The Best I Can Describe It First came the single-celled things. Then came the urge to divide. They vibrated, stretched, and became two things. Next came fibers, then worms, etc. Then someone invented the day I was born. Everything bloomed. Congratulations all around. To pass the time we went to nice restaurants. Someone invented overpriced… Read More The Best I Can Describe It ~ prose poem by Jeffrey Hermann
The Best Small Fictions anthology threw us a curve this year by combining the 2025-year nominations with another five eligible from January through July of 2026. The anthology will be coming out in 2027, published by Black Lawrence Press. I feel lucky that I picked up on the change before September 30, the new deadline… Read More Best Small Fictions Nominations 2027
Maraschino Marco says the pool boy quotes Cioran between laps I’m stirring negronis with menace, an aperitif for the impending apocalypse. Delphine keeps her sunglasses on through the eulogy because she says fun is photographed better with a rainbow lens The yacht is named Persephone, which feels on the nose for a woman who spends… Read More Maraschino ~ poetry by Sarp Sozdinler
Ellen Kombiyil (she/her) is a visual artist and author of two books and two chapbooks, most recently The American Journal of Insanity’s Diagnostic on the Plumbing & Wiring of Females (Visual Poetry Series Award, Anhinga 2026), and Love as Invasive Species (Cornerstone 2024). She is a 2022 and 2025 recipient of a BRIO Award from… Read More Postpartum Intake Pop Quiz ~ questionnaire by Ellen Kombiyil
Dad is mad Mom is so sad. He can say she is not fit, can say she is a big, fat ape. He can cut her lip and hit her eye. Now he can get air. Mom is mad at me. At me. At me. Me. Me. Her fat kid. I am mad at me.… Read More See Sam Run ~ fiction by Mona Lisa
Whack-A-Mole I am old, near death, with questions. I dig for answers. Mole-sized, I scuttle over the lawn, dig a hole and enter. A twitchy nosed mole rounds a corner and mocks me. With outsized claws she continues to relentlessly dig, tunneling ahead like a manic bucktoothed bulldozer. Moving dirt, eating earthworms like I suck… Read More Whack-A-Mole ~ poetry by Mac McLeod
GIRLHOOD AS AN APOCALYPSE #1 Born to die, we feel it in our bones End of the first act And we’re a bunch of unknowns Our time on earth is not our own Didn’t sign the contract Born to die, we feel it in our bones Wishing we were clones Our ideologies are abstract And… Read More Three Bastardized Villanelles ~ poetry by Kendra Augustin
The planet’s made another trip around the nearest star, and that means it’s time for the first round of anthology nominations again: The Best of the Net 2027. (It might seem like we’ve skipped a year, but the BOTN organization uses the year of the anthology’s publication, i.e., next year, so we’re adopting that convention.)… Read More 2027 Best of the Net Nominations
1. They will tell you at the interview that you are part of the family. You are not part of the family. You occupy a position somewhere between the Miele and the Dyson, which is not the worst place to be, since the Miele and the Dyson are serviced annually and spoken of with genuine… Read More Instructions for the Next Girl ~ fiction by Honni van Rijswijk
Jill Crammond is the author of the chapbook Handbook for Unwell Mothers (Finishing Line Press, 2023). Her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Asterales, Shame(LESS) Anthology, Made from Midnight: Delirium (Poets in the Pines Press), Mom Egg Review, Bending Genres, Sheila-Na-Gig, Slipstream, and elsewhere. A two-time Pushcart Prize and Best… Read More The First Grave Mistake ~ poetry by Jill Crammond
Chrissy Stegman is from Baltimore, Maryland. Her work has recently appeared in or is forthcoming in The Iowa Review, MER, Michigan Quarterly Review, ONE ART, Rattle, River Heron Review, and Gargoyle, among others. She is a 2025 MVICW Fellow and winner of the 2025 Ellen Conroy Kennedy Poetry Prize. She has received three… Read More How to Measure a Dog’s Loneliness Across Time ~ assignment by Chrissy Stegman
Creek Bed Meditations #24 Is it so simple as to be if we touch the world the world can no longer exist in the same way? I have to really think to remember we have a natural history as well. The East light can be a tide, but what will it take with it? We… Read More Creek Bed Meditations #24 ~ poetry by Darren C. Demaree
Christine Jackson is retired from her day job, three decades of teaching literature and creative writing at a South Florida university. She continues to clock in on a life-long night shift writing poetry. Her work has been published in an array of online journals, including The Ekphrastic Review, Verse-Virtual, South Florida Poetry Journal, and Chameleon… Read More Seven Randos Share a Wooden Pew ~ poetry by Christine Jackson
So Spielberg’s “having a moment.” Again. Maybe it’s futile, but I still have hopes that my as yet unsigned memoir will find a home. The American public deserves to know the truth about their “favorite director.” With this intention, I present here an excerpt from Memoirs of a Mechanical Shark—The Jaws of Ambition. * *… Read More Vanya, Vanity, and Betrayal on the Bay ~ memoir by Jeff Bond and S. M. Strand
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
