L’Esprit Literary Review publishes work written in the fearless, risk-adept, and revolutionary spirit of High Modernism. We accept short fiction, creative non-fiction, novel extracts, literar…

Tina joins our class mid semester. Instantly, I dig her aura. She shares the relaxed gait and slow drawl of the local stoners. She wears her dark hair flat and parted down the middle and has an effort...

If grand romantic gestures were my measure of true love, I never would’ve married my husband. He is nothing if not practical. He bought me a basic calculator our first Christmas together so I wouldn’t...

I haven’t been able to masturbateMy kids sleep with me in the tentThere’s no room that’s mine with a doorEven when the kids are out playinIt’s still a tent with just a flapA heavy canvas labiaBetween ...

Zoo The moon throbs just so, like a cock ring or Nadia’s dildo. I’m spangled and dreamy and drinking Blue Heaven,hot mouth, azure slur. The treesare green mansions. I keep mishearing poems.  If you…

L’Esprit Literary Review Judged by Diane Josefowicz I’m interested in writing that takes risks, and I’m especially interested in risky choices of style, voice, register, and point…

The Dinosaurafter Augusto Monterroso The tip of the tail (a barb almost, dripping with rainwater) gleams despite the intervening clouds and leaves as sunlight plays on its back, continuing, while t…

Jeff says this knife is his favorite, his everyday carry. When he flicks it, the loose, chipped blade snaps open. Jeff says he has more knives at

In hindsight he knew he should have wrecked her engagement.  She gave him every cue imaginable: inviting him over while her fiancé was at work, riding on the back of his motorcycle in a dangerously sk...

So today Mena's got a bucket, and a bright, sharp trowel, and a scary-sharp gleam in her eye. Rain's streaming down, and the air's thick and gray. Her nails are dirty, and it looks like she hasn't bru...

"Mitch stumbles into the pub that was attached to the motel, which doubled as the town gas station, late Friday afternoon, breathless and sweating despite the frigid cold..."

In the way of a stray dog following one home, or a young, little-known child asking why on repeat, “commentators” have been wondering, aloud and in ink, what has become, or might become, or should …

YouTube video by Belle & Sebastian - Topic

Hi, amigo. Circumcise me, please. Won’t you? No one else will do it. I trust in—I live by—your technique, unsteady as it is. Yes, maybe I’m a bit old for the procedure. Not the sort of challenge that…

Nobody thinks of the mother, given the babysitter’s ordeal. The mother, still young, is counting on dinner and a movie with her husband. It is the best time of her life—the children aren’t babies anym...

I Dano wondered whether he might be too old to be a Dano.  He got the name like he got self-consciousness. It had happened without a pinpointable moment of happening. When he came online, it was onlin...