Two Poems
Kwame Dawes
The sun falls out of heaven like a stone
Author Archive for: Miciah Bay Gault
Entries by Miciah Bay Gault
Two Poems
One of God’s Ovids
Josiah Bancroft
One of Ovid’s gods is drunk,
and stalking the city in peg-leg pants,
velour shirt open to the loins,
Visiting with Lin King
by Claire Guyton
In my English class, we were frequently discussing the definition of truth. After reading Tim O’Brien’s The Things They Carried, our class became obsessed with the idea that there is no absolute truth. When we were assigned to write any short story we liked, I decided to expand on the idea that “truth” is like a […]
Ruby Thursday
Richard Adams Carey
Single, childless Augustus Cyril St. Clair would have filled both vacancies with the same presumed applicant, would have married David Biffenbaugh’s daughter the moment she touched his shoulder and trailed a finger like a hot wire through the hair on the nape of his neck.
Night of the Spiders
Sheldon Bellegarde
It’s almost midnight but I have got to clean out my bedroom closet. It’s packed with junk and has, like, the most vicious spider problem this side of a radioactive-arachno movie. I’m delving into terror. At least I don’t have a big shoe collection, since spiders like to hide in shoes. For a girl who’s […]
Dentist of the Wild West
Deborah Vlock
Right while I’m getting my braces, and saliva I can’t swallow is pooling in the back of my mouth, Doc Hallowell tells me about square dancing. “I do it every Saturday with Linda,” he says, “and after we’re done we go to Bobby Ray’s for a nightcap.” I can see Linda holding “Mr. Thirsty” off […]
On Revision: Pulling Up Widows
One of my primary goals in writing Contents May Have Shifted was to make a book in which each of my sentences worked harder than they ever had before. I was brought up in the post-Raymond Carver school of compression, and I still believe the poets are the real wizards…
Two Poems
Mike Wright
I stumble under sunny-thunder sky. The weather
simply does as it chooses, and we all might
learn some lesson there. I’ve been drinking.
Last Dog
Claire Burgess
Joel was worried about the dead dog in his trunk. Heat rose off the road in front of him, rippling the air like a photograph warping over a flame—he was beginning to regret his decision to pack the ice inside the trash bag with the dog. In this heat, he knew, the ice would be melting, soaking the fur, and if there’s […]
2017 Contest Winners Are Here
We are thrilled to announce the results of our 2017 contests! With nearly 1,500 entries, we had a wonderful time reading and a hard time choosing our finalists. Thank you to everyone who entered. The winning pieces will be published this fall, right here in Hunger Mountain’s online companion. Thank you to our talented assistant editors […]
Announcing Hunger Mountain’s 2018 Guest Editors and Theme
We’re beyond excited to announce this year’s guest editors, three writers we’ve long admired. We can’t wait to view Hunger Mountain through their creative lenses. Please help us welcome: 2018 Guest Prose Editor // Melissa Febos Melissa Febos is the author of the memoir, Whip Smart (St. Martin’s Press 2010), and the essay collection, Abandon Me (Bloomsbury 2017). […]
The Art of Interviewing
The best interviews come out of passion for the interviewee and their craft. You are providing a conduit for them to expand or reach their fan base, and the best way to do that is to be a fan yourself.
Blackbirds in September: Selected Shorter Poems of Jürgen Becker
by Ian Haight
Becker’s belief in reality, his faith in meaning, and his understanding that meaning can be communicated, has value, and originates in consciousness; are all affirmations of human life. These are ideas worthy of gratitude.
A Reading: Poetry from Tom Paine
3 Poems from Tom Paine
Pain is Not the Only Thing
If you catch yourself thinking your evolution as a writer depends on an obligatory descent into darkness, then stop that shit, ‘cause that’s the Gremlin talking.
Portrait of the Alcoholic by Kaveh Akbar
by Genevieve N. Williams
Kaveh Akbar writes with such spiritual risk and honesty that we as readers are brought into the liminal spaces of language, addiction, and displacement.
“The Only Life and Death Matters Are Life and Death”: A Few Quick Words from Porochista Khakpour
Challenge that American addiction to speed — figuratively and literally! The worst writing I have ever seen has come from prescription stimulants and too much coffee, and sometimes both.
