New World Writing Quarterly

NWWQ April 2024 sub­mis­sions close 4/14/24. We will next accept sub­mis­sions July 1–14, 2024. Note that we do not accept sub­mis­sions between issues. We thank all who sub­mit­ted to this –more

The clown sang from a kitchen chair she moved in front of our piti­ful water­fall, a rivulet, not a riv­er, and shoved air into her accor­dion in whin­ing accom­pa­ni­ment. O‑ee, she sang, or some­thing in French, her not-native lan­guage but one she affect­ed –more

Before the Mojave, when the uni­form peo­ple came to take Mom and Dad away, we lived in a dif­fer­ent kind of desert—still in the California no one thinks about when they think of California. Everyone called this desert SB, –more

There’s a girl out walk­ing her dog. I’m out walk­ing myself. I live in the sub­urbs at the foot of the San Gabriels. I don’t rec­og­nize her. She’s not one of the usu­als. I don’t see many peo­ple when I walk. She’s –more

When I moved back home I had noth­ing to do, nobody to see, nowhere to go. In the apart­ment over mine some­one vac­u­umed at night. At first I thought it was an insect that lived between the floors, but there was no sense in that, –more

(A short sto­ry suite)

1. Except for Love

When I WhatsApped my moth­er ear­li­er today, she did some­thing she hadn’t done for years, ever since the onset of her demen­tia. She was try­ing to recite a poem. This poem was old­er than even her nine­ty-three –more

The last time they’d inves­ti­gat­ed one of these it had end­ed well enough, the offi­cers dis­cov­er­ing that the elder­ly occu­pant wasn’t dead at all but instead had run off to a bun­co tour­na­ment with a hair­dress­er –more

Cannon Fire

My father’s wise words swung through the air like claw ham­mers hop­ing they might find a nail, might build some­thing. I kept out of the way of all that star­tled air, always hop­ing for “miss­es.”  My mother’s –more

In 1848, when gold was dis­cov­ered at
Sutter’s Mill in the foothills of the Sierra
Nevada, that fact attract­ed thousands
seek­ing to sep­a­rate min­ers from their
nuggets: a more cere­bral type of sifting.

Petite Eleanore Dumont, whose origins
are –more

Children’s Game

I want­ed to write about our trip to Paris:
Seventy-two hours, with­out sleep — unless
you count pass­ing out in the Louvre,
against The Borghese Vase, until a guard
nudged us awake with the toe of his well-pol­ished
–more

I was prob­a­bly eleven when my father start­ed spin­ning plates. He’d been watch­ing The Ed Sullivan Show and in between Petula Clark and Sergio Franchi, there was a man, all tuxed-up, spin­ning fif­teen plates, five –more

I peer up and down the cere­al aisle at Piggly Wiggly to make sure I’m alone.  Then I lift down the oblong box of Corn Flakes and tuck its noisy con­tents deep inside the pock­et of my late husband’s trench coat.  –more

The first time you go to the hos­pi­tal, there is much to learn. I don’t mean how to knock the bub­bles out of your insulin syringe, although this is use­ful information.

I mean the def­i­n­i­tion of “grits,” a gig­gly noun that –more

Notes: Most peo­ple do not know how to tell the dif­fer­ence between the male and female robin. The female has a black head. Think of some­thing so black your foot might be sucked into its void, like oil or oily –more

 “…pre­tend you’re a bar­tender in the tav­ern of life. “ – James McBride, Guernica

I. Natural Causes

Accident, Suicide, and Murder walk into a bar. The bar­tender says: hey, you look famil­iar. Especially, you, ges­tur­ing at –more

Hogweed

His unbuck­ling of belt
Her buck­ling of knees
Buckles around my horse’s girth
His clever bloat
The slow slip of saddle
that some­times top­ples me
How easy I fall
to land in a field among
lace of –more

Ever since she left her hus­band, Kit has been rid­ing the train. She gets on at the sta­tion down the street from the one-bed­room she can’t real­ly afford, in the direc­tion of New York City. The train is already quite full –more

We wait­ed for the trains. The stolen match­es we struck burned out across the tracks. Our father packed sleeves of crack­ers in a plas­tic bag and told us to come home in the morn­ing. Mother was away again. This time, maybe Memphis. –more

They kept the cir­cum­stances of his dying to them­selves: what he said and what he did. The way the nurs­es looked at each oth­er. The way the anti­sep­tic air hung heavy in the room. Who was clos­est when they gath­ered in a cir­cle –more

He was hun­gry for news. It was cold and he was read­ing Wittgenstein. Wondering if a weed was a tree. If all hous­es were hous­es. If he, in fact, was him­self. Some peo­ple had been avoid­ing him. Refusing his entreaties. Leaving –more