Stirring

"...darkness as x, y as where this is headed. Fall harder for bad girl me & draw black nails through mystery. Shut your starsick heart up." – T. Dallas Saylor (@dallas_saylor) stirringlit.com/vol-25-ed-1-p-…

"They say there is only one rule: The headlights must recede into the fog. And if the sun is your headlight? You are walking, then. The fog recedes into your headlight." – Nicholas Molbert (@nicholasmolbert) stirringlit.com/vol-25-ed-1-p-…

"After five years, we let the dark undress us still. To see each other unclothed would be a concession. You in your ragged sleep shirt with holes at the underarms." – Nicholas Molbert (@nicholasmolbert) stirringlit.com/vol-25-ed-1-p-…

"I text 'The Moon!' and she knows this means, 'Go outside!' She knows this means, 'The universe is beautiful, isn’t it?' She knows this means, 'I miss you. I love you.'" – Joseph Mills stirringlit.com/vol-25-ed-1-p-…

"...two women fought with coat hangers down at Filene’s Basement. They’d grabbed the same dress from the tangle of satin during the Running of the Brides sale: a back buttoned ivory lace thing" – Jennifer Martelli (@Martelli89) stirringlit.com/vol-25-ed-1-p-…

"...three greedy girl ghosts full of shame, three women transformed into deep gorges with a river like a blue snake crawling, three women transformed into three wolves, three gun-metal wolves who gorged on three women." – Jennifer Martelli (@Martelli89) stirringlit.com/vol-25-ed-1-p-…

"I am ready to party with ten billion members of my closest family the moon’s red clay the sky a lavender making me uncomfortable" – James Croal Jackson (@Jimjakk) stirringlit.com/vol-25-ed-1-p-…

"You feed the pinewood mason bee, take over my lawn, choke out bergamot and blazing star, those native flowers I cultivate in vain. There will always be more of you than I can ever remove, and yet you are my favorite weed to pull." – KateLynn Hibbard stirringlit.com/vol-25-ed-1-p-…

"the gulls pooled in odd places, scraping their pale fingers on the cashmere lamp of the earth. Inside my lightning all the women smile, their furious lips hoarding spoons like a late martyr who dances in her one good dress..." – KateLynn Hibbard stirringlit.com/vol-25-ed-1-p-…

"you can only perceive bleary, wheat fields blurred by high-speed, distance. The landscape gone gold, the way you used to picture it: egg yolk, amber, honeycomb… that is, once-you, the figment thick with wistfulness." – Violeta Garcia-Mendoza stirringlit.com/vol-25-ed-1-p-…

"Blame the fog. In another life, I might have been the veil scraping against the corners of a sooted city or the slice of lamplight or the galloping black." – Violeta Garcia-Mendoza stirringlit.com/vol-25-ed-1-p-…

"To kill a lionfish in the Western Atlantic is to save a snapper, grouper, someone's legitimate dinner. Is to manage the species’ insatiable appetite, rare as sashimi. Is to mitigate an unfolding tragedy." – Sarah Carey (@SayCarey1) stirringlit.com/vol-25-ed-1-p-…

A big congratulations to contributor @AnnaLauraReeve for winning the Beloit Poetry Journal's Adrienne Rich award! Check out her piece in Stirring! And once again, amazing work! stirringlit.com/vol-24-ed-2-p-…

“I plug my ears with headphones and walk myself to the woods, nearly trotting as I pass blackened trunks, step over thin shoots of green, move in and out of shadow. She speaks and my breath slows.” -Angie Minkin stirringlit.com/vol-24-ed-4-p-…

“so to this day I can’t eat fish without first shredding it, searching for what may not be there, still hearing in my father’s caution not quite fear, almost love.” -Diane Leblanc stirringlit.com/vol-24-ed-4-p-…

“I had imagined doing it myself. So I could see the draw. Like bobbing for apples in a bucket of napalm, letting a lava flow envelope my body in pyroclastic pudding, or pressing the heat-shimmered surface of a skillet to my forehead.” - Joshua Jones stirringlit.com/vol-24-ed-4-p-…

“Once, the seventh grader Ann left her place in line and led me into the brush behind the store.” -Ryler Dustin stirringlit.com/vol-24-ed-4-p-…

“Not grace, but a drawn and quartered kind of love that loves you at the altar even as you leave. You loved me or you love me.“ -Jill Crammond stirringlit.com/fall-2022-vol-…

“my grandfather was born with his palm threaded to his shirt pocket, pledging himself to a nation only national for its suffering.” - Sam Baker stirringlit.com/vol-24-ed-4-p-…

“and the No Trespassing signs went up | along with lectures from our mothers | when the weeds grew over the signs | we ventured back in for hide and seek” - Allison Thorpe stirringlit.com/vol-24-ed-3-p-…