Comics = Cultural Criticism: An Interview with Bill Kartalopoulos
by Gina Tron
Comics take a bunch of images and put them together in a coherent and articulate way, where you go from image to image, and from text/image combination to text/image combination. Then you look at it all and it all adds up to something.
A Proud Family of Sneezers
Sandra Nickel
When the doctor arrived, she examined Snookie’s nose inside and out. She poked and pinched and prodded, and finally declared, “There’s nothing wrong with this little girl.
Terrorists
Donald Levering
God don’t let that be
my bombshell daughter naked
in a sleeping bag on a public bench
All the Pieces Came Together
Chris J. Rice
My identity as fractured as my vision, I erected walls around me. Hard walls. Flat walls. Walls I made and maintained…I’d already accepted my fate.
The Angel Age
Val Howlett
The backstage lights are off. The actors are in shadow, lit only by the faint glow of the house lights onstage. You tunnel around them, trying to keep up with Dani Aguilar, but Cinderella has somehow gotten ahead of you…
The Story That Chooses You
What I’ve learned through writing about Suzie is that stories sometimes choose writers. If something interests you, you should write about it. I still believe this is true. For me, this was the story I had to write.
The Catalog of Broken Things by Anatoly Molotkov
by Anthony DiMatteo
The book offers a journey of disorder and disappearance. As in life, one must find a way.
Watch Didi Jackson Read On the Death of my Father
His outsider art graces the album cover of Little Creatures
by the Talking Heads, and a vision of his dead
sister climbing down from Heaven
A Loaded Gun: Hunting My Elusive Book
For a couple of months I’d been lost in the metaphorical woods with my writing. The prize, my second book, circled out of my view like a fleet-footed creature of the night.
The Gifts of Ratoncito Pérez
Joe Baillargeon
I stop and drop my bike on the ground, and the young woman’s head appears in the back window. My father’s head pops up too, and then I see a hand reach up, an open hand patting the window, as if asking me to wait.
Adventure Counselor
Jocelyn Edelstein
“Fuuuuuuck!” I scream – three – possibly four times – as I hurtle through air, as my innocent 14-year-old campers giggle until they can’t stand, as the honest wind tells my body a story of speed and force and falling.
The Slide
Jennifer Hasty
I’m sorry your study was ruined,” he said. “But I think those rats gave you an answer after all. Maybe not what you were looking for.
Carol Amber
Kate Kingston
She pours us tea, one that claims
to detoxify, to soothe the throat. Honey
dissolves in the agitated swirl
Living in Stereo: An Interview with Alex Green
by Jennifer Kathleen Gibbons
“California itself has appeared almost as a singular character throughout my writing, kind of like the hotel in The Shining, but less creepy — or more creepy, depending on how you view my work.” – Alex Green
Dark Water: Melissa Febos’s Haunting New Memoir, Abandon Me
by Cameron Dezen Hammon
Love without sense or control, love made into a god, is no longer love. It’s a weapon wielded most painfully on the self, but perhaps it also has the potential to deliver healing.
Sympathetic Magic
This magic is also called the magic of correspondence or contagion — the properties of one thing leaping to another.In folk medicines around the world, it shows up in what has been called the doctrine of signatures…
From The Provost.
by Jeremy Wolf
Half the time, the poems are alright and the prose pages generally work out, but it’s all about that discipline. It’s all about ratcheting in that time.
Edna, With Her Mouth
Katherine Schaefer
Edna’s voice resembled nothing so much as what you’d hear coming from a poultry barn full of caged white turkeys: that loud, shrieking up-and-down gobbling that almost makes you want to scream, yourself.
Little World / After a Series of Rejections
Sawnie Morris
You can safely e merge to sit with magenta tulips ,
orange day lilies shouting
Oprah, Maslow, and Me
Amy Emm
We usually go for the middling neighborhoods. We don’t want curving brick driveways, brass knockers, tall clumps of waving grasses, gates, cameras. Nope – we want something riiiiight in the middle.
A Good Medicine
Jude Whelchel
In celebration of their eleventh birthday, the mother orders her twins Sunday suits from the Sears and Roebuck, matching breech pants, double-breasted sailor coats with yellow neckties.
What a Lonely Youth with Robots Taught Me: MST3K and Storytelling
We are literary. We produce literary fiction for literary people. That is why it’s paramount that we expose ourselves and our work to the same ruthless mockery as the saddest of Z-grade films.
