A New Literary Journal

Poems

Arachne

I know the spider in the fire pit, / There, scrambling along the circle of steel, / Will be past my tracking gaze soon, the heat / Will have its way with it before its will

By D. Eric Parkison · April 2026

Prose

Demiurge

In the Winter and Spring Trimesters of my freshman year at Saint Joseph's School for Boys, I looked out the window of my room in Morse Hall every night expecting to see a mushroom cloud.

By Daniel Sipes · April 2026

Poems

Spiritus Sanctus

Cleanse this soul with the holy froth of undulant seas; the balm of astral dust

By John Muro · April 2026

Prose

Margaret's Song

The first time I met Margaret, she was ankle deep in a pile of fertilizer. Those aren't coming off you, I thought to myself. I wanted to say it out loud but was too afraid to speak.

By Lauren Sklarz · March 2026

Prose

Trap

The house is tense and dark. She doesn’t look me in the eye anymore.

By Marc Cozza · March 2026

Poems

April Fool

April cruelty uncommon/ Thy fetching glance invites my hand/ As if to turn the floor with thee

By Steve Bucher · March 2026

Poems

Ash Wednesday, after T.S. Eliot

I cannot repent for all of this. The river rising to bury the mountain, the newborn wailing unheard in the desert.

By Erika Takacs · March 2026

Prose

Window on the Boulevard

Fee Calder hadn't seen the woman in the modern house across the street for months. Fee initially watched the house because she didn't like it.

By Claire Bezdek Gochal · March 2026

Poems

Ash Wednesday

Ashes on the subway, silent fraternity of the believing, the warmongers are building up their reserves, sending the tankers and the carriers into place.

By Nora Rawn · March 2026

Poems

Salotto

Look at your hand now, and intuit the difference between here an what stood straight to your right within a single glance.

By Anton Ivanov · March 2026

Prose

Clay Arthur

When the earth eats you up as it is liable to in these parts you never really stop dying. You get swallowed up by God and you’ll just keep on dying over and over as the mud and the bugs reclaim you and make you theirs.

By Cecilia O'Mara · March 2026

Poems

If Love Was a Gentle Thing

I remember what you said by the pecan tree: there ain't nobody here but us Gods.

By Kitty Saint-Remy · March 2026

Essays

(They Long To Be) Close To You

The horror, sincerity, and dissociative miasma of 20th century womanhood writ in Todd Haynes' Superstar: The Karen Carpenter Story.

By Audrey Robinovitz · March 2026

Prose

The Old Dispensation

There was a Birth, certainly. We had evidence and no doubt. I had seen birth and death, but had thought they were different; this Birth was Hard and bitter agony for us, like Death, our death.

By Naomi Leigh · February 2026