Stirring: A Literary Collection

07/06/2024

Our summer issue is here, and she’s radiant as a firefly on a warm evening. Take a look at our featured work from Jessica Furtado, Diane LeBlanc, Erin Hill, Peter Grandbois, Sarah Wirth, Celia Lawren, and others!

www.stirringlit.com/

“A Portrait of the Patient with Migraine and Carnations,” “The Patient Awakens with Midnight Migraine,” “The Patient Confides in Herself” by Jessica Furtado

04/06/2024

The Spring Issue of Stirring has arrived like a fresh bloom of your favorite flower. Featuring work from Claire Meng, Charlie Steak, Courtney Craggett, Claudio Parentela, and more! Hop on over and check it out!

Spring has sprung and brought with it the new issue of Stirring like a fresh bloom. Featured Poetry: Emma McCoy, Erica Appleton, Claire Meng, Charlie Steak, Philip Jason, Claire Scott, Jeffrey S. Hartnett, and Michelle Turner. Featured Prose: Jason Schembri, Mihriban Nurefşan Fidan, and Courtney Cr...

01/11/2024

We’ve been steeping our winter issue like a perfect cup of tea! The winter issue of Stirring has finally arrived with the crisp chill of the new year. Featured Poetry: JM Huck, Sharon Kennedy-Nolle, Amy Pence, Marina Hope Wilson, Sarah Cahalan, Kathy Nelson, Andy Ray, Richard L. Matta, Lisa Low, and Peter Leight. Featured Prose: Karen Paley. Featured Artists: Jeffrey Hartnett and Michael Noonan.

The winter issue of Stirring has finally arrived with the crisp chill of the new year. Featured Poetry: JM Huck, Sharon Kennedy-Nolle, Amy Pence, Marina Hope Wilson, Sarah Cahalan, Kathy Nelson, Andy Ray, Richard L. Matta, Lisa Low, and Peter Leight. Featured Prose: Karen Paley. Featured Artists: Je...

01/07/2024

The Sundress Academy for the Arts is hosting its fourth generative writing retreat celebrating survival and healing on March 22-23, 2024. This two-day retreat for sexual assault survivors will be held in Oak Ridge, TN and will be a safe space for creativity, generative writing exercises, discussions on ways to write trauma, advice on publishing, and more. Come join us in mutual support for a weekend of writing time for healing, safety, and comfort. Deadline to apply is 1/15. http://www.sundresspublications.com/safta/retreats

10/04/2023

The fall issue of Stirring has arrived! This is our anniversary issue, and we also celebrate the five year anniversary with art editor Stephanie Phillips by featuring her work. Along with work from Karen Laws, Manthipe Moila, Jan LaPerle, and many others, this issue is dancing like a fall leaf in the breeze.

The smoke of fireworks and wildfires is slowly fading, but the boom of our summer issue is just beginning. Just like a lightning bug (or firefly), this issue will bring a little light and magic to your warm summer evenings. With featured work from Meg Yardley, Sal Bardo, Sarah Lilius, and others rou...

07/06/2023

Summertime Stirring time! Our summer issue is out and features amazing work from Sal Bardo, Cathy Ulrich, Annette Sisson, and others. Take a look!

The smoke of fireworks and wildfires is slowly fading, but the boom of our summer issue is just beginning. Just like a lightning bug (or firefly), this issue will bring a little light and magic to your warm summer evenings. With featured work from Meg Yardley, Sal Bardo, Sarah Lilius, and others rou...

05/03/2023

May is the FINAL MONTH to submit to this year's e-chapbook contest! We are looking for poetry, fiction, nonfiction, and hybrid work as are visual poetry, poetry comics, and visual hybrid works between 12-26 pages. http://www.sundresspublications.com/submit

04/27/2023

Just 4 MORE DAYS to apply for our fall residency program! Fellowships available for women and nonbinary writers as well as Black and/or Indigenous writers. Application fees waived for all writers of color. https://sundressblog.com/2023/04/10/sundress-academy-for-the-arts-now-accepting-residency-applications-for-fall-2023/

04/06/2023

Happy April, happy NaPoWriMo, and happy Spring issue of Stirring. With work from Carson Elliot, Nic Portaro, Heather Truett, Bailey Willes, Cynthia Yatchman, and many more, there’s something fresh here for you to enjoy.

The change to spring welcomes the return of blooms and buds, the greenery, and NaPoWriMo. Our Spring issue has love and longing, place and space, relationships won and lost. This issue features poetry from Caitlin Dwyer, Sean Glatch, Kai Pretto, and many more. Fiction and Non-fiction from Bailey Wil...

01/20/2023

"...darkness as x, y
as where this is headed. Fall harder for
bad girl me & draw black nails through mystery.
Shut your starsick heart up."

– T. Dallas Saylor

If I show up as you’ve dreamed yourself,would you hear me, recognize me then?If I show up as you’ve dreamed yourself,in white robes & strong eyes,would you hear me, see me then as myself, or justas you’ve dreamed yourself? This showof white robes & strong eyes makes menow look like I’ve come...

