MonsterAt the end of the horror movie, when our person has killedthe monster-villain, she–and I’m thinking of heroines here,Sigourney or Jamie Lee–looks to the camera and we feel delight for her, we know she deserves this relief from all the hard work of killing and life.We relax a little, we undo some fears and let ourselves imagine…

by Robert Schiff The speech is drafted—brief, polite, gracious. Tradition calls for writing two. One for victory. The other for this. Two are not necessary tonight. Twenty five years ago: The last Fall practice wrapped. Jordan packed up gear. That was the freshmen’s job. Coach coming over. Jordan saw and walked the other direction. Coach trotted to catch up. “We’re going in a different direction.

by Xingyu Zhao After Boey Kim Cheng’s Clear BrightnessApples, persimmons, and orange sponge cakesShining under halogen glare, and mother and IWatch Bai Wuchang toss his divining blocks, Inviting the spirits to enter papier-mâché Dolls dressed in red silk robes. Peachwood Tablets sway above their heads in humid wind, Pregnant with the scent of lilies and peonies,And the dragon and phoenix candles wink…

by Jack Tisdale Belknap House. The Abner L’Argent Psychic College for Pantisocracy, Aspheterism, Benevolence, and Civil Liberty DE DESPERATIONE, FORTITUDO Staff Directive 23, October 5. From: Director Barringwell Re: Certain Items. Certain items have been brought to my attention. I address them here in no particular order. Were you therefore to read this from the bottom up, or start in the middle, or indeed, turn it inside out like a glove, the meaning would be more or less the same, and the narrative equally informative, if not entirely compelling.

by Emma Lagno wink their gold heads and smooth mouthless faces and flat fingerless hands. On the shelves, softback books on baseball and the wilderness crackle. They say how to be a boy when the plane goes down in the woods. How to hold a hatchet. How to swing a bat. It’s the inside of a basketball in here. The air brrrings and smells like rubber 

Winter Walk in PittsburghBlizzard so bright the sky turned dark.Pleasant-sting of flakes against cold-flushed cheeks. A parka-bundled neighborshovel-scrapes his front walk. We gesture to the snow, palms up, as if in prayer. I love it, I yell. Me too, he says. Cold-mist erupts from our mouths—incense to the gelid gods. I get worried, I say, when we don’t have winter.

by David Rodriguez Whether it’s one year or five decadesbefore we board an ark of silica ceramics,of flexible insulation blankets or whateverwe have (oak timber and tallow, like do-it-yourself Vikings), may I be donewith all my pettiness and grief,all my lists of tired resentmentsand whimpering dreams of renewal,bedside medicines, phone calls to…

Contributor M F Drummy, another of our Best of the Net nominees, has a debut poetry collection coming out in September/October. The book is available for pre-order at a discount through Main Street Rag bookstore: Advance praise for M F Drum's Perdido: Now and then you read poems that remind you how irreducible and necessary poetry is.

Contributor Michael Dwayne Smith, recently selected as one of our Best of the Net nominees, has a new poetry collection coming out in September from Sheila-Na-Gig Editions. The book is available for pre-order now (20% off through 8/15!): In Shaking Music from the Angry Air, Michael Dwayne Smith keeps poems close to their source: mortality, wonder, and an infinite appetite for love.

January House Literary Journal is excited to announce our nominations for the 2026 Best of the Net anthology. The Best of the Net is an awards-based anthology designed to grant a platform to a diverse and growing collection of writers and publishers who are building an online literary landscape that seeks to break free of traditional publishing. Congratulations and good luck to our nominees!

by Letty McHugh Would you describe your experience as dizziness, light-headedness, or vertigo? My brain has broken and now I’m constantly aware I am a stationary body on a spinning planet in a spinning galaxy in a spinning universe. I would describe it as that bit on a roller coaster when you pass the peak of the hill and your body…

by Sofia Bagdade Yesterday I fell off my bike. The truth is,under lamplight, the bruises rich as berries& blue too from all the pinching, when my knees hit the pavement it was prayeror the white pews peeled with paint and backsweat, our thighs almost touching on velvet seats. White-hot moment of suspense, my hipbent to cement, old man approaching like tepid…

by Aaqilah Mangarun The darkness of the night blanketed the sandy terrain outside my bus window. I was already bored beyond my mind with the desert view during daylight, and the night didn’t do it any better. My eyelids threatened to shut close—it was around 8 PM, I think—but I didn’t want to fall asleep. I knew that if I dozed off and we reached our first stop, I wouldn’t be moving from my seat at all.

by Francis Dylan Waguespack Millimeters (Annual Measurement) In Terrebonne Parish, subsidence occurs at a rateof thirty-five millimeters per year, a disappearance actmeasured in a stretching distance between step and ground,in water lines on buildings like faded magic-markercharting growth spurts on your childhood bedroom door. The Corps calls this relative sea level rise, a bureaucrat's term for drowning.