One Hundred Apocalypses and Other Apocalypses by Lucy Corin
by Amelia Marchetti
The stories they are living are moments of purgatory, the still transitionary moment where one state of living has ended, but the next stage of life has yet to begin.
Beyond Words: An Interview with Shozan Jack Haubner
by Kim MacQueen
A lot of times I’ll sit with an experience and let it germinate. Part of it will be something that happened to me, and part of it will be something that I’m trying to work through in my practice.
Writing First-Personal Journalism About Trauma
Are you going to write about every trauma in your life? No! Life is ridden with traumatic events. That’s part of living. But in some cases, writing about personal trauma is a powerful way to make a point.
Straight Forward: In Conversation with Fiction Writer Jensen Beach
by M. Demyan
It’s the things that come out of my own life or the reading that I’m doing, or things that I’ve heard from friends or whatever. But in this case, I think it’s just been an ongoing evolving project that had adapted to the realities of my own life…
Invasive Species by Claire Caldwell
by Ariel Kusby
Caldwell’s poems manage to explore substantial themes with an intimate gaze; the humor is simultaneously empathetic and darkly cynical.
Alison Prine Reads Coming Out
Alison’s poem, Coming Out, is featured in Hunger Mountain 21: Masked/Unmasked on sale now.
Living Multiple Lives Through Writing: An Interview with Stephanie Tyler
by Tierney Ray
Every once in a while, I’ll call a psychic. I was on the phone with one at one point and she said to me, “Oh, wait. Hang on. Hang on, they’re speaking to me.” And I was like, “Go ahead.”
Scratch That Curiosity Itch
I have never committed murder. Nor have I ever been at a murder scene with police, forensics, and medical examiners gathering evidence. But I know how to write that scene. So do you.
How (And Why) to Build an Author Website
Ultimately, don’t be afraid to fail, don’t be afraid to ask for help, and don’t be afraid to simplify, simplify, simplify. Computer people call this “iterating,” as in “let’s iterate on the simplest minimum viable product.”
Giving In
So it goes with writing and birding. You try to find a sapsucker, but stumble up on a tiny jewel of a hummingbird. You persist and strive despite a robin showing you the insanity of ignoring results.
Wonderland of Words: An Interview with Matthew Dickman
by Lara Gentchos
I’m going to die, and I want my experiences, as much as I can control them — which is not much — to be experiences with art that makes me feel something.
Ruby Mountain by Ruth Nolan
by Cindy Lamothe
Nolan’s soft, subtle expressions paint these invisible terrains with a quiet, haunting power. The speaker’s thirst for her previous life is a mirage that beckons us forward…
Wonderland: Readings by Matthew Dickman
“It seems like everyday now, anytime we make art, or really listen to someone else’s point of view, or empathize with the other, that it’s a fight against meanness…”
Writing In Between: An Interview with Tyler Friend
by Breanne Cunningham
Most of what I write is love poetry. And a lot of it comes from dreams. A lot of it comes from lucid dreaming, that half-awake, half-asleep state.
5 Reasons to Recommend With Animal
by Amelia Marchetti
“With Animal” explores the extreme natures of parenthood. There is no “animals are right, humans are monsters” philosophy, as people and beasts are both capable of selfish indifference and deep empathy.
When the Cake is Baked
I had to find a way to diffuse these tense and often unbearable situations. One day while discussing a student’s poem, I blurted out, “Hey, the cake isn’t baked yet.”
art as a gorged star: eight erasure poems
These are erasures of a book published by MOMA, which features transcribed versions of three lectures given in the 50’s and early 60’s
When Prose Turns to Horses, Remember the Humans
Any horse I made notes about, any horse for which I gathered stats and records, or any horse I got close to so as to describe him or her, was always seen in context of its human counterparts.
Get Lit with Zinester/Book Publisher Sage Adderley-Knox
by M. Brianna Stallings
“There is such an awful stigma around self-publishing, that the books will not be enjoyable…these indie authors just need the guidance and support to help them through the process.”
I Liked You Better Before I Knew You So Well by James Allen Hall
by Daniel Cretaro
I Liked You Better Before I Knew You So Well is one of those books that doesn’t come around often. It is the rare book that possesses three key qualities: language, love, and candor.
