Salamander 2024 Fiction Contest

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

SUBMIT ENTRIES NOW

Dear Andy (12)

poetry
  —from The Warhol Letters   I’ve become obsessed with bears & I hear you laughing at me through a veil   of Fire Island sweat & zinc oxide. Summer…

Standard Oil

poetry
  There’s nothing here to see. Relax. Beside a Coke machine, a guy who acts As if he’s in a movie Puffs on a Marlboro Light. It’s moody; Nothing’s happening…

Crystal Vision in Spring

poetry
  The city turns perfume shop. I can’t think at all with the jasmine so thick. Angels circle me like sharks, waiting for sweat or tears, anything wet and bodily.…

On the Brink of Our Extinction

poetry
  On the brink of our extinction, the milk in the fridge had not yet spoiled. We ate olives with our fingers, swallowed cold beer, thought little of our health.…

Everything’s Fine & Fucked

poetry
  I just can’t remember the saint whose name I took at my ‘04 Confirmation. Last year one friend took Hildegard. She’s a library scientist. This year another took Dymphna.…

Andromeda

poetry
  We used to think it was a nebula, and there was a time when people didn’t believe in germs. Of course, almost all the dishes ever made have broken,…

—From the Atomic Sonnets series

poetry
  😯 :: { Every Bond You Break}   & when they are all gone, the horses will open their great, great body. Two suns. One red. & one blue.…

{You Love Him— Don’t You—}

poetry
  You love him, don’t you, & from zero, zero, zero. Like photons flitting in the abyss, only shall two Lay waste this world wretched &— x oh oh oh.…

Poet Wrestling with an Ode to Her Brother

poetry
  —after The Cranberries   I never made it through a single night. It wasn’t without design. The brxght. Brxght xyxs. & still the border. Night. ++++++Unfurls.   +++:: &…

Against Sentimentality

poetry
  I’m told I’m roller skating in the oldest punk house in America. I want to believe it, but I don’t. We all want to be the biggest, the best,…

This Unkindness

poetry
  You’ve got to hand it to them, the ravens. They live just about anywhere—a garbage dump in the Mojave Desert, base camp on Mount Everest, or atop the water…

Extant/Extinct

poetry
  Crush the cockroach but not the ant, not the bees buzzing by   your palm about to press into mine, not the legs   of centipedes caressing concrete, not…