For March, Spittoon Monthly takes a look back over all the amazing writers who’ve graced our pixels in the past year and a half. Our mission has been to connect writers with readers, to get them heard over the noise with a little more selectivity and frame. So it’s important to keep our past writers in the limelight as long as we can, giving new readers a chance to discover the writing that’s been waiting for them.
This is also a little announcement . . . Spittoon Monthly is taking a short break from publishing new features while we do some exciting renovations that will help us serve writers better than ever. Expect to hear more soon along with a new call for submissions.
We hope to build a meaningful relationship with our writers and to help our writers build meaningful relationships with readers. Doing something with intentionality isn’t trivial, and so we are continuing to think of and try new ways to serve this mission (without burning ourselves out as humble volunteers). Ideas and suggestions are welcome from readers and contributors alike. Hit up info [at] SpittoonCollective [dot] com if you have something to tell us.
With that said, here’s a noble little game: Read through these quotes from our past features below, and whichever writer syncs with your sensibilities most, click through and read the whole story or set of poems. And if you love the piece, remember the author! Check their bio and give ’em a Google; they might just have published some other great work that you’ll love.
Thanks to all of our writers, readers, submitters, and supporters! And a special thanks to our past and current editors, Bradford Philen, Poornima Weerasekara, Deva Eveland, and Jack Calder. Couldn’t do it without any of you.
— David Huntington, Spittoon Managing Web Editor
Rewind! Our writers arrayed:
Note: For small screens, try landscape view to minimize scrolling or line wrapping.
August 2018 – Xiao Yue Shan
and when I reached out for your hand it seemed so silly that I took a packet
of marmalade instead. you wouldn’t stop digging your nails into the lacquered
rivers on diner tables, even when I asked nicely. even when
I hit you. you were so beautiful under florescent lighting
all apricot cheeks, all that blood popping like bubblegum
in the whites of your eyes. your face a puddle of milk on the countertop
October 2018 – Sara F. Costa
the city gravitates
in the sensitive fragments of verbs.
a night movement
lives on the highest floors
of solitude.
the great city rushes
in the convocation of men
that are lost and found
in the same space.
the hot age of the earth
dies in my hands as I pass
this sad bridge
November 2018 – Deva Eveland
I looked up in a panic, but another applicant had already pushed past me. I went to the next window, but the clerk wouldn’t look away from her computer.
“I’m an atheist,” I said, pressing the assignment up against the Plexiglas for her to see. “I can’t be a monk. It says clearly on my personnel sheet I’m an atheist.”
“You E37?” she asked, eyes still glued to her screen. Before I could respond, a voice behind me said, “I’m E37.” And thus I became a man of the cloth.
December 2018 – Camilla Bell-Davies
This time of day is mine
when the trees froth black ’gainst the blushing sky
scattered and taut like the strings of a lyre.
This time of day is mine
when the castle melts and spires prickle the heights
unfurl the dusky banner of the sky
January 2019 – Nina Dillenz
Years later you read in a magazine that something similar to false memory syndrome exists, where you only know about an occurrence through tales, or a photograph perhaps, but the more you hear the story or see the photograph the more you will think of it as naturally grown. You want to remember in emotion, and color, and so you add them, one by one, until nothing suspicious remains.
February 2019 – 郝一琼 Hao Yiqiong
I, a nobody from the east,
look through the window and gaze at the moon.
The moon, so bright and so cold,
accompanied by ephemeral stars,
yet looks like a crystal tear drop on the dark cheek of a young widow.
What if the galaxy is a spit of blood of a dying poet?
March 2019 – Nathan Bennett
Five years unremitting terror. They say that what goes up must come down; I know not whether that thing ever went up, but it most certainly came down. Only in the day am I safe. Night, I dare not go out. I doubt that it receives intelligence from its smaller cousins—it was out of place when I originally saw it, but they cover the sounds of its approach. How the harmless and the harmful sound so much alike!
April 2019 – Luis Humberto Valadez
Are we the force that refuses to stop doing that which must be done for
the conversation of energy?
I think so!
For the reason we start doing, the
expenditure of our ignition must be converted to units
we both understand.
May 2019 – Mario T. Perez Jr.
Daquan feels an unnatural shiver that starts at his hairy toes, bouncing off his bony abs, and orbits his bald scalp like a cold moon. The thick blanket propped up by nails guarding the entrance of his hut feebly flaps, allowing slithers of wind to snake their way inside. He rolls on his floor mat a few times to see if there is a chance to take a dip back into the tranquility of the otherworld, but feebly rises once he realizes it’s impossible.
June 2019 – William Doreski
Amelia removes her green wig
and plops it atop her sculpture.
That humanizing touch helps.
We walk around it, cooing
and making kissy faces.
It’s too big to fit the doorway
but easy to disassemble,
being screwed together with brass
decking screws, each plank numbered
like an artifact. It means
something, makes a point the way
bad art always does. Amelia
observes us observing it.
Her face clouds with crystal sparks.
July 2019 – Edward DeMarsh
Then I am out of the car and into the night. I watch Dad’s left hand closely, waiting for it to swing out a few inches from his body, the universal signal for hand holding, a command I must obey. Will I be placed in the position of having to choose between holding my fathers’ hand in front of strangers, or staying in the car and missing this? I hesitate, keep one step back.
August 2019 – Nicole Zdeb
Bloody, busy, we panted after Victorian
porn, fucking off on pillow books, Teen Beat
and Bop!, flouting god and Amerika
and the barbarously sad plaid exactly
to our knees, and each morning mass, pink ibis
light soaked the sacristy, how Father Richard’s
nail polish caught that light.
September 2019 – Bradford Philen
It started to sound a lot like the mindfulness crap Dr. Judy had been trying to sell me at our last session. Mindfulness had been everywhere at work lately too. At the hospital. “Hmmm,” I said. “I guess, Dr. Judy, then, what I am isn’t normal.”
It’s a small office. You can feel everything inside there. I could feel her shaking her head no, trying to save me. “We’re all not normal, Earl.”
All goble-dee-goop. “Even you?” I said.
“Even me.” She was lying.
October 2019 – Brady Riddle
What must Telemachus, that poster boy
for absent fathers, have felt the first time
Penelope directed him to his father’s field
to ready the soil for growing season? He, barely
grown himself, did not know handle from blade,
how deep to set the till or that the stones
he picked and cast away, his father put there
to moisten hardened ground. How many questions
plowed through his mind, sowing seeds of
struggling resentment and obligatory love
all sons must root deeply for their fathers?
November 2019 – Francesca Violich Kennedy
The Firefly had only two bartenders. Each was always there, always working. One was slight, barely more than a girl. When she opened her mouth, she did so only to sigh. Then, in those moments, I could see the small gap between her front teeth, which made her every breath a hiss. She never looked at me, and only seemed to stare at her own hands, as if confused why God had deigned to give her such appendages. The drinks she made were overly sweet, and made me sad. The other bartender wore flamboyant silk shirts and wide hats. He was a lofty and jealous man who loved to eat bitter fruit and stare at his reflection in his silver cocktail-shaker. His drinks were sour, and the more I drank them, the more they leached into me, leaving me snapping like a dog at the hurried heels of fellow patrons.
December 2019 – Jade Riordan
Wait is weight
condensed. Same
density. Same burden.
Same beckon to
the animal of intent.
To the almost birdsong.
To the small, slow
hurts of wolf-thought
and worry and wither
and want. To wither
with want.