Susurrus, A Literary Arts Magazine of the American South

07/10/2024

“I want my mother, she called, her words taking flight. Pain had wings. It traveled the miles back to Kentucky, found the hands that knew how to comfort."

"All the Mothers" by Karen Salyer McElmurray

All the Mothersby Karen Salyer McElmurray Holy MotherWhen I was little, I didn’t believe in any of the church’s faces of god—the gray beards, the crowns of thorns. I wanted sand the color of garnets. Camels. Deserts. When it rained some nights, I dreamed a holy woman came and sat...

07/08/2024

“I felt a strange conflicting feeling of familiarity and distance, as though I were remembering someone else’s life as well as one remembers one’s own."

"Metamorphosis" by Breanna Claire

Metamorphosisby Breanna Claire The epochs of our life are not in the visible facts of our choice of a calling, our marriage, our acquisition of an office, and the like, but in a silent thought by the way-side as we walk; in a thought which revises our entire manner of life, and says, — “Th.....

07/05/2024

“'Had to,' means love had nothing to do with it at all."

"Love in the Time of Abortion’s 'Had To' Question" by Dwaine Rieves

Love in the Time of Abortion’s “Had To” Questionby Dwaine Rieves Twelve, I probably was twelve when I first realized I was responsible for my mother’s miserable marriage. The insight appeared one morning shortly before school. I cowered in the living room, scrunched up against an arm o.....

07/03/2024

"It is springtime. Each year the earth’s atrophy reawakening, newness settling its bones, becoming, again, again."

"Each day the body gets stronger" by Faune Albert

  Each day the body gets strongerby Faune Albert   Open the palm, stretch the fingers wide, then bend them at the knuckles, where their smile lines crinkle. Muscle, tendon, bone—what makes these fingers work—fingers curled into talons, then extended gracefully. Open, and again, each movement a...

06/30/2024

✨ONLY HOURS REMAIN! Submit TODAY!✨

Susurrus is open for submissions through June 30th! We accept previously unpublished poetry, flash, fiction, creative nonfiction, and photography from artists across the American South. More info at the link below!

Guidelines *Submissions are open through June 30, 2024. (We took a brief hiatus during Winter 2023.)Susurrus accepts previously unpublished poetry, flash, fiction, creative nonfiction, and photography from artists across the American South. We publish three times a year, during April, August, and De...

06/29/2024

🌟Just ONE DAY remains! Submit today!🌟

Susurrus is open for submissions through June 30th! We accept previously unpublished poetry, flash, fiction, creative nonfiction, and photography from artists across the American South. More info at the link below!

Guidelines *Submissions are open through June 30, 2024. (We took a brief hiatus during Winter 2023.)Susurrus accepts previously unpublished poetry, flash, fiction, creative nonfiction, and photography from artists across the American South. We publish three times a year, during April, August, and De...

06/28/2024

"If all vision is theft, the poet, too, counts as thief and marauder, a Conquistador, a finder as a keeper, but also as a loser."

"A Haunted Book" by Charlotte M. Porter

A Haunted Bookby Charlotte M. Porter Are finders keepers? Who decides in today’s grabby world? Eliza knows that present residents of North Florida, herself included, live on homelands of the Timucua people and hunt lands of the later Creeks and Seminoles. In the sixteenth century, European d.....

06/28/2024

🌟Happy Friday, friends! Just TWO DAYS remain! Submit today!🌟

Susurrus is open for submissions through June 30th! We accept previously unpublished poetry, flash, fiction, creative nonfiction, and photography from artists across the American South. More info at the link below!

Guidelines *Submissions are open through June 30, 2024. (We took a brief hiatus during Winter 2023.)Susurrus accepts previously unpublished poetry, flash, fiction, creative nonfiction, and photography from artists across the American South. We publish three times a year, during April, August, and De...

06/25/2024

Congratulations to Amy Cipolla Barnes’ “Ashes to Ashes” and Sarosh Nandwani’s “The trains follow us,” which both made The Wigleaf Top 50 Longlist!

An online journal of very short fictions -- under 1000 words.

06/24/2024

“Montmorency fruit plucked
from trees along Saginaw Bay, tossed
into baskets carrying season’s stain

to kitchens, roiling pots, crimped crust..."

“rest your head on cherry stones" by Lucinda Trew

rest your head on cherry stonesby Lucinda Trew Montmorency fruit plucked from trees along Saginaw Bay, tossed into baskets carrying season’s stainto kitchens, roiling pots, crimped crustthe tang of cherry mash steamed sour and sweet, the blade-bleedof juice that flavors dreams, pits sucke...

