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VIEW ALL CONTENT I quiver when you touch me Ann Youmans Good grief it's so obvious I see the quivering leaves and I remember you, feather-light fingers brushing across my skin “Like petals,” you breathe, a spring breeze coaxing the pink into the bloom your bee-stung mouth bends for more honey the currents of sap rise I cry out, as per cliche, more baby don't stop more and I wonder what will come when our window faces an evergreen Ann Marie Gamble is an editor and writer who enjoys telling stories, experimenting with language, and discovering connections between family, places, and ideas. Her poetry has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize and you can find her work in Nixes Mate Review, star 82, and the Heartland Review. In her free time, she organizes volunteers for the Unbound Book Festival and checks out as many audiobooks as the library allows. Make literature part of your everyday life. Carefully curated stories and poems you can read in under 5 minutes, sent straight to your inbox. Email* Sign Up Yes, subscribe me to the Gotham Literature newsletter.

VIEW ALL CONTENT Animation by Putri Yua The Way Home Ann Sproul The clouds aren’t for me. I thought, at some point, that they were, that I could carve a home out of water vapor, but I would only ever melt through. I would crash from the sky, and I would not be the pretty kind of shooting star but just the dying girl on your back porch. You’d open the door to smashed bits of tile and skin and bones, and then you’d put on that disappointed face and take me back home. But when I was a kid, and maybe sometimes now, I used to jump as high as I could. On trampolines or on swing sets, I’d launch myself into the air and try to stretch my hands far enough to latch on to something. I pleaded to the rain and the snow and the sleet that I could go with it, that something might take me, but it just kept falling and I was getting cold. And I would’ve frozen out there, too, if you hadn’t taken me inside, set me down with an anxious glance and put me into the corner. I can’t be sure you wanted me there, but you always let me stay. I am not candy. I am not sun, I am not rain, I am not what is good or beautiful or sweet. I am what is left over on your plate when you get up from the table. I am the old t-shirt in the back of your closet you kept even though you wanted to throw it away. I am for back porches and alleyways, not living rooms. But the only things I’ve ever wanted were the next things I’ve never had. And sometimes still I’ll wake up with my hands bleeding, ceiling shredded by claws that never should have been let inside in the first place. Previously published in Apotheca Journal Make literature part of your everyday life. Carefully curated stories and poems you can read in under 5 minutes, sent straight to your inbox. Email* Sign Up Yes, subscribe me to the Gotham Literature newsletter.

VIEW ALL CONTENT Animation by Aleksandra The Older We Get John Grey Seated in front of the television on a Sunday afternoon, clutching the first beer of what is now a five-pack, a fat packet of chips at the ready, cursing at or cheering on the New England Patriots, he has become his own father. The old man died of a heart attack six months before so there was an opening. Make literature part of your everyday life. Carefully curated stories and poems you can read in under 5 minutes, sent straight to your inbox. Email* Sign Up Yes, subscribe me to the Gotham Literature newsletter.

VIEW ALL CONTENT primary sources C.C. Apap what happened to that book— that one which we both loved, desperately, one summer, stealing it from one another whenever we gave in to sleep, the one we said would change us forever, as if aesop had cast a spell within its pages, making us new creatures, with horns and claws wedded with tenderness. I have torn apart every shelf in the house. looked under every bed. rummaged about in your drawers. perhaps it has disappeared for good, as we transformed into some solid middle-aged coupling. perhaps it does not or never did exist. perhaps the story was a shared fantasy, when we were young together and in love. the story we told each other naked to make the both of us forget to be ashamed. C.C. Apap’s writing has been featured or is forthcoming in Belt Magazine, Alba, The Thimble Literary Magazine, Roi Fainéant, Twenty-Two Twenty-Eight and The Wild Umbrella. His short story, “Bed and Breakfast,” is a 2024 Best of the Net Nominee. He teaches literature at Oakland University and lives north of Detroit in a suburb where doodle ownership seems like a fundamental requirement. Make literature part of your everyday life. Carefully curated stories and poems you can read in under 5 minutes, sent straight to your inbox. Email* Sign Up Yes, subscribe me to the Gotham Literature newsletter.

VIEW ALL CONTENT comb Alex Masse my damp, dark curls unfurl part like curtains around your fingers and it’s this gentleness I feel I don’t deserve breath held like a grudge coaxed out with every stroke of the comb smooth, strainless, strikeless, stainless the ease I let in is all at once alien and an old friend to my battered brain and its every vigilant nerve but sweet as spring snowmelt to my starving skin and it’s petals unfolding shedding the season’s final frosts to drink in the sun again a flesh that forgot it could ever feel so warm Make literature part of your everyday life. Carefully curated stories and poems you can read in under 5 minutes, sent straight to your inbox. Email* Sign Up Yes, subscribe me to the Gotham Literature newsletter.