What Being “Willing to Fail” Really Means
It might seem paradoxical or even impossible to embrace a low-stakes mindset about your important work, but it is very doable, and gets easier with practice.
How Not to Not Be Funny
Humor is just one of many tools in the writer’s toolbox, and funny for funny’s sake is nice, but if it doesn’t contribute to what you’re trying to accomplish…
Julianna Baggott Whispers Urgently Into Our Ears
by Breanne Cunningham and M. Brianna Stallings
You never really have to look at the blank page at all because by the time you’re free to write and can actually get to a computer, you already know what you’re going to write.
We Are Pleased to Announce the Judges for Hunger Mountain’s 2017 Literary Prizes
2017 Deadline Extended to March 8th! Click here for guidelines and to enter the contest. The 2017 judges are: Matt Bell– Howard Frank Mosher Short Fiction Prize Joni Tevis – Hunger Mountain Creative Nonfiction Prize Major Jackson – Ruth Stone Poetry Prize Cynthia Leitich Smith – Katherine Paterson Prize for Young Adult & Children’s Writing […]
We Are Pleased to Announce the Judges for Hunger Mountain’s 2016 Literary Prizes
The judges are: Janet Burroway- Howard Frank Mosher Short Fiction Prize Robert Michael Pyle – Hunger Mountain Creative Nonfiction Prize Lee Upton – Ruth Stone Poetry Prize Rita Williams-Garcia – Katherine Paterson Prize for Young Adult & Children’s Writing Janet Burroway, awarded the 2014 Lifetime Achievement Award in Writing by the Florida Humanities Council, is […]
Isadora’s Sandálias
Robin Heald
“Isa, this package came for you.” Mamãe sets a box in front of my cereal bowl.
“It’s from Vó Ziza,” I say. My granny, Ziza, lives in Brazil, far away from our family in Miami.
Again
Tara Bray
The warbler’s folded in my tongue
like a lemon drop. What joy
it is to trap a festival inside,
Two Poems
Chard deNiord
In steps at your command/down the plank of a tall
fast ship with the salt/of sex across its lips.
The Hollow Places of the World
Kenneth Garcia
The ores of divine providence are everywhere infused, and everywhere to be found. St. Augustine, De Doctrina Cristiana The margins of the world surrounded me—at least in the physical sense—for hundreds of miles in every direction: a no-man’s land of semi-arid deserts; middles of nowhere; and solitary mountain ranges. I lived in this no-man’s land, […]
Three Poems
Katherine Hollander
These creatures with breathing blue
necks. Arch and bristle. Forelock and star.
Two Poems
Jessica Goodfellow
In origami the mountain fold
folds down—constructing
an obstacle. The valley fold
folds up: receptacle.
The difference between
structure and stricture,
between paperweight
and wastepaper basket.
Three Poems
Nancy Eimers
I Am Reborn as a Shadow Frog eyes glimmer in water then douse themselves and shiny turtles topple off a log down to the water’s under-black when I step out skin form and sun hauled out of layers of trees spring wood summer wood the bark and pith to walk and stand at […]
Reeni’s Turn
WAITING Monday April 16th At the barre at Miss Allie’s I lean and dream: onstage alone where the spotlight glows, fears of an audience scatter like stage dust. Music flows through me – it always does like air and blood moving my limbs to dance in ways that push me out so close to the […]
The Chevra
Goldie Goldbloom
When my mother died, I stopped calling her mum and began to call her mama.
Vasectomy
Carol Tyx
The teacher did not like the poem,
but seemed unable to say why, his face
seeping dismay or disgust.
Day Trip
Noelle Catharine Allen
I had killed the engine, filed my nails, organized my wallet, and done a sketch of my left hand.
Three Poems
William Olsen
Wherefore the marram grass settled the land there also sprang the children who are as the sand in the sea, and houses on stilts as good as gone.
Toast at my Parents’ Second Wedding
David Moolten
For they everted the irreversible,
Proved all that time my life went door slam
Door slam done an epic waste for the sake
Of argument.
What Is There, What Is Missing
River Holmes-Miller
I am The Weird Girl. The Freak. The Barfy Little Feeb.
Two Poems
Majda Talal Gama
I’ve seen you in souks that spill with people,
On streets that reek of three continents,
Found you filling cut-glass crystal with the scent
Of nine woods and the rose petals of three cities.
