At last, we have the finalists for the Heaven Eleven Annual Ekphrastic Marathon in July. And the results are a wild surprise: the winner of both the poetry and the flash categories this year is the...

“What about my African violets, my jade plants, my burro’s tails? Are they all dead too?” she asked when she saw me. The look on my face gave her the answers. “Shame! They would’ve thrived here,” she ...

Before you look at my hands or reach out to shake them, I should warn you: every one of my exes loved my hands, and every one of them left me because of them. Not because they were hardened by heavy l...

“What about my African violets, my jade plants, my burro’s tails? Are they all dead too?” she asked when she saw me. The look on my face gave her the answers. “Shame! They would’ve thrived here,” she ...

By Christine H. Chen — It all began with the empty bucket in a corner of the living room that collected the occasional water dripping from the ceiling when Ah Ma was showering on a chair in the bathtub upstairs even though I had suggested that she simply took a bath

“Anything” by Tracy Royce is a masterpiece of mood. The speaker of the prose poem begins “gloomy again” but ends, via a city bike ride, in an entirely new and revelatory headspace. Royce integrates…

​*   Managing Editor: Edward Ahern    * *   Associate Editor: Alison McBain    * *    Special Features Editor: Matthew P.S. Salinas    * *    Poetry Editor: Mary Keating   * ​ ​...

Signs it is time for a self-clean cycle: buildup of grease, odors and heavy emotional residue.  Some say there is no bad time for self-clean...

When baby-picking season comes around, Meredith says we should go, says it’ll be fun to pick newborns off trees, fill buckets with them. We ...

The Department of Marriage and Family has started adding fine print to wedding licenses. I’m leaving nothing to chance.  My veil sits on the...

The window shakes when bus number 71 rumbles by. The floor creaks, the pancake slides to the side on the pan. Ah Ma’s face lightens up when ...

As babes, you toddling with the cleaver, your Ma yelling. As fresh pupils, you whispering the answer, us caned by Sister Adele. As fourth gr...

I told a story at a dinner party. The story went like this: I was in college and I was walking by the light rail line. A man in a wheelchair was on the track. The train was coming. I walked quickly…

Shortlist – 2026 Gooseberry Pie Annual Writing Competition by Christine H. Chen He presents Marilyn with a loaf of eulogia he stole from the Church, and a pot of Bromeliad he’s grabbed from Ma’s windo...

“I can’t take it anymore!” the wife yells, but the man, her husband, is dancing and whistling. “It’s the biggest fart I’ve ever let out!” he says and laughs at the wife who’s rushing to open the bedro...

You get home from your dad’s on Sunday, and as soon as you pull up in your shitty Cavalier you can tell that Marcus and his whole family are just… gone. No curtains hanging in the windows, no lawn cha...

Longlist – 2026 Gooseberry Pie Annual Writing Competition by Frances Gapper Day 9, month 2 of Low Water: as the great god Ra lifts his solar crown above the eastern horizon and I shiveringly prostrate...

Shortlist – 2026 Gooseberry Pie Annual Writing Competition by Claudia Monpere Crossing the street, you  see the eye is taller than you with huge, ropey, red veins and a cold, blue iris that follows yo...

Shortlist – 2026 Gooseberry Pie Writing Competition by Suzanne Hicks He thought he was alone until he was startled by a small child looking up at him wide-eyed, staring into his glowing red orbs, his ...