Author: skipjackreview
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Revelations, Renovations, and Cold Hard Cash
Hello, Dear Chum, As you may have noticed, we’ve had a submissions makeover. Eyes up here, please. Yes, we’ve been changing some things. For one thing, we’re now accepting submissions through Submittable. For another, we’re now a paying market. Actually, 2025 marks our third year awarding the Dead Herring Prize to writing that slays real…
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A Conversation with Mary Collins
Jim: The river has always been my happy place. Any river. Anywhere. However, one specific region always comes to mind: the Dora, MO area, where there are as many watering holes as names in the phonebook. I was fortunate enough to call Dora “home” for a number of years. Mary and I were even neighbors…
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“Portages” by Rebecca Callahan
They portaged into the Minnesota wilderness for six hours that day. They carried the heavy canoe through the narrow, wooded trails, sometimes a mile or more, until they could put it into the water again. Each time they came to another portage, where shallow rapids flowed over exposed rocks, they climbed out of the canoe…
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“River” by Peter Cashorali
The final piece is our dying. Not hurried to or gotten through, Not flinched from though if so That’s part of it too. As if the end of the river Wasn’t a falls or an ocean But the entire river, A single word of everything, Seen and read and taken in. As if it was…
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“The Creek in Winter” by Mary Ellen Shaughan
She places one foot down, then the other, gleaming blades meet glistening ice. After a few tentative strides, she stretches her legs, then pushes, soon finding her rhythm, propelling her forward, away from the creek’s bank where tufts of brown grass tremble, following the meandering path as it bisects snow-covered fields. Her blades chatter over…
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A Texas Gulf Coast Baptism
is a momentous affair. Veneration drives steaming bodies into revelrous, unsurvivable throngs. Humidity compounds, heat makes us suffer, and wind-whipped children play house on the sand. I’ve walked all the way here with a bag in my pocket to collect washed up trash: bottle caps, fishing line, wedding rings. A baby cries and it sounds…
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A CONVERSATION WITH MARCUS CAFAGÑA
Poet extraordinaire and all-around good guy, Marcus Cafagña, has seen his poetry published in hundreds of magazines across the country, including AGNI, Witness, Poetry Magazine, Ploughshares, American Poetry Review, and on and on and on. His first book, The Broken World, was selected for the National Poetry Series. In a review of The Broken World,…
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“Chipmunk Summer” by Ed Ahern
Chipmunks have reentered my stone walls and flitter-twitch across the open grass guessing that a thing as grossly large as me cannot be a healthy coexistence. They dart into the spaces between rocks, suspicious little sentinels intent on their anonymity. I could with time and guile persuade them to take peanuts from my fingers, but…
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Announcing the Winner of the 2024 Dead Herring Prize
Ho ho ho-ly mackerel, it’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas! Gridlock as far as the eye can see. The smell of burning money in the air. There’s a negativity scene at every grocery store. A baby in a manager. Yuletide insults being slung by a guy dressed like he just left the gym.…
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Announcing Our Nominations for The Pushcart Prize
Hello, Dear Chum, Thanks for stopping by! It’s good to see you. It’s been a busy year—but the year isn’t over yet! We’re roughly a month away from the release of Issue 4, a whopping triple-issue print anthology featuring the best of the year, the winner of our annual Dead Herring Prize, and a whole…
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That Which
Dear Writer, Today I am reminded why we write and that the how of it is irrelevant when it comes to doing the deed. Sure, there are a great many qualities effective works do and do not possess (most of which we all tend to agree on), but it’s worth remembering first and foremost that…
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“Lofgeornost” by Eric Fisher Stone
Beowulf’s last word means most eager for glory,though the gulf coast toad seeks anonymityand crickets juicy as mangos. Wartedlike some goblin dumpling, your soft stone sits in moss-slick ditches, your eyelidshelming black mirrors to marsh grasswhere Grendel might burble upfrom salted Texas jetties. Teach us your humility, jumping plum, rubbingbetween streams without seeking powerbeyond the…
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“The Sky is Falling” by Morganne Howell
2006 “What are you worried about?” my mother asks me across the patio table. She looks at my father for reassurance, who studies his stein. Charred fragments of the forest float down from the overcast sky and land in the crisp foam of his beer. He picks them out with a finger and wipes his…
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Best of the Net Nominations
It’s that time of year, friends! No, I don’t mean fall. I don’t mean Halloween. Certainly not Christmas! Best of the Net nominations! Unfortunately, Issue 1.3 came out a little later than expected and falls outside the window of consideration, but work featured in our first two issues were fair game! Without further ado, here…
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“November Garden” by Ronald Geigle
The poet in the November gardenseeks words that rhyme with spring. Lumps of marigold,browns of spent peony underfoot. On the poet’s tongue, rebirth.On the garden’s veil, a hint of tomorrow’s frost. The garden folds its arms inward.Wishes the poet to take his blooming hope elsewhere. Ronald Geigle is a writer and poet living in Arlington, Virginia. His work has been…
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“Sinking Feeling” by Alice Lowe
In an Ursula LeGuin story written in the seventies and set in an unspecified future time, Manhattan is under eleven feet of water at low tide, and oyster beds occupy San Francisco’s Ghirardelli Square. That’s fiction, but it’s a fact that New York City is sinking under its own weight. Relentless construction—the city’s million-plus-and-ever-increasing buildings…
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“Woodstove” by Nicole Chvatal Poem
The methodology for his laundrystill makes me laugh and cringe and laugh againthat I am no longer faced with the moundsof heavy denim, wool river driverswith seed-sized burn holes and necklines fraying,air-drying from every door jamb like longbeans on the vine, even during summerthe fire going. First I ate it uplike caterpillar, what are these…
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Jon Zawislak: An Interview with the assistant professor of Apiculture and Urban Entomology
FEATURED IN SKIPJACK REVIEW, ISSUE #2 For this special, Bugs-themed issue of Skipjack Review, we set out on a quest to have a heart to heart with an Ozarks entomology expert. But where to start? We’re happy to report that there are a surprisingly many incredible humans up to some fascinating and niche studies and…
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“Late September” by Paulette Guerin
The last cicada is sputtering out.Probably a male calling for a mateas autumn moves in. The buzz starts and stopsand pushes forward like an old crank car.This year, no tidal wave of cicada songas in the summers of my childhood.This year, no water and only suburb grass.The dragonflies have died and the mosquitoes with them.Then…
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“Why We Pray” by Will Falk
We should have known – whenpollution turned the sun purpleand even the honest horizonshazed over – that we were trappedbetween the two halves ofthe last summer solstice.“Half day, half night,part Earth, part sky”was an eerie rhymechanted by passing timeas it dragged us alongto neither cold darknor scorching light,but blank, hatefulindifferent gray.But those moments thatalways flee…
the water and the gills 