Two Poems
Michael J. Pagán
Unghost, the leftover residue across the surfaces of
the sea, after a receding
wave or a skimming of the hands. The present has no
Faces at the Window
Sara Schaff
Our house was too big. It dwarfed me and my mother, who cried every year when we received the first winter heating bill.
Catch Me, I’m Falling
Dionisia Morales
I found out I was pregnant during rock-climbing season. The weekend before the test showed positive, I was clinging to the stone faces that flank central Oregon’s Crooked River.
Two Poems
Frannie Lindsay
What else is she ever going to be
but one of the wind’s outgrown costumes
stuck in the swingset’s tangled chains
Junk Food Killer
D A Thompson
The memory hits me like hunger: sudden pangs, gnawing edgewise. First it’s just a headline and the torn edge of a story.
Old Bull in the Road
Matt Yurdana
Some admire the old bull’s cracked horns and peeling hooves, the second skin of ancient
mud as wrecked and crumbling as this narrow road
Nocturne in the Key of We
Laura S. Distelheim
Five o’clock a.m. on a morning last fall, in the Walgreens of an affluent suburb on Chicago’s North Shore, where I have gone to buy batteries for my flashlight…
These Things Should Not Happen
Michelle Webster-Hein
We took a walk this evening as we often do. My husband pushed my daughter in her stroller as I walked alongside.
Two Poems
Gary Moore
I wanted the prize but the prize looked the other way
It was the other prize…
Three Poems
Laura Budofsky Wisniewski
You can dress my naked genome up.
You can teach it art and poetry,
but it will pace the corners of the night
grunting, ‘Something else. There’s something else.’
Observations at the security checkpoint
Joel Brouwer
We should be glad our safety and security
are someone’s top priority, yet we
can’t help but hope for fresh announcements
Companion
Annie Lighthart
The body keeps us ordinary. It says Sleep, and we must,
it says Eat, and we do.
Where you could sit up straight
francine j harris
i have walked with half a skull and i have walked
with a blanch shell. i have walked, legs
split hungry, and i have walked too old.
Announcing 2016-17 Guest Editors and Theme
July 2016. Hello readers and writers. First off, we want to extend a special invitation: please submit for our upcoming print issue. Hunger Mountain 21: Masked/Unmasked will be out in February. We need your brilliant work now. We’re looking for poetry, children’s lit, fiction, and creative nonfiction. The theme, Masked/Unmasked, can be interpreted in myriad […]
Congratulations to the Winners of the 2016 Prizes at Hunger Mountain
2016 Howard Frank Mosher Short Fiction Prize Judge: Janet Burroway First Place: Jude Whelchel for “A Good Medicine” Runner-up: Jennifer Hasty for “The Slide” Our special mentions are: Nell Pierce for “No Small Miracle” Mark Rader for “Phosphorescence” The 2016 finalists: Dianne Bechtel for “It’s a Boy” Charlene Logan Burnett for “Thirst” David Denny for […]
Why I have Hemingway Tattooed on My Forearm
“Why do you have tattoos?” I often hear.
“Because I like tattoos,” I say.
Some people understand. Some don’t. And some don’t like it…
Where I Find Myself
I’m in Philadelphia, on my couch, next to my dog. I’m trying to write nonfiction. I have published some fiction, so I think of myself as a fiction writer. I have published some poetry, so sometimes I think of myself as a poet. I have published a few essays, but I have never….
Air: Photographs
Ten photographs from the series “Ari” by Evie Lovett. Originally featured in Hunger Mountain Issue 19: The Body Issue.
Writing the 30th Gate
This past summer my husband, Derek, and I spent seven weeks in Mexico, where he took immersive Spanish classes, and I holed up in our rented apartment finalizing some contracted writing projects. I also spent my days trying to learn….
Hunger Mountain Nominates Six Authors for the 2017 Pushcart Prize
We are pleased to nominate six Hunger Mountain authors for 2017 The Pushcart Prize: Hope Chernov for her story “Things I think about while swimming“ Noelle Catharine Allen for her story “Day Trip” Michelle Webster-Hein for her essay “These Things Should Not Happen” River Holmes-Miller for her essay “What is There, What is Missing” Daneen […]
Paintings
Over the past three decades, Don has worked in a variety of art media. He considers painting to have the broadest vocabulary for articulating the intersection of practical existence and spiritual inquiry.