Salamander 2024 Fiction Contest

SUBMIT: May 1 through June 2, 2024 | READING FEE: $15

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The End of History

poetry
  History, I say, with its high ramparts, its engraved swords. I say the bees are falling from the skies, the apple blossoms will not come into bloom this year…

Where the empty cartons go

poetry
  1 Rain in an unused pool   Lack of attention is a kind of dirtying.   We are tension stretch. We are land filled   beyond our fill. A…

Wildfire

poetry
  We watch lit horizon for a signal. When it comes, the sky looks like rainclouds, except heavier, funneling upwards, dragon-shaped smoke over mountains. Flames. The opposite of rain. We’re…

Narrative

poetry
  How are the dots connecting? I know how my taste is formed. It’s already on the first page if you see the world in stories, as I do.  …

Bedroom in Arles

poetry
  In my hour to read Sweetman’s Van Gogh, order seeds for the garden, frame a print, I stood instead at a window, watching you children wild with joy at…

Night Poem

poetry
  Your body diminished at my touch. It hurt, though who I’m not sure. Don’t stop loving me I said, being brave. But it was a dream—love, and my speaking…

I Dreamed I Forgot

poetry
  I dreamed I forgot who I was—the last woman to love you. You knew me as a girl, when joy was edgeless, and required no work. Cinquefoil in the…

Night Poem

poetry
  The wind gossips, though most everything stays sleeping, the stars in the black pouch of heaven, stones, the unexceptional foliage, poor wind with so much to say and no…

Life as a Mirror

poetry
  It was a relationship of listening. Listening while we ate dinner or sat on the couch. Listening while you answered my questions. Listening while you complained about your ex-girlfriends.…