01/19/2023

"They say there is only one rule:
The headlights must recede into the fog.
And if the sun is your headlight?
You are walking, then.
The fog recedes into your headlight."

– Nicholas Molbert

After five years, we let the darkundress us still. To see each otherunclothed would be a concession.You in your ragged sleep shirtwith holes at the underarms.Me in my basketball shortsdampened by night. Concernedwith covering, I would reachfor a spatula, three-ringed binder—hell—the tennis racke...

01/18/2023

"After five years, we let the dark
undress us still. To see each other
unclothed would be a concession.
You in your ragged sleep shirt
with holes at the underarms."

– Nicholas Molbert

After five years, we let the darkundress us still. To see each otherunclothed would be a concession.You in your ragged sleep shirtwith holes at the underarms.Me in my basketball shortsdampened by night. Concernedwith covering, I would reachfor a spatula, three-ringed binder—hell—the tennis racke...

01/17/2023

"I text 'The Moon!' and she knows this
means, 'Go outside!' She knows this means, 'The universe is
beautiful, isn’t it?' She knows this means, 'I miss you. I love you.'"

– Joseph Mills

After dinner, I walk the dog and because it’s already dark, we turn right instead of left which means we go up a hillrather than down into a park. As we climb, the moon seemsto push its way into the sky and rises through the trees, becoming so large and luminous that I stop, unable to continue...

01/16/2023

"...two women fought with coat hangers down at Filene’s Basement.
They’d grabbed the same dress from the tangle of satin
during the Running of the Brides sale: a back buttoned
ivory lace thing"

– Jennifer Martelli

I’ll tell you my mother had three children,all girls. We grew, to our father’s dismay,into bleeding things: hoarse, hungry, aching.All three of us stole from him.My older sister stole his control. My younger,his love. Me? I took his onyx rosary beads,his laugh, his tortoiseshell bowl.We lived in...

01/15/2023

"...three greedy girl ghosts
full of shame, three women transformed into
deep gorges with a river like a blue snake
crawling, three women transformed
into three wolves, three gun-metal wolves
who gorged on three women."

– Jennifer Martelli

I’ll tell you my mother had three children,all girls. We grew, to our father’s dismay,into bleeding things: hoarse, hungry, aching.All three of us stole from him.My older sister stole his control. My younger,his love. Me? I took his onyx rosary beads,his laugh, his tortoiseshell bowl.We lived in...

01/14/2023

"I am ready to party
with ten billion members
of my closest family

the moon’s red clay
the sky a lavender
making me uncomfortable"

– James Croal Jackson

it has been seventeen yearssince I went to workthis morningI am ready to partywith ten billion membersof my closest familythe moon’s red claythe sky a lavendermaking me uncomfortablethe boss who stresses me outsaid today stress’ll kill youman that’s why I spendall my free timetrying to relax a...

01/13/2023

"You feed
the pinewood mason bee, take over my lawn, choke
out bergamot and blazing star, those native flowers
I cultivate in vain. There will always be more of you
than I can ever remove, and yet
you are my favorite w**d to pull."

– KateLynn Hibbard

All that morning, the gulls pooled in odd places, scraping their pale fingers on the cashmere lamp of the earth. Inside my lightning all the women smile, their furious lips hoarding spoons like a late martyr who dances in her one good dress, raining broken on the sand. Now you with your weird silenc...

01/12/2023

"the gulls pooled in odd places, scraping their pale fingers on the cashmere lamp of the earth. Inside my lightning all the women smile, their furious lips hoarding spoons like a late martyr who dances in her one good dress..."

– KateLynn Hibbard

All that morning, the gulls pooled in odd places, scraping their pale fingers on the cashmere lamp of the earth. Inside my lightning all the women smile, their furious lips hoarding spoons like a late martyr who dances in her one good dress, raining broken on the sand. Now you with your weird silenc...

01/11/2023

"you can only perceive bleary, wheat fields blurred
by high-speed, distance. The landscape gone
gold, the way you used to picture it: egg yolk,
amber, honeycomb… that is, once-you, the figment

thick with wistfulness."

– Violeta Garcia-Mendoza

Call it the end of the world, come alive—by which I mean how the past keeps dissolving…its counterfacts infinite possible rooms. I am indoors, sitting at the piano,hands branching a chord I have not yet played. These are the slow blinks, secondsbefore the song begins, when I listen & think an...

01/10/2023

"In another life, I might
have been the veil scraping against

the corners of a sooted city or the slice
of lamplight or the galloping black.

Or is it all pentimento? Painting over painting
over painting, repenting."

– Violeta Garcia-Mendoza

Call it the end of the world, come alive—by which I mean how the past keeps dissolving…its counterfacts infinite possible rooms. I am indoors, sitting at the piano,hands branching a chord I have not yet played. These are the slow blinks, secondsbefore the song begins, when I listen & think an...

