This may be the saddest tweet we’ve ever tweeted, but it looks like Juked may be about to end.
It’s not a matter of money, and it’s not a matter of love. It’s a matter of life itself, of family, of care.
If we’ve accepted your work, you will be published. Details to come. XX
Congratulations to
@BorrowedHorses
whose excellent essay “The World Within, the World Without”--which appeared in Juked
#17
--received a notable distinction in this year’s Best American Essays!
Big congrats to our 2020 Best Small Fiction Nominees: Jacqueline Doyle (
@doylejacq
), David Galef, Babak Lakghomi (
@babakl
), Ashleigh Bryant Phillips (
@woodlandraised
), and Charles Rafferty
Read their stories in the archives at:
"I don’t know how it happened. As I started to slide the photo out onto the kitchen counter, ready to insert my son’s latest school picture, the carefree family changed before my eyes."
New fiction by
@doylejacq
up:
For the first time since 2006, we won’t be tabling at
#AWP
. We'll miss seeing all of our writer friends, sharing whisky, and shooting the breeze. We’ll be sure to reconnect next year in Kansas City. Meanwhile, we’ve got a slick new issue available soon. Cover below. Dig it.
"All my sex stories always start off
with what we ate for dinner,
and of course, I remember that fancy
Dragon Roll in Phoenix, Arizona"
New poetry by Dorothy Chan:
Big congrats to our brilliant Pushcart Prize nominees: Casey Zella Andrews, CL Cummings, Douglas Luman, Emily Alex, Brian Evenson, Trevor Shikaze…
Visit the archives and read their work here:
"The plants usually stayed in their packs for weeks, browning and unplanted, while his mother smoked on the step and listened to “Suite: Judy Blue Eyes” on repeat."
New fiction by Amy Stuber (
@amy_stuber_
):
The cover for COUNTERFACTUAL LOVE STORIES & OTHER EXPERIMENTS with Noemi Press is here at last! If you can, please pre-order now to support me and small presses everywhere. I will love you forever. Official publication date is 1 October 2021!
"Standing on a box for several years—
moving my hands just so—
outside, then inside, then sitting down—
trout in newspaper. Trout to take apart and heat just so—"
New on the site, poetry by Molly Brodak:
Friday throwback: "When a dope dealer got shot, nobody sang praises at his funeral. When he got out of prison, nobody baked him peach cobbler, welcomed him home."
Read "Teeth's Story" by
@RonAAustin4
here:
"He buckled the plush alien into the passenger seat of his pickup and made his way back to the hotel, the sky turning from a hot bright summer blue into a hard slate grey as a storm rolled in..."
New fiction
@Teaweave
:
"How many were killed for the magician’s secret?
147,902 humans have murdered each other thus far for the magician’s secret. However, the number rises every day."
New fiction by Dustin M. Hoffman (
@dustinmhoffman
) :
"Any pain? says the nurse as she wraps the blood pressure cuff around my arm. No, I say, because to admit the full ache in all of me would be to ask for something stronger or something worse."
New work by
@hannahkalena
on the site:
"Richard gets A’s with ease and I look at his essays he hangs on his wall. Those fucking A’s are going to take you places, baby. An A man can always have me because I deserve an A man."
New fiction
@MarstonGHefner
up:
Hey Juked fans! We’ve got friends over at Nimrod, and we wanted to pass along some of their news. You should send them your work! (When you’re not already sending it to us!):
Nimrod International Journal's 40th annual Literary Awards...
Juked is always thrilled when contributors have books out in the world! Check out Rainie Oet's recently released chapbook NO MARK SPIRAL available from CutBank. Congrats, Rainie!
"Consequentially, the village is divided equally between the living and the dead. The human townspeople occupy one half of the village and the nosferatu claim the other."
New fiction by Lincoln Michel (
@TheLincoln
):
"Consider the word small. A swastika scribbled on a page corner. Poppy seeds on a flaky roll, flecks of paprika on the soup ladle, smudges of jam caught in the lunch lady’s hair."
New fiction by Danielle Harms:
“Our parents promised a Nintendo
if we could clear every cactus
from the pastures, front and back:
about four acres. At the time,
it seemed difficult but fair.” New poetry by Amy Watkins (
@amykwatkins
):
"You were there, Ronald, Thursday nights, the good times
of your golden arches glowing
through winter’s interminable night, my mother, twenty pounds
overweight, indulging in the pleasure
of ten Chicken McNuggets."
New poetry by Steve Coughlin:
"Bodies align and press. Maybe he twirls her, she levitates as he lifts, her toes point in graceful half-moons, as he sweeps her plain off her feet."
