Elf NYC vs Elf MFA, by Danny Collier
Prompt, by Matt Perez: Write the two Pushcart poetry nominations from the Peg & Hammer, the number one literary magazine of Santa's (artsiest and perhaps most disgruntled) elves.
God Rest Ye, by Kevin Fanning
Prompt, from Danny Collier: If you're bitten or scratched by a celebrity, you become a celebrity. These are the plague days.
Bump, by JP Kemmick
The day we moved into our new home, my husband, Roger, dropped a box and out spilled his collection of vintage little green army men. A machine gunner got stuck upside down in a sidewalk crack and an infantryman stumbled toward the sewer grate.
How are you gonna eat a peaceful breakfast after your incredible night of sex with the surprisingly-experimental woman who as a girl was in the Kellogg’s Frosted Flakes commercials? by Simon Pinkerton
After I slept with the woman who as a girl had been in the Frosted Flakes commercials, every day I imagined myself as Tony the Tiger a little more.
The Good Boy Club, by Delaney S. Saul
We are Good Boys.
We are in the Good Boy Club.
We follow the rules.
We do what we’re told.
The Pied Piper of Pepperton County, by Matt McGee
In 1966, the residents of Pepperton County were perfectly happy to go to work, attend church, mow their lawns and make occasional love to a husband or wife they’d chosen when the moment seemed right, before the moment passed.
Four Poems, by Rose Hunter
Well it turned out classically
my desire was to be desired, and it wasn’t like I hadn’t read
any of that stuff, I mean I’d read a bit. But I made no
connection between that and
me
incantation to the departed, by Jessica Ram
when I drive past the body of a deer,
struck down in the middle of the road,
sometimes whole, sometimes not,
Four Poems by Caroline Earleywine
ut never wear, the ones I double back for and pluck
from the rack on impulse, that I smuggle into dressing
rooms in my search for something that looks like anyone
Last Week All the Girls Were Foxes, by David Joseph
The guys get a real kick out of the bird. There’s a cougar and a whale and one I think is an armadillo, but it’s the crow they’re all looking at—the way her black feathers shine against the white skin stretched over her collarbones.
Psssst: A Note from the Editors of the Secrets Issue
Hey. You with the face. Can you keep a secret?
As it turns out, we can’t.
Dear Reader, by Tyrese Coleman
I’ve been spending a lot of time imagining myself in love scenes. Not always sex scenes, though sometimes, my imagination involves sex, I’m not gonna lie.
Joy as an Act of Resistance: Julia Mallory
There are few things one can imagine that would be as difficult as losing a child to a senseless act of violence.
Chasing Waterfalls” and “Edges,” by Julia Mallory
A month after my 17 year old son's earthly shell joined his spirit, I was up in the mountains chasing waterfalls with a man I loved but had not yet told.
Church Ladies, Writing, and Love: Deesha Philyaw
Love: Deesha Philyaw’s much-awaited collection The Secret Lives of Church Ladies contains a myriad of facets of this basic human emotion.
How to Make Love to a Physicist, by Deesha Philyaw
How do you make love to a physicist? You do it on Pi Day—pi is a constant, also irrational—but the groundwork is laid months in advance.
Poems, by M. Saida Agostini
to you, I am worth less then the camera you shot me with the money you make selling this daguerreotype to other white men who hide me