“In various parts of Missouri, one hears the story of a great hole in the ground, where hunters have heard strange sounds and smelled unusual odors. Some say the Devil lives in that hole …” –Missouri Magic and Folklore by Randolph Vance, 1947 Once upon a time, as absurd as it sounds, the King… Read More Expedition ~ creative nonfiction by Nancy Bell
Three grackles appear to me and as they stare it is impossible to look away, transfixed (transluced) (transpired) by this encounter as though they have something to prove, a message to pass on and I cannot begin to understand the five questions (who) (what) (when) (where) (why) even as I should have at least some… Read More When the Forecast Forgets the Wildfires ~ fiction by Audrey T. Carroll
Dear Kitchen, Congratulations! The Nostalgia Committee is pleased to inform you that you have won this year’s Ambivalence Prize. Your bleached yet cozy atmosphere intrigued us. Your blue and white embroidered tablecloth impressed the judges as the perfect complement to the painstakingly-crafted mocha cakes assembled upon it by a working mother’s aching hands. We appreciated… Read More Ambivalence Prize from the Selective Memory Foundation of Boston ~ award correspondence by Patricia Flaherty Pagan
The explosion of brass, a tsunami: paintbrush bristles staining skin, tickling eardrums; a titanium mass soaring skyward, blocking, encompassing all auditorial perception, absent peripherals, reverberating metallic and hollow; a traffic jam at all four corners of the bedroom, the precipice of a gasp, a ceiling’s pull at the sternum, unrelenting; dive bombers; controlled demolition; uncontrolled… Read More The Myopic Ideation of Frank Shishido ~ fiction by Henry Knollenberg
A man was found with a beating heart at the busy intersection of Las Vegas Boulevard and Tropicana Avenue on Tuesday. Authorities arrived on the scene at quite an ordinary time of day and found the man shouting, I’m alive! I’m alive! The man was taken to the hospital, where he was determined to be… Read More Reservoir ~ fiction by Suzanne Hicks
Sunday morning before church; in the blackberry patch. Boys plucking berries, lips smack red; giddy kisses in the thorns, snakes gliding past their shoes. Sunday morning before church; from behind a pine, the Devil files his nails. Sunday morning before church; out pop lizards, green anole, red bib bobbing in robotic threat; mockingbird robs songs… Read More Pink Boys: Sunday Pastoral ~ prose poetry by Kim Salinas Silva
FIFTH So Avery plays the Serenelli, her shoulders bobbing, floating around the living room, hovering over the couch and the TV, up over the roofs of the terraced houses, through the schoolyard, soaring, fluttering, down the slide and between swing set chains. Through the tire in the backyard and then back in. Another tooth pops… Read More Avery and Jacob ~ fiction by Perry Genovesi
Ladies and gentlemen, meet Dorothy Corsair! Our housewife finally has a name. First prize (a copy of my novel Parts Unknown) is shared by friends-of-the-zine and contributors Jake Sheff and Liz McShane, who suggested the first and last names, respectively. Jake had no idea that my mom’s name is Dorothy, so his entry was completely… Read More See her name
PROTEST V Flaming shingles fly above the streets outside neighbor’s apartment – playing NBA 2K21, blasting DJ Screw, Wretched of the Earth on the end table, white fist raised, curtains closed. Young folk out walking rawly the expanse of reality. PROTEST IV Sky closes on elm trees and metal-throated birds above street crowd flushed out… Read More Two Poems ~ poetry by Adam Day
Take the loot from the Saturday night knockover and lock it in the box; wash the stash on Sundays at the track and glom a little for yourself and stuff it into the mattress; never leave the house without one of the fellas; fry up eggs in butter, not oleo, and make a lot more… Read More Moll (After Kincaid) ~ fiction by Richie Narvaez
~Friends of The Disappointed Housewife ~ Now that we’re a few months past our five-year anniversary, I’ve been thinking a lot about the lady at the top of our home page—how steadfast she is, how stern but fully loving, just like the kind of mom who turns out a Greta Thunberg, a Michelle Obama, or… Read More Contest: Help name our disappointed housewife!