VIEW ALL CONTENT Ten years but tomorrow. DS Maolalai my wife's been in london two days now or so. I haven't been over in over ten years – but tomorrow I'm joining her there – I had to work. I think of old friends and wonder will I meet who I was when my feet touch the granite of that cold wood-ash city. a boy, sentimental as a 2nd hand suitcase. unsettled by prospects of love. DS Maolalai has been described by one editor as "a cosmopolitan poet" and another as "prolific, bordering on incontinent". His work has been nominated thirteen times for BOTN, ten for the Pushcart and once for the Forward Prize, and released in three collections; "Love is Breaking Plates in the Garden" (Encircle Press, 2016), "Sad Havoc Among the Birds" (Turas Press, 2019) and “Noble Rot” (Turas Press, 2022) Make literature part of your everyday life. Carefully curated stories and poems you can read in under 5 minutes, sent straight to your inbox. Email* Sign Up Yes, subscribe me to the Gotham Literature newsletter.

VIEW ALL CONTENT groundwater Tara Labovich i want to find water where water has not been found. i feel in dry earth, the possible—where empty, now—roots, thick, clustering, talking. i am better, mending, with conversation in the ground. what do you hear? the swarming? talk of beetles, iron, algae. even roots hedge their bets and gamble against water. i do this dream because i am looking for swaddling, but unable to release the going, the direction, the faith that following groundwater will bring me where i need. the roots are dancing too, now. they swing slow, they dowse towards drinking. we all dream of soil that clots again. Tara Labovich (they/them) is a writer and lecturer of English and Creative Writing in Iowa. Their multi-genre creative work explores questions of queerness, survivorship, and multicultural upbringing. Their writing is nominated for Best of the Net, and can be found in journals such as Salt Hill and the Citron Review. You can find them on socials at @taralabovich Make literature part of your everyday life. Carefully curated stories and poems you can read in under 5 minutes, sent straight to your inbox. Email* Sign Up Yes, subscribe me to the Gotham Literature newsletter.

VIEW ALL CONTENT nothing burns for me— C.C. Apap no angel has stayed my hand. never have I been told to count the stars of the sky or grains of sand. I speak in metaphor only on the page, and never as prophecy. no one anoints me with fresh-pressed oils, denounces my daily ablutions. some mornings I bear all of the punishment and none of the sin. some evenings it feels like the opposite. I have stood before oceans, and seas, and lakes, walked in up to my neck, and beyond, with no sign of a pathway opening before me. I pray and there is only god’s stillness. and yet—I listen. some days, I hold a blade to my children’s throats, casting about for a ram. C.C. Apap’s writing has been featured or is forthcoming in Belt Magazine, Alba, The Thimble Literary Magazine, Roi Fainéant, Twenty-Two Twenty-Eight and The Wild Umbrella. His short story, “Bed and Breakfast,” is a 2024 Best of the Net Nominee. He teaches literature at Oakland University and lives north of Detroit in a suburb where doodle ownership seems like a fundamental requirement. Make literature part of your everyday life. Carefully curated stories and poems you can read in under 5 minutes, sent straight to your inbox. Email* Sign Up Yes, subscribe me to the Gotham Literature newsletter.

VIEW ALL CONTENT Hungry Like the Wolf Chris Cottom Mum frowns at my ‘Smash the Patriarchy’ hoodie, tells me to say hi to Granny, hands me yet another foraged-fruit crumble in a twee wicker basket. She’s the first veggie to win SuperChef and tonight’s her date with the guy who won MeisterSinger. I imagine my dad – whatever he looks like – seeing the pictures, letching over what he’s missing. As I wave from the gate, Mum’s dishing out treacle-drizzled traybake amongst the paparazzi, all cutie-pie smiles and icing-white teeth. When Mum explained my dad was a catalogue model, I cut out pictures to show Gabi and Katharina: Cardigan Dad, Crewneck Dad, Jimjam Dad. For ‘Bring Your Dad To School Day’, Uncle Ortwin offered to come with me, but I pretended I was cramping and stayed home watching Lassie , tickling the back of my throat with a hen-pheasant’s tailfeather to honk up Mum’s broth. Deep in the forest, the sawmill rasps, close-by and dangerous, buzz, buzz, buzz. I drop a trail of Mum’s episode-three bee-nuts through the trees, skirting prickly thickets, into a loam-soft glade where I sit and wait, daubing my breasts with blueberry crumble. The apprentice-boys’ hands are calloused and scratchy, their rock-muscled abs scented with pine. I despatch the wolf by myself, snicker-snack, dead and done, no point waiting for anyone, particularly a dad, or even a mum. As I tuck Granny into bed, I wonder if Mum’s humping MeisterSinger, whether he sings as he comes, whether the paparazzi will hear. I get a text from some saddo, claiming he’s my dad, saying he’ll stop by. I work late making wolf-burgers, bathe in the millpond at midnight, sharpen my blade for morning. First published by Free Flash Fiction as the winner of FFF Competition Twenty-Two Make literature part of your everyday life. Carefully curated stories and poems you can read in under 5 minutes, sent straight to your inbox. Email* Sign Up Yes, subscribe me to the Gotham Literature newsletter.

