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Best New Poetry: French Pears by Hanna Karras

French Pears by Hanna Karras Here is what you learned (NOT ONLY on the dark floors but also in the soft grass, tall or short as it was, trimmed or left to grow frail and brown in the hollow winter; when you walked upon it or rolled, or crawled; when a knee was dropped for security or when hands pressed against clay cold and full; NOT ONLY when you slept but also when you awakened, or were carried through the hallway; when you drifted to and from the flicker of sleep’s candle,

Best New Fiction: ONE SAFE ROUTE THROUGH THE PSYCH-BELT GHOST-HOUSES by Allison Mulder

ONE SAFE ROUTE THROUGH THE PSYCH-BELT GHOST-HOUSES by Allison Mulder 1. Wait for rain. You can’t be sure of the walls otherwise. It’s all too same, the craters and rubble and even the buildings there before--white paint this, red brick that, lawns manicured into order. Solid shelter looks the same as open porches or garden archways. We tossed up flags, but one jutting elbow past a boundary is begging for the psyclones to whirl through and snatch you up, flattening you to

Best New Fiction: Orange Lady by Allison Field Bell

Orange Lady by Allison Field Bell I’m walking home from school—high school, sigh, what a waste—and there she is on a corner in town slinging oranges. For free. Nothing is free in 2026. It’s only a matter of time before they figure out a way to charge us for air. Correction: before they charge some people for air. Billionaires, apparently, will be the ones charging us. This is what my mother says. She says the more money you have, the more money you make. To which I say, That’

Best New Book Review: Terrestrial by Suzy Eynon

Terrestrial by Suzy Eynon Reviewed by Jonathan Danielson On March 13, 1997, lights appeared over Phoenix, Arizona. Witnesses described them as a massive, V-shaped formation drifting silently overhead. Later, more lights appeared, only these hung motionless in the sky. For the whole night, 911 switchboards were overwhelmed while news stations were flooded with shaky home videos recorded by people who had stepped out onto their driveways or climbed on their roofs and zoomed in

Best New Fiction: The Horse by Juliet Waller

The Horse by Juliet Waller Monday There’s a horse across the street from my apartment. He’s a brown horse but his mane is black. He’s grazing on a patch of sidewalk grass. He doesn’t seem to mind that the traffic and city life are just going on around him. A couple of police officers are keeping people at bay. Tuesday Nobody knows where the horse came from. We talked about it in the elevator this morning. One guy said the horse had been in some old man’s garage. A teenager s

Best New Poetry: After Hearing the Owner of OnlyFans Was Dead by Justin Karcher

After Hearing the Owner of OnlyFans Was Dead I found a naked baby doll lying in the mud next to a bulldozer. It got me thinking about that time my friend used a broken branch to draw sex positions in the snow. We watched the storm cover them up, and I didn't know what to say. Later, in their bedroom, they went down on me while Jaws played on TV. I felt more teeth than should have been possible. Justin Karcher (Twitter: @justin_karcher, Bluesky: @justinkarcher.bsky.social) is

"What the Husband Keeps" by Todd Dillard

What the Husband Keeps by Todd Dillard from Issue 20 of Stanchion Magazine There was that time you went blind driving on 85. I grabbed the wheel, we coasted down the offramp to one of those anonymous office centers—it was Saturday, so it was just us and the blackness that swallowed your vision. "What's happening?" I asked. But you said to wait. You described stars bursting, light crumbling the dark's edges. And just as suddenly you could see again. I asked if I should

Jo Gatford's "Hallelujah Has Too Many Verses for Karaoke"

Hallelujah Has Too Many Verses for Karaoke by Jo Gatford from Stanchion Magazine Issue 20 The street evangelist is plugged into a three-foot-tall karaoke speaker on a little wheelie trolley and your first thought is how the hell he got it on the bus—or if he drove here, where the hell he managed to park because you’ve been driving squares around the second-most expensive zone for twenty minutes trying to find a spot which means you had to powerwalk for another fifteen and now

Stanchion's 2026 Pushcart Prize Nominations

This year's Pushcart Prize nominations come from two Stanchion Books chapbooks-the title story of Hannah Grieco's debut fiction collection, First Kicking, Then Not , and the final piece in Kristen Zory King's debut, Ladies, Ladies, Ladies -as well as Issues 19 and 20 of Stanchion Magazine. "The Pushcart Prize: Best of the Small Presses series, published every year since 1976, is the most honored literary project in America - including Highest Honors from the American Acade