Andromeda Among Asphodels, 2005 Cassiopeia Nix Oil on canvas In this work, the artist has painted a field of half-bloomed asphodels, flowers that crawl up their spear stems in the hyper-detail-rich style that has become her signature. The features of the flowers are sharp and minute. When viewed from a distance they become so myopic… Read More Andromeda Among Asphodels, 2005 ~ fiction by Spencer Nitkey
Siobhán picked me up from the apartment and drove us into Brooklyn. She sang along with Bowie’s “Golden Years” playing off her iPhone. She turned to face me as we barreled up Bedford Avenue near McCarren Park. “ANNNNGELLLLL.” “Oh, good fuckin’ Lord. Watch the street,” I said. She laughed. “I always keep one eye on… Read More Ourselves ~ fiction by Mike Lee
Oak Ayling is a Pushcart Prize nominated poet from North Cornwall, and Editor-in-Chief of Spare Parts Literary Magazine. Her debut pamphlet With Love from the Curator was released in 2021 from award winning publishers Indigo Dreams Publishing. Her other works can be found in literary magazines and in the print anthologies Light… Read More Mixtape Stax 3 ~ playlist poetry by Oak Ayling
a prisoner spit at me and I stopped and he looked at me like I was a vulture and he was a corpse and I would usually just keep walking but the spit hit my arm and so I looked at it when he was looking at me and I looked up and the… Read More when I was an EMT in the prison ~ poetry by Ron Riekki
Sometimes, when we feel like aliens, which is most of the time (but whatever), we wonder: Do you know us? If not, it’s okay. It’s okay. Who knows us, really knows us? Gets us? The woman with a YouTube music reaction channel, the woman with a slow-rolling teardrop in her voice hearing feeling believing in… Read More The Ones Who Know Us ~ prose poem by Pat Foran
We come out at night to scurry from between the cracks in your foundation. We explore every crevice in search of crumbs, a warm place to rest, or to infest. We never go near the traps your husband placed in the corners, and though we would love to lick the peanut butter he positioned just… Read More We Are the Mice That Live in Your Basement ~ fiction by Sara Dobbie
Wednesday, May 11th, 11:30 I appreciate you seeing me on such short notice. You came highly recommended. It’s just … well, you won’t believe what’s happened. I almost didn’t believe it myself until she popped out. I call her Calvia—because she came from my calf muscle. And I’m not trying to look a gift horse, or… Read More Vestigial ~ fiction by Coleman Bigelow
I inspect floral enamel coating spoons and forks, hand-painted cherries across white porcelain, slices of slouching golden brioche like giant dominoes. I run my finger across the whetted blade. Yellow, uneven circles tumble on laminate. It’s a choice between reading Kafka or covering beech wood with glossy hortensias, poppies and bluebells. In eighteen minutes and… Read More The Not-So-Sudden Walk after Reading Kafka ~ fiction by Isabelle B.L
Anatomy of Melancholy From lapidary inscriptions, from signs, from stones, in the beginning, I try to rebuild you. The sky says, “Take this boot-knife, consider it a gift from a friend.” Was it then I noticed death can be a lesser misery? “It may well be.” quips Robert Burton, author of The Anatomy of Melancholy.… Read More Anatomy of Melancholy ~ poetry by Laurie Rosenblatt
VAGINAL CLAW® PRESS INFORMATION: January 31, 2032 Positive Data Reports for Vaginal Claw® and Development of New Claws Out! Product Claws Out! proudly announces that from 2026–2031, wherever our best-selling Vaginal Claw® is legal and available, reported vaginal rapes and unwanted pregnancies fell by 60% and are forecasted to continue falling. Data also indicates that… Read More Vaginal Claw Press Information ~ press release by Meredith Wadley
They descend in clattering droves, sag telephone lines, drip from the tulip tree like rotten fruit. You watch from the window, push your nose against the pane. Your mother tells you about a sudden spring snowstorm, about a speckled egg found on the doorstep. How she candled the shell and saw a sleeping girl tucked inside. Saw… Read More When the Cowbirds Come to Carry Your Sister Away ~ fiction by Audra Kerr Brown
Against Beginnings Each night I grow my second self a quarter inch and now her girth fills the bed, soon the room. By noon next Tuesday month she’ll fill the garage, then the block. Next year I’ll enter a city and change the weather, bringing what’s blue and open, like legs. Each night I grow… Read More Three poems ~ poetry by Barbara Lock
The Disappointed Housewife is delighted to announce that Lynn Mundell’s terrific flash story, “Centaurs in the Laundromat,” has been chosen to appear in the Best Microfiction 2023 Anthology. This is our second award since our inception, and we’re awfully proud to be able to offer a platform for works like Lynn’s so more readers can… Read More Best Microfiction selects one of ours!
