Salamander 2024 Fiction Contest

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

SUBMIT ENTRIES NOW

Liar, Liar

poetry
  I was another story.   Nothing awarded with ribbons or scrapbooks, nothing to please the eye.   I grew but never did I thrive.   Instead I was stealth…

Bedroom in a Borrowed City

poetry
  Between the four walls of fable and four shelves of forgotten books,   back of stairs that double back to earth, above the grimed arc of the kitchen,  …

What Does a Little Hospital Poem Taste Of

poetry
  At first, immunizations & cherry lollipops. Scales, stethoscopes, Disposable bedding. Formica & triage rooms. The delayed ache Of epidurals & birth. Latex gloves. Barium. The occasional mistaken Stone &…

Big Old

poetry
  Big old heron fishes midstream, wading as through a time slower than the Susquehanna’s hours upon years upon stone, so when he flies I almost panic after all this…

Raft

poetry
In the dream or half-dream half waking I was filling a book with writing about a child’s survival, and longing. As I kept writing the book grew thicker. What were…

I Gave Him the Moon

poetry
  —with thanks to Geoff Notkin   —a piece of it, lunar rock, gingerly, as directed. I gave him the moon, or as we call it, mah, the H heard…

Parenthesis Enclosing Empty Space

poetry
    You were my Persephone until you abducted yourself. From me. Gone (    ) Where? Why? How? Who are you? My body echoes with your absence, with once-and-lost inflections.…

Elegy as Long as a Summer

poetry
  Summer burned easily. And everyone had something to say. The rock said, be finished with sweetness. The tree said, repeat like a lie. The ground said, a mouse is…

With Nuts

Fiction
  When you hit a jogger with your 4-Runner and he gets up and runs away, turning to say, Hey, I’m OK! as he disappears into the night, it’s logical…