Joint Winner of the Letter Review Prize for Short Stories. Features: Self harm. Most days I don’t like my brother, Dan. He’s bigger and four years older than me. Besides, he’s always saying he’s smarter than me, but that doesn’t matter anymore. It all started on Saturday night when everyone in Crawley’s Corner celebrated the return … Read more
Joint Winner of the Letter Review Prize for Short Stories Listen up, compadre. If you want to run a bodega successfully in the Boogie Down, you need to check your scruples at the door. See that upside-down milk crate by the potato chip rack? That’s a chair. See that cold-cut slicer in the deli? That’s … Read more
Joint Winner of the Letter Review Prize for Poetry We see so little of the world, a mere corner,they say, though today, nothing seems scanty—the oaks around the meadow, full of spiked leaves and fear- ful band-tails, life’s matrix pulsing every nerve—it’s morethan more: it’s a slow explosion, even if its plentyis mere sliver next … Read more
Joint Winner of The Letter Review Prize for Poetry The house in its placecould never replace it. A three-car garagewhere the bar used to be. “I wonder what would happenif I knocked on the door and told the cast insideit was happy hour? Might they invite me infor a cameo? A curtain call cocktailon the … Read more
Joint Winner of the Letter Review Prize for Poetry i. In the field, light cuts across my palms and draws nothing but a new shadow. A gift mistaken for darkness. ii. In a poem you can be anything but a better son. iii. Half a country away, I carry your name – a hummingbird sleeping between my palms. iv. You never taught me how to suffer, mother. Which … Read more
Joint Winner of the Letter Review Prize for Flash Fiction Kenneth would not look back into the room, only out of the window at his dying garden. She had come a long way. Two buses, a train, another bus. His three sons, all grown, had been trying to encourage him to turn his head ever … Read more
Joint Winner of The Letter Review Prize for Flash Fiction Zeke slid the rusted step-side under the cypress moss and wiggled the shifter into neutral. He circled his window down first and reached over Jeannie Mae to crank hers. Which was a hassle given the knob was broken off and persuasion was needed to hold … Read more
Joint Winner of The Letter Review Prize for Flash Fiction One month into the pandemic, I bought a telescope. It was my wife who suggested it. In the first few weeks she’d started running, practicing yoga, and joined a book club. None of those appealed to me, but I’d always liked space. I spent a … Read more
POVerty Line Third Place in the Letter Review Prize for Poetry New Poetry by Deja Jones 14th April, 2023 It haunts me like a perpetual poltergeist From my childhood home to every bedroom and kitchen table. Stalks me like a masked killer creeping But its sinister shape looks nothing … Read more
The Dangle Unreleased New Poetry by Michael Dufresne Second Place in the Letter Review Prize for Poetry 14th April, 2023 安時而處順，哀樂不能入也。此古之所謂縣解也，而不能自解者，物有結之。 If you settle with the times and dwell in the course, neither grief nor joy will be able to enter. This is what the ancients called the dangle and release, and those who are … Read more