VIEW ALL CONTENT a maskil C.C. Apap all praise begins with hiding— the things that we conceal beneath covers, within safes secret chambers, behind locked lips and closed doors, the layers of rich, embroidered fabric. veiled threats. brides. undressed piles of poetry, unmolested near the bed. every final, silent prayer said at night, begging for suffering to pass by our doors. lacking language to express gratitude, having buried it for so long, it has been my habit to ask for no blessing, lest it arrive. what a surprise, then, when all the doors blow open, the mask drops, and all is, for a moment seen—unexpected consecration in afternoon light. all the cotton shrouds tossed aside together. I never sought divinity face to face, but god, this is close. C.C. Apap’s writing has been featured or is forthcoming in Belt Magazine, Alba, The Thimble Literary Magazine, Roi Fainéant, Twenty-Two Twenty-Eight and The Wild Umbrella. His short story, “Bed and Breakfast,” is a 2024 Best of the Net Nominee. He teaches literature at Oakland University and lives north of Detroit in a suburb where doodle ownership seems like a fundamental requirement. Make literature part of your everyday life. Carefully curated stories and poems you can read in under 5 minutes, sent straight to your inbox. Email* Sign Up Yes, subscribe me to the Gotham Literature newsletter.

VIEW ALL CONTENT The Machines Katerina Sutton Every month we followed Dad to the driveway and watched the delivery man haul another machine into the living room. There was a rowing machine and a stationary bicycle and an elliptical. Dad named them after women I didn’t recognize, always from the first half of the alphabet. One evening Anna and I squeezed onto the sofa and tried to watch Cheers , but the whirring was too loud. In February, he added a bed-like frame with long straps and resistance springs underneath. In March, a curved leather barrel on wheels, attached to a tall wooden ladder. Dad shrieked when he saw Anna balancing on the top rung, pretending to be a flagpole. In April, he added a trapeze contraption with six-foot steel poles extending upward, chains dangling from the top. At some point Dad stopped leaving for work. The machines whirred incessantly. We only heard his panting when he moved from one to the next. One morning I found Dad fast asleep, slumped across the bed-like machine with his hand loose around a strap. He kept an industrial-sized bag of quinoa in the garage and cooked it in vats; he’d read that it prevented stroke. We silently prepared his electrolyte water and heart-healthy smoothies. He thrust supplements into our hands each morning to improve our cholesterol. In May, we pooled our savings to buy Dad a new elliptical for his birthday. He gazed at it, then began running his hands along its frame and adjusting its knobs with scrupulous care. We suggested the name Rebecca as an homage to Mom, but he shook his head fiercely and named it Beth. The first date I brought home asked “what are those things?” and I pointed: Beth, Diana, Felicity. I left for college and savored the open space. When I returned for Thanksgiving, machines crowded every inch of the living room. Blender bottles lined the windowsill, blood pressure monitors were strewn across the floor. The machines themselves had become a shrine. Mom’s dresses were looped into the rungs of the trapeze machine. Her pink robe was draped over the barrel device. Her running shoes were placed by the feet of the elliptical. Long vertical scratches lined the polished wood floor. Two months later Anna called, frantic. Dad was dangling from the trapeze machine by his bare foot, caught in a strap. His skin was colorless, his body emaciated. His skull was so caked with blood we hardly saw it’d been split open. The whirring had stopped. We watched over the next few days as the moving man came and hauled the machines into trucks. Make literature part of your everyday life. Carefully curated stories and poems you can read in under 5 minutes, sent straight to your inbox. Email* Sign Up Yes, subscribe me to the Gotham Literature newsletter.

VIEW ALL CONTENT In Case of Fire Renee Emerson I have them practice which way they’ll run, not to hide under the bed, or search for the cat, or a favorite stuffed elephant misplaced in the night. We practice at night because disaster always comes when everyone is sleeping, breathing even. It comes like the angel for the firstborn, and I for one don’t leave my threshold bare. I try to have them practice being afraid, afraid enough to save the irreplaceable. But they are only children, so the rehearsal becomes a giggled make-believe, where only I feel the quick spark of panic of one who has held ashes. Make literature part of your everyday life. Carefully curated stories and poems you can read in under 5 minutes, sent straight to your inbox. Email* Sign Up Yes, subscribe me to the Gotham Literature newsletter.