Whatever Happened To Baby J I remember that black circle spanning two pages of the TV Guide. The question was about falling into a hole that small, or it may have been a statement. Either way unfathomable. And also, what kind of well was that anyway? All my well knowledge involved a circular brick structure,… Read More Whatever Happened to Baby J ~ poetry by Christina M. Rau
Young Gannet I’m tired of crows and their death banquets. Really —lighten up, Ted. Do you keep your glasses on during sex? School is over. It’s parrot season and there’s a gold rush in Cuzco. Sure, the flesh is sad and I haven’t read Hesse since New Paltz. Rachel, that bird girl, loved the mystery… Read More Young Gannet ~ poetry by Damon Hubbs
MARGARET The basil has bolted. Margaret comes most mornings, around ten. She has been coming four years, give or take; I’d round down. I know her by the wing. One feather sticks out at the angle of a cracked finger; the others are flat. I know her best by the place above her foot where… Read More Margaret ~ fiction by Kellan Jansen
Recently we added a new request to our submission guidelines, hoping to get writers to look a little more closely at the kinds of work we publish. Now, in the submission cover letter, we ask writers to include a brief statement on why your work suits the mission of The Disappointed Housewife. What we’re hoping… Read More Submission guidelines update
Jonathan Procopio is a poet, professor, and freight train conductor from Philly. His work has previously appeared in Cultural Daily, The Avenue, and Fiction Pool (UK). He’s a poetry attendee of the Writers’ Workshop and lives in Iowa City.
Objects in the Fairfield Inn Lobby Currently Nudging Me Into Psychosis drum lampshades in barely varying shades of taupe porcelain asterisk accessory (bludgeoning weight) menu for an 80s-themed pizza joint where absolutely zero items have pun names thermostat in a locked case, case only partially screwed to wall map to a local weather museum endorsed… Read More Objects in the Fairfield Inn Lobby Currently Nudging Me Into Psychosis ~ poetry by Erica Reid
Haircuts after “Beneath the Layers” (below) ~ Kurt Reynolds Lined up, wiped clean, eldest to the baby, sons are screwed to a gilded frame. Ferrules are paint-caked, brushing scenes of horror on shot-pocked alley walls. Abstract, outlines of girl’s breasts— no girls left, but brothers are bristle brushes with a taste for mannequin. Fiberglass flesh… Read More Haircuts ~ poetry by Robert Carr
233 MILLION YEARS AGO. It is raining. It was raining yesterday, and the day before that, and the day before that. In fact, it has been raining for almost one million years, and it will rain for one million more, making this the halfway point. (This is historically accurate: It really did rain for two… Read More Carnian Pluvial Episode ~ fiction by Maia Gerlinger
P.H. Coleman looks out a window full of forest and its denizens, dogs and people, and writes. With help from Sze, Harjo, Pardlo, Jackson, Duhamel (whether they knew it or not), he’s appeared in Eunoia Review, Trouvaille Review, Quail Bell Magazine, Dillydoun Review, The Ekphrastic Review, Dodging the Rain, Hyacinth Review, Ink In Thirds, etc.
The Indiana Weather Service has issued a TORNADO WARNING for Vermillion County on April 19, 1996, at 6:40 p.m. Take SHELTER IMMEDIATELY in the basement that has a pile of insulation melting, like filthy cotton candy, into a pool of stagnant water on the floor. In the basement’s only dry corner, you’ll find the EMERGENCY… Read More Emergency Alert ~ fiction by Emily Hall
A Taxonomy of Unbecoming: Notes Toward a Theory of Female Disappearance Item 1: The voice. First to go. Not all at once—gradually, like water finding its level. She learns to modulate, to soften, to make herself heard without being loud, to be loud without being threatening, to be threatening without being punished. By the end,… Read More A Taxonomy of Unbecoming: Notes Toward a Theory of Female Disappearance ~ essay by Ghazifa Bashir
Sienna Gallus is a 21-year-old undergraduate student studying Psychology with minors in Women and Gender Studies, Religious Studies, and English at Manhattan University in the Bronx, New York. Her work has been featured in Lotus Magazine, Manhattan Magazine, NPR’s WDIY 2022 poetry contest feature, and FlowerMouth Press’s LitArts in the Valley, among others.
