotton-starched on the bed. The stillest I’d ever seen her. She’d not like to be known […]
What Is or Is Not True
Laurie Marshall While it is true I did not accept his proposal, that did not prove that I did not love him. […]
Parent and Child
by Rebecca Ruvinsky A sense of living alreadyin the past. He is lookingat a dying woman whileshe is breathing. Eating.She can only […]
My Rooster Booster
Frances Gapper Skipping most stages of poultry production including death, he’d blagged a ride in the delivery truck. He was free-range organic, […]
Sun in Our Eyes
Rebecca Ruvinsky The audacitywas circumstantial: we didn’t know we wereflying until it was toolate to stop. Then, we’re hopeless, trippingover each other, […]
The Light Falls Through
Jared Povanda With angular gaps in the branches. Light everywhere. In my hair, on my skin, claws of it and petals. A […]
Rama Lama Ding Dong
Sutton Strother On the album cover the Rock Star reaches out, so you take his hand and pull him free, out of […]
Sitting on a Stool by a Bar
Jesse Millner Once I saw a man punch a homeless guy in the face.It was afternoon. It was the mid-1980s. It was […]
The Avenue of Slurred Dreams
by Jesse Millner It was cold then, mid-1980s, Chicago—authentic winter with below zero daysand the wizardry of turquoise ice alongthe lake, shaped […]
What Butch Says
Tania Hershman Butch says I need to watch everything you do. I say, But he’s just sitting there. Butch slaps my back. […]
Cosmic Lovecraftian Love
Wyatt Winnie Saturn ringsaround cul-de-sacs,adhesive radio wavesjamming, jamming transmissions fromNeptune to Mercury searchingfor staticky reception andconfirmation of alien life. She’s wrapped hertentacles […]
Corona Legal
Wyatt Winnie They’re out of horchata againand I don’t know how to tellthe othersI’m not Corona legal,at least not in this state […]
Each Breath a Chain
Sara Hills After school and on Saturdays we couple up and make-out under the overpass in the middle of town—under shirts, over […]
Addressing her inner voices
Shannon Kenny I have a thick skinbut the patriots and bigotsare wearing it thin.The blood of the world is all over my […]
U.I.
Frank McHugh Universal indicator of right, wrong,good, bad, life or death. Of course,no-one nowadays can make a decisionso the digit wavers, not […]
Running
Julia Kelly And we ran through the streets, stars like comets streaking the black sky, two girls laughing, pounding the concrete through […]
Plastic
Nora Nadjarian I’ve spoken to thousands of art dealers listed in the yellow pages. I’ve turned the thin pages and made over […]
Star Fall
Joyce Wheatley There was the “fall.” “Dropped on her head as a baby,” Mama said. Nothing congenital. Nothing genetic. An accident. Story […]
The Vampire Visits The Bog
Meg Mulcahy We sit ditch-side in curdled breeze and watch as curlews tango in briar and thorn. Bodies like mine are made […]
There; Fixed.
Amanda Wilkins Our dirt smelled different, I say.Rust and library paste,Ground up talons and the blood of mice.Sure, it had the same […]
Last Night I Dreamed
Jesse Millner of Chicago back in the 1980s when I drank shots and beers with Polacks and Puerto Ricans in West Side […]
The Chair
by Jesse Millner The neighbors are Labor Day loud now that the rain has driven them in from the golf course. Why […]
The Salvation of the Loud Refrigerator
by Jesse Millner Having your wife leave you is exhausting.The moon still rises and falls outside& the Florida heat kicks your ass […]
Four Houses Ago, Early Morning
Sidney Dritz Ugly little dinosaurs, thoseprehistoric wonders onthe back porch, thosethree-toed feet pebbled andstrange in the sun, bobbingalong with those stunted,immobile wings, […]