New work by Sara Lippmann (
@saralippmann
):
Congratulations as well to
@DeWittHenry
whose amazing essay “Long-Distance” received a notable distinction in this year’s Best American Essays. Read it over on the site:
"The mimosa tree grew on a hillside of grass and wild herbs, and at the top of that hill stood a cottage with a long flight of stone steps leading up to the front door."
New fiction by Elizabeth Bergstrom (
@Liz_Bergstrom
):
"Middleton, Wisconsin: I (8), walking home from school maybe with my brother (7), probably alone (eternally lonely)."
New work up on the site--Read
@_JodyKennedy
's "For Anne Sexton" here:
"I’m hammered drunk after I see the banker, and my brother calls to say that preacher’s on TV again. You know, he says, the slapper. I flip around until I find him, and he’s so ridiculous and rotten..."
Read "Five Shorts" by
@WorderFarmer
here:
"From inside my kitchen, looking out across
someone’s yard & a parking lot & that busier
street near an intersection, at certain times"
New poetry by Monica Berlin:
"We are told that if we get lost
we may very well start going
in circles. That we will end up
where we started and begin to
worry if we will ever return
safely to shelter before dark."
New poetry by Kelly R. Samuels:
"The gloves quietly pull things found inside the practice patient outside of itself. The surgeons table is the shade of muddied lip gloss. By the end there is a bowl the size of a coffee mug full of insides."
New work by Lane Devers:
"I was fourteen the year my father disappeared into the Black Lake. A kayaker had spotted him, lingering there along the shoreline."
New fiction by Annie Vitalsey:
Big congrats to poet and Juked contributor Merridawn Duckler (
@MerridawnD
) for winning the
@harbor_review
's Washburn Prize. Read "Hebo, Oregon", a poem included the the forthcoming chapbook here:
"All boys are interchangeable
I tell my daughter in my head when she’s older
I’ll lean my heel heavy on the banister and tell her
All boys are foreign objects"
New poetry by Neetzan Zimmerman:
"we urge ourselves forward
like our time is little, like we know what’s coming
like the advertisements,
if you look at them, spell out a disaster
but it isn’t the one the news predicts"
New poetry by Elisabeth Blair:
"There was the first moon, the moon of my entire life, with its ivory shine and pockmarked face, and then to the southeast there hung another, brighter and rounder, like a revised version."
New fiction by Alanna Schubach (
@AlannaSchubach
):
"I couldn’t tell you what sort of bird it was. It didn’t look like any bird I’d seen before. But what I could tell you was that it was the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen."
New fiction by Jerome Blanco:
"Nero sat at the end of the diving board with a saucer full of cocaine. Their famous nude friends swam up one at a time for dispensation. He touched them with his cross, splashed a little holy water..."
Read "Town and Country" by Morgan Hobbs here:
"So, experimentation is everything to me. I can’t be too gratuitous with it, though. It’s like a drug in that way."
Read Ashley Farmer's new interview with Melissa Cundieff here:
"The first time the tree blossomed, the fruit fell and rotted and was met with an infestation of long-winged, pinching bugs. A local man with local knowledge was called in to exterminate them."
New fiction by Michael Farfel:
"Because I was very young, and because rudimentary ideas about possession come with the psychological territory of childhood, I believed his voice existed for me."
New work by Caroline McCoy:
"No creatures on Noah’s ark ate each other, and after the Great Flood, God promised Noah’s descendants, “Every moving thing that liveth shall be meat for you.”
Read "On Meat" by
@DeWittHenry
and his conversation with
@ryan_ridge
here:
It's awards season, folks, and we're proud to announce our nominees for the Pen/Robert J. Dau Short Story Prize for emerging writers:
@eva4fr
@worldwidedirt
and Timea Balogh... The future is looking bright!
"After two glasses of champagne, the early afternoon birthday party for Evie’s nephew, Jacob, transformed into a roundtable discussion about pregnancy and new motherhood."
New fiction up by
@AnnEliseknows
:
"The next time you share a toothbrush I urge you to remember that the fear of contagious is what makes you susceptible to things like strep that just don’t otherwise exist!"
New fiction by Leah Dworkin (
@frumperella
):
Juked
#16
is now available, featuring fiction and poetry by Brian Evenson, Jenna Lê, Ellyn Lichvar, Katherine MacCue, Daschielle Louis, Christine Ma-Kellams, and many more.
For complete table of contents:
To order:
“We keep a kind of a lifestyle here,” said the manager of the building, a woman who smelled of exorbitant perfume and rancid memories. “Stay fashionable, don’t hold onto the past. Right? It’s a new world every day.”
New fiction by J.I. Daniels:
"If you told me then that Cassandra was the ghost, I would have believed you. She stepped into the Micro wearing black fishnets and hiding a human-and-a-half’s fill of suffering behind her toothy smile and deep olive skin."