Gail Purdy is a writer and visual artist living on the west coast of British Columbia. She is the runner up recipient of the 2021 International Amy MacRae Award for Memoir. Her writing has appeared in the 2021 Amy Award Anthology, The Bluebird Word, Last Syllable, Quillkeepers Missing Pieces Grief Anthology, Witcraft, rhizomag, and Four Tulips. Her photography has been included in Beyond Words and The Waxed Lemon. Long walks in the forest accompanied by her inner child nurture her creative soul.

by Nora Esme Wagner Mom’s music box is being auctioned off on eBay. Not her exact one—that disappeared with her. Delia and I upended the entire house, opening air vents, the false back board in her closet, the paint cans left in the garage from when she decided to paint all the walls lemon. She only got as far as the kitchen.

by David Raney I’ll admit it: I’m a word nerd. Books lean from stacks on my floor and bedside table; I read at coffee shops, on elevators, at red lights. Years ago a new neighbor mused, “I’m gonna have to get some books for all these shelves,” articulating a problem I’m not familiar with. Reading forty or fifty books a year isn't crazy, but it's a lot for a country where between a quarter and half of us don’t read even one.

by Kaci MoDavis Kaci MoDavis is a Pennsylvania-born writer and MFA Candidate in The Writer’s Foundry in Brooklyn, NY. She’s the Fiction Editor for Mouthful of Salt and Assistant Managing and Marketing Editor for Tabula Rasa Review.

Invitation I cannot describe my aeipathy for you, so I sift through an orange and stony desert. Its immense worldbeneath each fuzzy, violet Antelope Bitterbrush. Its pouring screeand dry bed rivers and hot antivenom for indifference.Mycologists comb for lichens that find their way through ancient plutonic rocks to thrive  on petrified wood. Waters come and go. Monsoon season too. 

by Garrett Speller I think, it would start with the wind, a simple,Summer thing, winding its way over whitecaps and waterboardsSkirting up mountains to mingle with clouds that hangOver mountaintops, then descending into forests and bringingThe first hints of storm, A whisper of rain, a darkening sky crawling fromBehind verdant peaks, their descent inevitableAnd brutal and final…

Janina Aza Karpinska is a multidisciplinary Artist-Poet from the south coast of England. Poetry informs her collages with an eye for the 'chime' and rhythm of line and pattern. Her work features on covers of: Heart of Flesh; Drawn to the Light; The Genre Society; Under_Score Magazine, and in: 3 Elements Review; The Empty Mirror; Waxing and Waning; Grim and Gilded; Blue Mesa Review; Quibble; Rundelania, and Mercurius amongst others.

by Jaclyn Port The spider appeared late Wednesday night, or before dawn Thursday morning. None of us knew the exact time, as we were all getting our recommended six-to-eight hours of sleep or finishing our homework. We only saw segments of it as we arrived at The School: three legs each on Keyuan Road and Lanlong Road, which both ran north-south and held the east and west gates, respectively; and one leg apiece on Gaoxin 2nd and 4th Streets, which ran east-west.

by Mia Vodanovich In another world I inherit my father’s Mustang - We drive to the beach for my 20th birthdayAnd nothing turns to a pile of crushed metal;In the spring my hair whips around my face and all the falling cherry blossoms. My father sits shotgun, no seatbelt. Mia Vodanovich is a writer, educator, podcaster, and semi-avid ABBA fan from the Bay. She has had work published in Troublemaker Firestarter, Taco Bell Quarterly, and Gardan, among others. Follow them on Instagram @the_galacticmermaid

Laurie Hollman is a psychoanalyst who has published award-winning books, poetry, and short stories, and cover art in publications such as The California Quarterly, Pithead Chapel, Beyond Words,Cosmic Daffodil and others.

by Mary Kate Williams As a novelist, with quite a robust imagination, I never expected the mob to be involved in the success or demise of my literary art piece novel. But here we are. “Thanks again,” I trill, exiting the nail salon feeling truly pampered. Some women do this every week; how do they have the time? But for me, this is a treat: a mani-pedi after a decadent massage.