Salamander 2024 Fiction Contest

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

SUBMIT ENTRIES NOW

Pitch

poetry
  In the heat I hobbled             on my phantom limb.             Bark where a pulse should have splintered.  …

Small God

poetry
  Small enough to crawl in through the pet door to my mind when I’m all locked, so small You nest a migraine in my pillow, gall my hallways like…

Cartoons in Red and Blue

poetry
  A boy is coloring a picture of his family, but he only has two crayons.   If he makes his father’s face blue, he must draw his eyes red.…

virginity

poetry
  Since he had a girlfriend (now gay), we met just inside the chapel doors, only to descend the stairs separately, like spies, or, in truth, I forget, but I…

Maqloobah

poetry
  after Allison Wilkins I cannot tell you how the olive oil is first harvested from my neighbor’s trees. How the cauliflower is cut into bouquets, eggplant sliced and divided…

Calligraphy

poetry
  Arabic of the hair of my husband’s chest each year a new phrase   aquamarines in my hair tremors of light my husband’s diamond mind,   Gift us, O…

Trees Lie Broken Everywhere

poetry
  I was visiting the capital city of Slovenia, passing through the park. At the edge was a man selling chestnuts, sitting on a bag of chestnuts, inhaling a cigarette…

In the Computer, a Cave

poetry
  for Darach   So quickly, this child learns the ways of swipe and scroll. We find him, hiding behind the sofa with a small screen, his little fingers far…

Nothing Dramatic Now

poetry
  Night after night this waking, suddenly middle-aged and barely able to drag myself to the kitchen, finding it hard to be in night’s gulf with so much blatant wanting,…

Salted Apple

poetry
  The feel of a sheet is called the hand. The feel of a hand is called a plan. Paris is a plan. His petunias are a plan. After the…

Have Two

poetry
  Chatsworth Estate, Derbyshire England, May 2012   Having left London to see what was demolished in 1920, which was the world’s largest greenhouse.   Having found in its place a hedge…