Salamander 2024 Fiction Contest

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

SUBMIT ENTRIES NOW

Origin Story

poetry
  could have been raven scraping her beak against granite sparking or dipping crane stirring death from waters dumb floated mush on surface we circulate to shore gather sticks that…

Hummingbirds

poetry
  Hummingbirds are flying to Mexico and out of the blue a postcard, a photographic grid of recent life—you in sunglasses, a giant cactus, children in their striped suits poolside—…

Questions

poetry
  She imagines it is the day she is born. What does she want? What does it cost to be real? Isn’t the wind the breath of the earth? Will…

Dream with Whale

poetry
  I enter the mouth of the whale. I am the mother-to-be carried   by night. A slow swallowing, down the throat my plump body   goes. Into the hollow,…

Step

poetry
  In each of us there is a girl always wanting more and in her wanting becomes someone no one wants to help. Not mice in the board room where…

Over Breakfast

poetry
  She tongues French toast to her left cheek. Mom, she says, there’s a bug on the floor by the fridge. There it is, I say, a stink bug. Chew…

1963

poetry
  When the classroom’s somber loudspeaker voice said “our president,” was I the only one . . . surely I wasn’t the only one thinking our student body president had…

The Driveway

poetry
  I. You and your mother sit on the futon and watch Twelve Angry Men*. She tells you she has been looking forward to this. Lately, you have taken to…

The Root of All

poetry
  burns a hole in your head sprouts wings and flies won’t bark up the right unless you shell out or marry it hand over fist penny wise or not…

Diet

poetry
  I After working out, I stop by the café across the street that stays open late and I sit at the bar in a favorite spot. I am thirsty…