The Blue Bull of Bayou Bonne Chance
Maidencane isn’t half as elegant as it sounds. Not even close. When I came across the plant’s name in a copy of Gulf Coast Flora I had checked out…
2019 Salamander Fiction Contest Winners
Very excited to announce the finalists and winners of our 2019 Fiction Contest, judged by Wayétu Moore. Thanks so much to all the contest entrants for such high-quality work, to…
Salamander Fiction Contest 2019 Results
Winner Christina Leo, "The Blue Bull" Second Place Michael Howerton, "Hopewell" Finalists Catalina Bode, "A Bedroom in the Kitchen" Shubha Venugopal, "Belonging" Steven Fromm, "Po-Ya 6" Ethan Feuer, "Quartering winds"…
The Art of Seeing: The Arrangements by Kate Colby
The Arrangements by Kate Colby (Four Way Books, 2018). “Were we born with eyes / or when we saw ourselves // seeing?” Kate Colby asks in “The Beholder,”…
Take Me Home, Country Roads: Let Me Out Here: Stories by Emily W. Pease
Let Me Out Here: Stories by Emily W. Pease (Hub City Press, 2019). If the cover image of Emily W. Pease’s new short story collection—a stone-faced little girl…
No Other Way Out of Away: House is an Enigma by Emma Bolden
House is an Enigma by Emma Bolden (Southeast Missouri State University Press, 2018). Emma Bolden’s House is an Enigma lives inside a continual unfolding, moving fluidly and fluently…
Stinging Nettles: Bad Harvest by Dzvinia Orlowsky
Bad Harvest by Dzvinia Orlowsky (Carnegie Mellon Press, 2018). The title of Dzvinia Orlowsky’s sixth book, Bad Harvest, evokes the Holodomor, the man-made famine that affected and killed…
On Skyline Boulevard
As we snake up through redwoods into the thickening gold haze, my brother the firefighter wonders how long to get a first responder out here, where the sheer gravel…
Easter 2016
We go to Golden Gate Park to have a picnic. Find a patch that is empty, our clearing. Don’t realize until a ball almost bursts the bottle of Bulleit…
Morning Begins with Dark
thunderstorms forming, kids out of school and off to camp, brand new ringtones loaded on phones. Another famous overdose, another fading star on trial, a governor-gone-wild all sexier stories…
Plum Brandy
after Edouard Manet A young woman with a cigarette—perhaps a prostitute! Or maybe she’s a “shopgirl hoping for company,” but either way, she’s not an upper-class lady, sitting…