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Poetry editor Tuuli Qin-Terrill on today’s poem: This is how it feels to be dropped into the current of a maelstrom thought. “& how the body keeps is a black hole” by heidi andrea restrepo rhodes is a poem that spellbinds the reader with celestial encounters. It is a can of pressurized air, light and heavy all at once, abounding with associative leaps. Yet in its measured frenzy the poem still…
heidi andrea restrepo talks form, inspiration, and humanity in this pre-publication interview. Find restrepo’s poem, “& how the body keeps is a black hole” on PassagesNorth.com. You can also find their new book, Ampersand Organ: a more-than-human lyric, at Milkweed.org. INTERVIEW PN: I find the word choice in your poem “& how the body keeps is a black hole” so attractive in its particularity…
Congratulations to Crystal Odelle and their story “The Big Show,” winner of the 2026 Waasnode Fiction Prize! Judge Megan Milks on the winning piece: This story had my heart from the jump with the risks this narrator takes toward friendship and toward her own becoming. I love how complexly the author explores queer friendship between characters who have, and wield, different degrees of social…
Congratulations to Benjamin Niespodziany and their short “Inside the Inside,” winner of the 2026 Neutrino Short-Short Prize! Judge Zachary Schomburg on the winning piece: "Inside the Inside" is a tightly-packed ride, a matryoshkic search for meaning as if it hides like a clue in the insides of things. This is prose that knows the propulsive magic of sound. The first lines pull you hopping into the…
Poetry reader Frankie Spring on today’s poem: The wheel spider lives in the desert. It is named for its ability to use its legs like spokes and roll as fast as 44 turns per second down sand-dune hills. Watch a wheel spin, ignore the context, and you might think it’s just repetition, rotation round a fixed point in empty space. Wheeling helps the desert spider outrun its main predator, a wasp…
Creative nonfiction intern Sophia Torres on today’s essay: Electric and ecstatic, “Chuffalo Buffalo” is a delightful delve into Myrtle-the-dog and all the wonderful inner-workings of her mouth! Filled with slobber and silliness, Brancato perfectly blends adoration with an overwhelming amount of doggie drool, treating the reader to an illustrious - though not exactly exclusive - tour of what lies…
Short-shorts editor Adam Nesbit on today’s short: Winter has a warmth around its edges. But maybe not. Maybe winter is cold around its edges and warm in its middle. Is it more like sipping a hot drink to generate heat, or more like a gust of wind that makes your exposed skin steam? I can't decide. Lys Granier's "The Dog on the Stairs" doesn't ask us to decide. Her piece feels like a creature "made…
Poetry editor Nicolette Ashley Visciano on today’s poem: What are you left with when tender ballad and commanding poeticism are melded? Within this coalescence, James D'Agostino presents the reader with "American Molten" and a new way of understanding the power of a palindrome. Enacting a call to "keep your ears on the horizon, / let the nearby slosh you to sleep," D'Agostino masterfully swells…
Zachary Schomburg is a poet, painter and novelist. His newest book of poems, Wool Moon, is forthcoming from Black Ocean in the fall of 2026. He is also the author of a novel called Mammother (Featherproof 2017). You can see his paintings at zacharyschomburg.net . He lives in Portland, OR with B and Y. Short-shorts team leads Jordan Vines and Adam Nesbit interview Zachary Schomburg for Passages…
Poetry editor Sara Daniels on today’s poem: In “The Bumper Car Cowboy Turns Blue,” Sean Faletti explodes a single bar scene into a sonic, technicolor frenzy of wannabes, whiskey, and weeping. Dizzying, dangerous characters lurk in this modern Western to pull us—speaker and readers alike—along the knife’s edge of beauty and violence. Turns out both are blue. See for yourself. the bumper car cowboy…
