Salamander 2025 Fiction Contest

SUBMIT: May 1 through June 1, 2025 | READING FEE: $20

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Taking Stock

Kate Hubbard
| poetry

 

I assure you that I still love you. It is the truth
but it is also threadbare, a warm bowl of soup
waiting at our empty table, above the ruts dug
by years of chair legs scraping in and out,
across the floor. The sour musk of wet wool
on the radiator lingers and from my window
I can only see the back of the stop sign, snow
slouching down the post, but I’m sure
its face is still red. I never have to ask.

Kate Hubbard teaches creative writing to children in East Haven, CT, where she lives with her family. She has an MFA in poetry from New England College. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Poetry, Sun, The Florida Review, New Ohio Review, North American Review, Hole in the Head Review, among others.

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