Like a lot of people, I started experimenting with bugs in high school. My first time was at a party after homecoming sophomore year. A girl wearing her hair in a towering beehive do fluttered a baggie of monarchs the color of Halloween in front of me. Butterflies were no big deal, I figured. I cupped a… Read More Glow ~ fiction by Keith J. Powell
She calls from the top of the jungle gym. Look at me, look at me now. I’m feeding the baby mashed fruit from a tube and still only have two eyes. Sure, I say, as I try to squeeze just the right amount of yellow goop into his half-open mouth. Look at me now! She… Read More Look at me ~ fiction by Hege A. Jakobsen Lepri
Late one night, Becca gathered her supplies—flashlight, spackling knife, rubber spatula, shovel, and scalpel—and walked into the woods behind her house. The breeze rustled her black hair, and the tall trees waved back and forth as if to welcome her. Far in the woods, she found a spot she liked: desolate, and so dark it… Read More Scrape ~ fiction by Victoria Mack
The fourteen-year-old twins watched Doris in her push-up bra lipstick blot rouge pluck pencil thicken shape all the while listening to Mel Torme and talking nonstop to them about which of the boys she hoped would come to her table and ask permission from her date to dance and then she stood and danced and… Read More The Emerald Room Awaits ~ fiction by Paul Beckman
Author’s note: Scan the QR codes for an instant look at the artworks. Or visit https://andreaswannerstedt.se. Mikaela Nyman writes fiction, non-fiction and poetry in English and Swedish. Her first poetry collection in Swedish was shortlisted for the Nordic Council Literature Prize 2020. Recent poems have appeared in The Spinoff Friday poem, the climate change anthology No… Read More Oddly Satisfying: a meditation ~ poetry by Mikaela Nyman
Edgar Rosenberg. Remember me? Joan Rivers, your wife, and partner for twenty-two years? The funny one? The one Carson loved? And Robert Mitchum. Yeah-yeah, cuckolding’s not nice. I’m not nice. You can’t get where I got with nice. Can you hear me? No, of course, you can’t hear me because you’re dead. Deader than my… Read More Can We Talk? ~ fiction by Lucinda Kempe
And now for our final nominations for the 2022/2023 awards season: Sonder Press’s Best Small Fictions. A couple of years ago, one of our stories, The Apparitions by Kirsty McGrory, was chosen by the judges, so we’re on their radar. It’s nice to know that we’re reaching a wider audience thanks to that honor, but… Read More Best Small Fictions Nominations 2023
My death every day is the idea of being made invisible I die of invisibility, my blackness devalued by lack of empathy from slavery up to Breonna Taylor, I am here to make space for blackness to be visible. The words that I write must show you how invisible you are to me because you… Read More I Feel Like a Mosquito Taking on Godzilla ~ poetry by Ilari Pass
You will watch TV with Mrs. Beasley, sitting on her two-seat sofa, and it will not be dangerous. Your mother trusts her. You will play cards and checkers. You’ll draw dinosaurs. You’ll iron leaves in wax paper, and she’ll let you close your eyes and run your palm, warm and waxy over it, to feel… Read More Radio on the Fish Tank ~ fiction by Nancy Freund
Attention, readers of The Disappointed Housewife: As our fifth year of publication comes to an end, we’re finally on Facebook. At the urging of a recent contributor, we thought we might as well go ahead and at least attempt to increase our readership by connecting with thousands of readers and writers there who have no… Read More The Disappointed Housewife is now on Facebook
You were eleven and I was twelve, Irish twins, and I was always telling you to come on, move faster, hurry up. I already felt so far behind the rest of the world. And there we were in summer exile at our grandmother’s house in Boring, Pennsylvania, a town with no mall, no movie theater,… Read More I’ll Be Your Mirror ~ fiction by Kathryn Kulpa
Craig Foltz is the author of three books of prose / poetry (available via Ugly Duckling and Compound Press). His work has appeared in numerous journals (Fence, Conjunctions, Diagram and others). He currently lives and works on the North Island of New Zealand. For more info or collaborative pitches: http://www.craigfoltz.com.
For the first time, The Disappointed Housewife is pleased to nominate a few works for the annual Best Microfiction competition. This one has a 400-word limit, so I’ve been remiss in combing through our archives to find eligible pieces. We have a nice debut stable of short fiction for the 2023 prize: Now Look… Read More Best Microfiction 2023 Nominations
The Disappointed Housewife is pleased to nominate the following stories and poems for the 2023 Pushcart Prizes: FICTION How to Vanquish the Demon Raktabīja ~ Emily Hoover From the 2354 Galaxy Museum Exhibition of Lost Civilizations ~ Andrea Marcusa Forbidden Fruit ~ Karen Schauber POETRY Painting Party at an Indian Buffet ~ Megan Denese Mealor… Read More Pushcart Prize Nominations 2023
Your Mind Wanders Because Your Brain Whispers a found poem [You store] memories in a new place when you daydream. Electrical impulses encode like different barcodes identify a product in the stores. This happens thousands of times a day without us being aware. We think we are not doing anything useful, our brain is very… Read More Two Poems ~ poetry by Laura Grace Weldon
It’s hard to believe, but The Disappointed Housewife is five years old this month. Our first piece was published on November 30, 2017—that is, our first piece by someone other than me. I had contributed a faux book review to get the ball rolling a couple of weeks earlier. I remember back then wanting to… Read More The Disappointed Housewife is 5 Years Old!
The Disappointed Housewife 