Victoria Nordlund is the Poet Laureate of Glastonbury, CT, and lead master teaching artist of The Nook Farm Writers Collaborative at The Mark Twain House & Museum. Her poetry collections Wine-Dark Sea and Binge Watching Winter on Mute are published by Main Street Rag. She is a Best of the Net and Pushcart Prize Nominee,… Read More While looking at the Hermann Grid Illusion ~ poetry by Victoria Nordlund
To Do List Take on the load of the burdened. Picture cutting the baby’s cord with your teeth & cremate the fetus in your eyeballs for the rest of the ultrasound examination. Observe the next woman’s follicles (after separating ovaries from bowel) & figure out why her (breast) ducts are dilated with no baby in… Read More To Do List ~ poetry by Kataru Yahya
Manon After Alexander Agadzhanov, Marianela Nuñez & Federico Bonelli Not too far. Yes slowly, yeah. LIFT. A little bit late. AWAY more! Come closer close— Go go go go— That’s enough, enough. Bourrée bourrée bourréebourréebourrée… HOLD it. That’s enough, enough—come back to him. HOOOLD. That’s right. Okay, okay. Not—you okay? Not bad at all. Just… Read More Manon ~ poetry by Ellie Snyder
Notation The novel starts off in the town of Verrières, France, in 1830. The protagonist Julien Sorel wishes to elevate his social status and find true love after the French Revolution. A young man of nineteen, Julien is eager to leave his provincial town in search of a better life. He is hired to be… Read More Stendhal’s The Red and the Black Meets Raymond Queneau’s Exercises in Style ~ variations by Ági Bori
Daltokki’s Time-Lapse of a Noni [00:00:00] With enough work, I pass for beautiful. In the mirror, my talced face mouths: —Daltokki: Aren’t most girls plain to start? Her paws dusted white, still grinding—more, never stopping. [03:00:00] At the mall kiosk, a woman hands me a glossy flyer: BEFORE / AFTER, jawlines sharpened into crescents. Tape… Read More Daltokki’s Time-Lapse of a Noni ~ poetry by Kimmy Chang
Burn Nitro Say prayers Say vitamins Eat, eat, eat These are the demandments, brother. Terry Bollea lied and we let him back into our hearts. The New World Order is for life, brother, repeated like a mantra every Monday night. But he changed costumes, and we suspended every ounce of disbelief, so the entirety of… Read More Three Poems ~ poetry by Chris Dolan
Marlowe’s guayabera sticks to his skin like ocean salt, toes peeking over the edge of a kidney bean dredged in soft cyan. He hates the valley. Tells me it’s a man-made lake of pure beige stocked with confidence men and carnal women. Some ruby-headed cutie with curves like a candy cane queries the crowd for… Read More philip marlowe is invited to a beginners improv graduation party in van nuys ~ prose poem by Ben Starr
Kathryn Aldridge-Morris is a Bristol-based writer of short fiction and creative nonfiction. Her debut flash fiction collection Cold Toast (Dahlia Books) was listed in “Best Small Press fiction of 2025” and selected as Book of the Month by the Republic of Consciousness Prize, in partnership with Queen Mary University, London. Her work has appeared in… Read More Case Notes for Snow White Ref 01812 ~ victim referral form by Kathryn Aldridge-Morris
Because the late August sky cloaks me in a cool flavor of blue. Because these streets are blissfully barren, only a mother towing her children to Target for back-to-school bargains, a scattering of returning weekenders trudging toward Trader Joe’s to restock. Because in the library on the next corner a stack of best sellers pinpoints… Read More Perfect Day, Downtown Brooklyn ~ fiction by Catherine Chiarella Domonkos
Sun Box after Joseph Cornell’s “Suzy’s Sun” In the beginning on a bench beside a river, currents like moissanite facets jumping crests, we were two old souls that only the sun could know, hot blazing pillars of photons through water vapor and dust illuminating us like a spotlight— not white godspot, but a free-range egg… Read More Sun Box ~ poetry by Kristen Keckler
And now for our nominations for the last anthology award of the year, the venerable Best Small Fictions contest. We published eleven qualifying stories in 2025, so it kills me to have to weed out six of them—all excellent pieces in their own right—to select the five nominees. That said, if you get a story… Read More Best Small Fictions 2026 Nominations
I love when this happens. Guest judge Diane Seuss has chosen one of our nominees for the 2026 edition of the Best Microfictions anthology: congrats to Jeffrey Hermann for his exquisite short, “Unimaginable Powers.” Pop over and read it right now. It’ll take less than a minute. It’s a prose poem in a neat little… Read More Another Best Microfictions Win!