06/23/2024

🌟One week left! Submit today!🌟

Susurrus is open for submissions through June 30th! We accept previously unpublished poetry, flash, fiction, creative nonfiction, and photography from artists across the American South. More info at the link below!

Guidelines *Submissions are open through June 30, 2024. (We took a brief hiatus during Winter 2023.)Susurrus accepts previously unpublished poetry, flash, fiction, creative nonfiction, and photography from artists across the American South. We publish three times a year, during April, August, and De...

06/21/2024

“...the supplanted
grass squares that sicken yellow under merciless
Mississippi sun, that grow in thin
where trees used to be..."

“Sweetridge" by Alston Tyer

Sweetridgeby Alston Tyer The house is already set to rot, this home if ever I had one—from slant foundation to cracks that creep up unslept bedroom walls painted over off-white, the hydrangea garden besieged by frogs mowed flat, the supplanted grass squares that sicken yellow under mer...

06/20/2024

Take a look at the latest publishing opportunities currently available to writers from the many literary magazines and presses that are members of CLMP. Before submitting your work, be sure to check the publisher’s website for any updates.

06/20/2024

✨Just 10 days remain! Submit TODAY!✨

Susurrus is open for submissions through June 30th! We accept previously unpublished poetry, flash, fiction, creative nonfiction, and photography from artists across the American South. More info at the link below!

Guidelines *Submissions are open through June 30, 2024. (We took a brief hiatus during Winter 2023.)Susurrus accepts previously unpublished poetry, flash, fiction, creative nonfiction, and photography from artists across the American South. We publish three times a year, during April, August, and De...

06/19/2024

“I asked if you would bury me in brick, but
you laughed. We’re going Viking, you said,
we agreed. Burn it all. Everything I have, you said.
What do you have? I asked. You, you said."

“Oakland Cemetery, August 2016" by Ross White

Oakland Cemetery, August 2016by Ross White What mattered in that moment was the heatof your hip on my palm. Sunlight gildedthe whole island of Atlanta for a few minutes.We were castaways a few miles from I-75.Overhead, armadas drifted, white in their ships.We steered lazily through the rowsof .....

06/17/2024

“I want you to know it's okay if the first
year's garden yields nothing, if you sometimes cry
at the farmer's market buying

overpriced tomatoes."

“Gardening Instructions for New Mothers" by Pamela Manasco

Gardening Instructions for New Mothersby Pamela Manasco They say any kind of pest could killa tomato: a hornworm, powdery mildew, a squirrel taking a single bite of each almost ripe berry before spittingthe fruit on the ground, little stepping stones that hope the next bite will be sweet & alm.....

06/16/2024

Just two weeks remain! Submit today!

Guidelines *Submissions are open through June 30, 2024. (We took a brief hiatus during Winter 2023.)Susurrus accepts previously unpublished poetry, flash, fiction, creative nonfiction, and photography from artists across the American South. We publish three times a year, during April, August, and De...

06/15/2024

Only 15 days remain! Submit today!

Guidelines *Submissions are open through June 30, 2024. (We took a brief hiatus during Winter 2023.)Susurrus accepts previously unpublished poetry, flash, fiction, creative nonfiction, and photography from artists across the American South. We publish three times a year, during April, August, and De...

06/14/2024

“A hug was never enough, but there was laughter
—one I hadn’t heard before. Maybe, it was a good day.
Maybe, candles and cake weren’t needed—just a memory."

“Only the Cow Knew" by Shome Dasgupta

Only the Cow Knewby Shome Dasgupta Wind blown erosion—at the intersectionof two dirt roads where bales of hayonce played with wrens and robins.One street sign, nodding overlike my baro dadu at the kitchen tablewhen we ate maach and aloo bhaji, tired and quiet.I was just a brat visiting famil.....

06/12/2024

“When cold wind gives permission
to tears I imagine you ask

what the matter is, I imagine I point
to the lilac sky of dusk or the roadside

co**se of a bird or rodent to place
some blame."

“Don't Look Away” by Liz Bruce

  Don’t Look Awayby Liz Bruce   When cold wind gives permission to tears I imagine you ask what the matter is, I imagine I point to the lilac sky of dusk or the roadside co**se of a bird or rodent to place some blame. As a child, I found a dead squirrel sprawled on the yellow lines, still....

06/11/2024

06/10/2024

“The wean is over, corral empty and a feeling of aftermath pervades.
A last trough we didn’t need in the fields for the calves, remains in
the top lot where we feed the broken bull."