01/09/2023

"To kill a lionfish in the Western Atlantic
is to save a snapper, grouper, someone's legitimate dinner.
Is to manage the species’ insatiable appetite,
rare as sashimi. Is to mitigate an unfolding tragedy.
Is to right reef life’s equilibrium.
Is to gut red-white striped bodies, hunger's fire,
venomous spines within fins."

– Sarah Carey

To kill a lionfish in the Western Atlanticis to save a snapper, grouper, someone's legitimate dinner.Is to manage the species’ insatiable appetite,rare as sashimi. Is to mitigate an unfolding tragedy.Is to right reef life’s equilibrium.Is to gut red-white striped bodies, hunger's fire,venomous s...

01/04/2023

The weather is unpredictable at best these days, but the winter issue of Stirring is here to be your reliable, literary treat for the new year. In this issue you’ll find poems from Sarah Carey, Jennifer Martelli, Nicholas Molbert, and more. Along with prose from Giunotte Wise, Liam O’Buachalla, Scott D. Pomfret, and J.L. Moultrie. With knockout featured artists Joseph A. Miller and Yuko Kyutoku this winter issue is sure to please each of your senses and dance around in your mind during these long nights.

12/08/2022

A big congratulations to contributor Anna Laura Reeve for winning the Beloit Poetry Journal's Adrienne Rich award! Check out her piece in Stirring! And once again, amazing work!

1.Leaving the party on a pretext,I return to the second-story apartment.I could walk out of each windowonto hackberry branches,or emerge from the bedroom skylight, dimmedwith rainwater deposits,fine cracking,into the crown of a hackberry.What do people want, when they wantchildren? Soulsfrom the nex...

10/20/2022

“I plug my ears with headphones
and walk myself to the woods, nearly trotting
as I pass blackened trunks, step over thin shoots
of green, move in and out of shadow. She speaks
and my breath slows.”
-Angie Minkin

I’m tired, I told my friend,tired of the weather, donewith being mired in bad news, drowningin the world’s sorrows. So much outof my control. Hiding behind sunglasses,I plug my ears with headphonesand walk myself to the woods, nearly trottingas I pass blackened trunks, step over thin shootsof gr...

10/19/2022

“so to this day I can’t eat fish
without first shredding it,
searching for what may not be there,
still hearing in my father’s caution
not quite fear,
almost love.” -Diane Leblanc

Fresh trout meant small bones  and my father at the kitchen table bending over each filet,  a pencil grip on his knife,  and with the blade and one finger extracting bones like slivers,  then warning us over and over  as we flaked bits onto our forks, watch for bones or you’ll choke.  If one...

10/18/2022

“I had imagined doing it myself. So I could see
the draw. Like bobbing for apples in a bucket
of na**lm, letting a lava flow envelope
my body in pyroclastic pudding,
or pressing the heat-shimmered surface
of a skillet to my forehead.”
- Joshua Jones

There’s this beetle, innocuous, matte black.A blandly insectoid pill. Practically the model for the dollar store plastic bag of bugs you buy a nephew who’s desperate to prank a teacher. Melanophila Acuminatasomebody called it because its kids eat nothing but the charred dark stubblea forest ...

10/13/2022

“Once, the seventh grader Ann
left her place in line and led me
into the brush behind the store.”
-Ryler Dustin

My father gives advice in my garden: prune the apples every spring. The tomatoes need more manure. This dirt is drier than death. All his life, he has been trying to learn the slow, awkward language of care. His father’s love was a dialect of fists passed down from the mining camp where he was...

10/12/2022

“Not grace, but a drawn and quartered kind of love
that loves you at the altar even as you leave.
You loved me
or you love me.“
-Jill Crammond

There is a certain state of grace that is not loving.Your face when I say No, Love.The phone unanswered, the love letter unread, the deerstill dead. What grace in loving what was.Impossible. As if love, that bloody organ, could be stalkedlike some wounded thing, or, Love, crushedbeneath the heel of....

10/11/2022

“my grandfather was born with his palm threaded to his
shirt pocket, pledging himself to a nation
only national for its suffering.”
- Sam Baker

my grandfather was born into frostbitten        fingertips, steaming from a charred pocket ofmagma and glaciers for cutting the cord.  his first steps were slick. he found his rhythm in the        crackling cadence of Lake Michigan’s mercy and the subtle taunts of Chicago spring...

10/06/2022

The fall issue of Stirring is here, and she’s singing happy birthday…to herself!

Check out poems by Claire Scott and Aparna Mitra, fiction from Lukas Tallent, art from Maureen Alsop, and so much more more!

Happy anniversary to us! Fall is our favorite time of year, and the birthday of Stirring is a big part. This year we are celebrating with amazing authors and artists like the nostalgia-driven poems of Ryler Dustin, the pain of love in lines from Jill Crammond, a full immersion of place in the nonfic...