I woke mid-emergency, no sirens, just consequences. Twelve hours of accidental sleep after two days awake is not rest, it’s an ambush. My mouth tasted like I’d been chewing batteries. My body registered gravity as a personal insult. The room was full of aftermath. I checked my phone and understood too much at once. Pia’s… Read More Said and Done ~ fiction by Jonathan Daniel Gardner
We’re storming to Zouk. We’re getting drunk tonight! we shout, drowning out the Jacky Cheung schmaltz murmuring from the taxi’s radio. We wind down the windows, stick our heads out, smirk back as the driver glares in the mirror. It’s a no-holds-barred night, exactly what we deserve after living in the trenches of our office… Read More It’s Not a Pyrrhic Victory If We’re Paid Shitloads of Money ~ fiction by Ya Lan Chang
Palahniuk ekphrasis Fade in. I look up and she is sliding over to me from the other side of a chessboard, her big bong-bong hips swinging from one side to the next, her cat-eyes gleaming. Well, well, those eyes whisper, a pretty little mouse-pet. Come to mama. Cue Hello Operator by the White Stripes. See,… Read More Palahniuk ekphrasis ~ fiction by Natasha Mihell
We’ve just wrapped up our eighth year of publication, and now, in the midst of award nomination season, Dottie and I are directing your attention to our DONATE button in the right-hand sidebar. Click on it and you can contribute any amount to help defray our website expenses, which have just come up for renewal.… Read More Our Annual Fundraising Appeal Is Here Again 🎅
We’re in something of a unique position this year with respect to the annual Best Microfiction contest. There’s a limit of 400 words on entries, and it turns out that we only published four pieces in 2025 that are eligible. Three of them are by a single writer. I happen to think that all three… Read More Best Microfiction 2026 Nominations
A Partial Dictionary of the Veridical Dialect Compiled from fragmentary speaker records recovered after cessation of use. Cross-referenced where materials permit. Archivist’s Note: This document remains in circulation despite the absence of any remaining interpretive community. Almost (adv.) Defined exclusively as measurable proximity or probability (e.g., “within 3.2 meters,” “88% likelihood”). The qualitative sense of… Read More A Partial Dictionary of the Veridical Dialect ~ lexicon by Libby Banks
In the Southwest in Mid-September (a Nuit Blanche poem, after Amy Lowell’s “Nuit Blanche”) The chirping of crickets in the night is not found in the desert. Two hours from Albuquerque, not much is. In Socorro, I stop to get gas, lunch, and a room for later that night. Then I head out, driving dusty… Read More In the Southwest in Mid-September ~ poetry by Mary Christine Delea
I never know what year to slap on this annual announcement. The Pushcart Prize anthology will come out in 2026, but all the pieces will have been published in 2025. Let’s just be forward-looking and go with 2026. In any event, here are the six pieces I’ve selected to represent The Disappointed Housewife this time… Read More Pushcart Prize Nominations 2026
We’re making a change to our submission guidelines as we wrap up our eighth year of operation. From now on we’re going to allow document attachments rather than requiring writers to paste their work into the submission email. For the most part, literary journals allow attachments. I’ve become more confident as the years go on… Read More Attachments now welcome!
There Are No Wild Dogs In Brooklyn Heights A skyline of wonders with a phantasmal attraction. The soapy comfort of store-bought flowers. Too pink, too sweet. Fragments in the sky on a day you’re brazen enough to look up. And they’re running. Just like you. Waiting to be shot down. Head back to Ainslie Avenue.… Read More There Are No Wild Dogs In Brooklyn Heights ~ poetry by Tessa McHattie
Burning Chocolat Mademoiselle likes her brioche with crème fraîche, Maupassant and a tasse de chocolat. I like her way of nonchalantly feigning I do not exist. Makes me feel like Camus smoking a Gauloises and struggling to pen the Myth of Sisyphus. She tells me all one needs is love but un peu de chocolat… Read More Burning Chocolat ~ poetry by Salvatore Difalco
Eternal Frat Boys So, this is who you’d rather spend time with? Does their obnoxious behavior compensate for my shyness? Does you saying you’re not like them, explicate your blindness? Or, are you just really that numb to my kindness? So much so, that these new friends are (not men, but) Eternal Frat Boys who… Read More Eternal Frat Boys ~ poetry by Jenna Mabus
Look at This Two wild pears from a tree near the train tracks, on a windowsill facing ten p.m. neighborhood backyards. Each would fit in one palm. Almost everything else lies on one table. A round pill box, brewpub restaurant coaster pasted to the lid, blue behind a red heart. My wife’s glasses: black bows,… Read More Look at This ~ poetry by David P. Miller
Recently Dottie and I added a statement to our submission guidelines that I thought I’d better highlight here for writers thinking about contributing: The Disappointed Housewife will not knowingly publish content generated by AI. It probably doesn’t really need to be said, but in a time when some creatives might convince themselves that AI is… Read More Our Policy on AI (it is verboten)
Angel Ranch after Las Poquianchis, by Francisco Corzas (Mexico) 1966 “Last week, in a San Francisco del Rincón courtroom … the (Gonzalez) sisters were found guilty of first-degree murder, white slavery and assorted other crimes and sentenced to the maximum penalty under Mexican law: 40 years in prison.” Time Magazine, October 30, 1964 Catalina, small, sweet,… Read More Angel Ranch ~ creative nonfiction by Lorette C. Luzajic
The 101 Uses of a Cravat The “Before” picture of a necktie. A bandage to staunch the blood. If it’s black, an armband for mourning. If it’s red, an armband for war. To welcome the spirit of Edgar Allan Poe to inhabit your body as his host. A lobster bib. A tourniquet. To appear epicurean… Read More The 101 Uses of a Cravat ~ poetry by E.R. Davis
The Disappointed Housewife 