“Inviolable" by Sean Sexton

Inviolableby Sean Sexton 9/6It’s my lost sister’s birthday month. Is it in two more days or twelve? It doesn’t matter much I suppose. There has been a cooling, the sky’s seasonal change from hard-bitten light.F**k Jeff! —I told my buddy last night; soon to turn fifty—I’m ninet...

06/07/2024

“I tried
a deterrent last year, just a spritz, aimed
at the holes. The mad vibrations buzzing

as they died are with me still."

“Small Delights" by Ann Long

  Carpenter bees that worry us at our doorby Ann Long   drip their excrement from holes they bore in the trellis, mixed with the sawdust they make, a paste that dries to the yellowed hueof old photo albums. If I were to poison them, we wouldn’t hunch and hurry our way across the threshold. O...

06/05/2024

“Koko pets her pet, and it learns
what that means. It meows and cuddles
and never questions. She sees
a peered mirror test, small theories
of sonder"

“Small Delights" by Matthew Moniz

Koko’s kittenby Matthew Moniz can’t comprehend her prestidigitation, projections, flat shadows puppeteered, omitting semiosis, stringed digits pulling responses. It can’t imitate the gesture, the hand that carries, the hand that gives, the hand that takes – the wiggling symbols, ...

06/03/2024

“...Every time I learn a word like this I love
these small delights, that there are things I don't know,
that choosing to remain rewards..."

“Small Delights” by Pamela Manasco

Small Delightsby Pamela Manasco Four years after Halley's comet made its 1759 revolution Charles Messier discovered star clusters. He was looking instead for more comets, noting stars as a way of marking what he didn't want: heavenly bodies that didn't move. Imagine a squirrel mapping drive...

05/31/2024

“Arbiter of arrested breath and stutter step chest/you made an
enemy of resting heart rate/tachycardic thump/metronomic
breast./Your familiar fist knocks like an old lover./Hard
caress./You brain tangling witch.”

“Ode to Generalized Anxiety Disorder" by Ronnie K. Stephens

  Ode to Generalized Anxiety Disorderby Ronnie K. Stephens   Arbiter of arrested breath and stutter step chest/you made an enemy of resting heart rate/tachycardic thump/metronomic breast./Your familiar fist knocks like an old lover./Hard caress./You brain tangling witch./Memory terrorist./Remember...

05/29/2024

“On the other side of the gate I see no tracks and no one in the
field which inclines toward the road. The fields are dead. The
farm is dead. All remnant color is gone from the grass. Tonight,
the leftover dungheaps will freeze. Tomorrow maybe it will snow."

"Fincastle Farm Fence Elegy" by Cory Crouser

  Fincastle Farm Fence Elegyby Cory Crouser   After Wendell BerryTracks pinch at gateshe saidand I have seen it, too, hereat this sun-cast farmtwo bright tracts of field lazeinto a naked creaseof dirt: an old tube gategoes crooked on its hingesome flagship year before I'm born, falls open of a st...

05/24/2024

"In this way, the body is built to be forgotten: there
are cells in the heart that make their own
rhythm; even brainless, they march on."

"We Cannot Control the Automatic" by Lydia Buzzard

We Cannot Control the Automaticby Lydia Buzzard In this way, the body is built to be forgotten: there are cells in the heart that make their own rhythm; even brainless, they march on. So I know a thing about unstoppable forces, how momentum truly pushes more than pulls, but as a...

05/22/2024

"That anyone speaks a single thing is ever more toward
being than demise. No one, given the chance would
refuse an extra life. Now the sky grows sullen and dim,
drops begin to fall, world’s breath rises, rousing everything."

"Argued" by Sean Sexton

Arguedby Sean Sexton 8/24One glimpse up from the page and there’s the eyepeeking between folded blue cloths in the sky—a chance encounter with light—as I pour through old, mistaken pages of my books, altering in pencil what cannot be changed in print, all before tonight’s reading.It...

05/20/2024

Open for submissions! Susurrus, A Literary Arts Magazine of the American South accepts previously unpublished poetry, flash, fiction, creative nonfiction, and photography from artists across the American South. Send us your gorgeous and compelling, your thoughtful and tender! More at the link below!

Guidelines *Submissions are open through June 30, 2024. (We took a brief hiatus during Winter 2023.)Susurrus accepts previously unpublished poetry, flash, fiction, creative nonfiction, and photography from artists across the American South. We publish three times a year, during April, August, and De...