Did I Mention
a box of frogs arrived one day at our front door, special delivery? My dad had ordered them. Laboratory frogs, he called them. Said they were ours; we could…
The House of Bees
My father’s childhood home was condemned a few years before. Looking at the simple house, above us on the slight hill, I wanted to enter, except my tía stopped…
El Chupacabra Visits Chicago
I find disappointment in the Midwest—how they keep wanting me to be Mothman. We both wear red eyes and wings, but I take no joy in knocking down bridges…
The Costume Shop
Inside the mask, hot with my own breath and the toxic smell of cheap rubber, I look through eye-holes into the mirror and see a predictably demented clown. …
My friend, America
I get it. There is nothing inherently creepy about an empty swing swinging on an abandoned playground. But the ghost pushing it is a problem. You remind of my…
Salamander Fiction Contest 2020 Results
Winner Jinwoo Chong, "The Lesser Light of Dying Stars" Jinwoo Chong is currently an MFA candidate for fiction at Columbia University, where he serves as Online Editor for Columbia…
Living for the Very Last Time: Requiem with an Amulet in Its Beak
Requiem with an Amulet in Its Beak by Elizabeth Knapp (Washington Writers’ Publishing House, 2019). In her second poetry collection, Requiem with an Amulet in Its Beak, Elizabeth…
Mind as Aperture: Be with Me Always by Randon Billings Noble
Be with Me Always by Randon Billings Noble (University of Nebraska Press, 2019). “But then I met J, and my heart emptied its pockets,” writes Randon Billings Noble…
Save Us From Ourselves: Orders of Protection by Jenn Hollmeyer
Orders of Protection by Jenn Hollmeyer (University of North Texas Press, 2019). When Salamander first published Jenn Hollmeyer’s short story “Step Off at Ten” in the spring of…
Human Touch: Sex & Taipei City by Yu-Han Chao
Sex & Taipei City by Yu-Han Chao (Red Hen Press, 2019). The Taipei of Yu-Han Chao’s debut story collection Sex & Taipei City both bustles and glistens. It’s…
The Eye of the Hagstone
The Black River ripples up from the limestone beneath the Ozark Mountains. Standing in its shallows, watching small fry dash and school just beyond the ripples of my steps,…
Mr. Forble
The trees seemed to hunch closer as darkness fell. Something—a mouse, or maybe a squirrel—emitted a high-pitched shriek, and Marta startled. An owl, she thought. The notion of…