New fiction by
@JonUdelson
:
"That’s what I hope Fire Bones affirms: the spiritual value of communal play and laughter among people who disagree. Not enough of that these days.
Poet, Editor, Songwriter, Go-Show Pioneer
@gbrownderville
on his new multimedia experience Fire Bones.
"The back of Jerry’s pants bulge. He wore his Bulldog football shorts to Christ Zone and no one said a word. He doesn’t hear me coming. I slap his ass and a box of tampons fall from his shorts."
Read
@elicranor
's "Unforgivable" here:
"I’m in Half Moon. Madness here. Checked in earlier this week under my favorite alias, Kyle Tagalong. The trainer for one of my films is the only person who knows this one."
New fiction by Brandi Kalicki:
"Arlene was my gym buddy a couple years back. For a while, she was my only friend. Forty years my senior, Arlene and I had similar interests of shopping..."
New work by Brittany Ackerman:
"At first, our mother was shy. She slept in the pantry and shivered when any of us came into the kitchen. I heard her hum through the walls when I was in bed. It was the inside of a seashell."
New fiction
@wordsonstrings
here:
"One of the bears was a female named Coldilocks. She was transferred as a cub from the Seneca Park Zoo to Philly in 1981 and lived until 2018, euthanized at age 37, the oldest polar bear in captivity."
New fiction by Tom McAllister (
@t_mcallister
):
"I’m saying I agree with you. I am a monster. I’m a lawless under-the-bed, no-good,
evil-eyed, consuming fiend. You’re right. You hear me? You’re right."
New poetry by Megan Alyse (
@megs_alyse
):
"when we first met
I remembered
the flesh-eating wildflower
that sprouts from acid bogs
near where I grew up"
New poetry by J. Todd Hawkins (
@jtoddhawkins
):
Attention(!!!):
@JukedMagazine
contributor Anita Felicelli’s debut collection is reviewed favorably in the New York Times, which features her story “The Tiger Left a Widow” from Juked
#12
:
Congratulations to Juked
#14
contributor
@catrachxs
, whose debut collection Catrachos comes out this week! We love their "Queerodactyl" poems and can't wait to read the rest.
"I hadn’t seen Charlie since the buffalo. Then tonight I’m smoking out on the curb in front of my dad’s place, where I’m staying, again, when Susan pulls up in her little four-banger."
New fiction by Jason Hardung:
"All those religions jostling like hornets and not one of them got it right: when you die, you wake up in a gigantic glass onion. No smell. No moon."
Read new fiction
@mrmeyerhofer
:
Our friends at Nimrod Journal have awards in fiction and poetry is coming up. The awards offer 1st prizes of $2K, second prizes of $1K, and publication for all winners and finalists. This year's judges are Kaveh Akbar and Joy Castro. Deadline April 1st!
"He says to the truck stop stray dog, son todos
bichos, bicho, knowing he is the bee,
flower a diesel engine—extinction"
New poetry by Lucian Mattison:
"Following a stroke, an elderly woman was admitted to the intensive care unit of a hospital. From that moment on she insisted that she be released, not because she was well, but because she was sick."
New fiction by Olivia Parkes:
"I hadn’t been out my apartment for months when I met her at a party. I’m not exactly a party person and was busying myself finding a cracker or anything to leverage some dip with when she said to stop staring at her."
New fiction
@DuncanBirm
here:
"If my memories appeared
outside my head, they would look
like a string of cut-out
construction paper people,
never-ending, accordion-style,
array of colors, classic ones"
New poetry by Matty Bennet:
"Numbers. That’s all it took. It’s just numbers in my brain, calculating everything. I got these strong forearms and all this energy. I hate sitting still."
New fiction by Saxon Baird:
"Shaker holds the wet glass to his forehead, rolling his attention from one Howitzer foot to the other. Big, pulpy bricks. The man must need special sneakers. He must shop in special stores."
From David Nutt's The Great American Suction (
@tyrantbooks
):
"She sees the cops walking
towards the dilapidated wooden house.
The dead leaves are on the path. She hears
the rustle of the leaves
as they step on them."
New poem by Jacob Kobina Ayiah Mensah:
"Act I. Open with a chorus line of high-stepping Jack Rubys in characteristic Jack Ruby garb—dark suit and tie, white shirt, short-brimmed fedora."
New fiction by John Picard:
"Maybe when I’m older I’ll understand how religion is baked,
served and ate in batches, by mum and dad, each hour.
The Arabic slinking around gums and a sore tongue,
sifted in, drying out the mouth."
New poem by Farah Mustafa: