Tag: midwest
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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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“Passing Whimsy” by Angela Townsend
Mullet has passed. Mullet was the color of a circus peanut and too shy to enjoy being enjoyed. Mullet’s heart misfired. Mullet’s death made eighteen people cry. Mullet’s name was a housewarming gift from the whimsy people. Animal shelter staff gnaw comedy like a protein bar. They name cats for ill-advised haircuts. They blow cool,…
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“Generation Facilitator” by Cristine Emerson
Sterile, she rides the airheavy with ingredientsfor new generationsof cotton and serviceberry,stamens and pistilsunable to touchwithout caresses ofa third party,and drunk, finds warmpillows inside purple petals. CJ Emerson is an writer and artist who enjoys all the magic and weirdness the natural world and human experience has to offer.
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“The Japanese Beetle War” by Karen W. Burton
Japanese beetles hummed about my head, their iridescent thoraxes reflecting the summer sun. I closed my eyes and decided they were humming in the key of C sharp. I stood in their chorus and the sweltering heat while I considered my problem from different perspectives: Poetically: Rainbows were feasting on my blossoms Scientifically: popillia japonica…
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Announcing Our Pushcart Prize Nominations
Ope here, Get in here! Come on in, you’ll catch a cold! Close the door behind you. Have a sit! Take a seat. Gosh, it’s been a while, huh? We have a lot of catchin’ up to do, you and me. A lot’s been happenin’ at Skipjack camp. Have you seen Issue 1? Darn purdy,…
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“Ode on a Trilobite” – Paulette Guerin
Antennae curving like scythes,they once moved like excited pupswaiting for their owner to arrive.This Cambrian creaturepatrolled the darkest seas,growing up to six feet long.But this one fits in my hand.Mid-curl, forever in chase,its eyeless carbon ghost lives on.Oh, ancestor of today’s cockroach,once the height of the food chain,teach me about impermanence! Paulette Guerin lives in…
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Laura McHugh: An Interview with the author of “What’s Done in Darkness”
Anybody who’s ever called the Ozarks home shares a particular heritage with the land itself in a way that is unique from the rest of the world. Almost a stereotype, we Ozarkians grew up catching lightning bugs, climbing trees, and tearing through the hills barefoot. We are born of honeysuckle and dogwood and baptized in…
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#amwriting #exorcisms
It occurred to me during a recent bout of creative drought that I’m most involved and even prolific when I’m writing about things that are difficult to talk about or for which I lack the right audience. Morbid as it may be, the more whatever I’m working on seems capable of making somebody else squirm…
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#amwriting
When you don’t know what to write, write. Right? Well—that’s kind of like somebody saying, “Cheer up,” when you’re down in the dumps. Down there, usually we’re not asking for help. Writing can be like that. We understand intellectually that we should just cheer up (or just write), it’s what we want, in fact. Or…
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Five Journals to Submit Nature Writing
Reckoning This stellar publisher has an other-worldly love of the natural world, showcasing both literary and genre work. Like Skipjack Review, Reckoning does not limit themselves to literary phenomenon and seeks to publish “cli-fi” and other sorts of slippery, slipstream writing in addition to traditional narrative styles. https://reckoning.press/ Split Rock Review SRR is creating quite…
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The Pouting Trout Life Jacket
Good morning and good day, you pretty, shiny fishes and creatures. This is the Pouting Trout. Feel the sun’s healing and know it is a new and better day. I just wanted to let you know I am out here. I am listening. I know what you’re going through, and I know it isn’t easy,…
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Concerning Cannabis
Weeks into the legalization of marijuana in Missouri, it’s as if we’ve entered into a brave new world. Change is in the air—change, and a lot else, mind you.
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#amwriting
Failures, rejections, and efforts that don’t take flight are our best teachers—though rarely do we learn anything in the moment from such lessons. We just feel the sting. If we’re lucky, criticism is punctuated with admiration and we receive some kind of insight about how to improve a manuscript, for example, but the days of…
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Salad Daze: The War on Drugs vs. the Legalization of Weed in Missouri
I’ll never forget the first few times I saw marijuana when I was a kid. Usually, it was hidden somewhere I shouldn’t have been looking or wasn’t expected to look.
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Five Journals to Submit Unconventional Work
Ope! Excuse me! Check out this list of literary journals I fancy.
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Who is Skipjack?
Who’s askin’? Skipjack asks the questions. A better question is, Who’s Ope? Skipjack is the fringes itself, the outer limits, the abyss staring back after you’ve stared long enough. Wait—what was the question? Here, hit this. Conceived in early 2022 at the River Pretty Writer’s Retreat in the Missouri Ozarks, USA, Skipjack Review is named…
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Ope!
We all know about skipjack herrings and their obsession with those lights we see at night. You’re probably thinking we’re a little silly, throwing our bodies and everything we’ve got at what amounts to nothing more than an idea, or a curiosity. None of us knows what’s waiting for us up in space, and thus…
the water and the gills 