Day 12: “Child’s Play” by Angie Macri in @emptyhousepress.bsky.social. LOVE LOVE LOVE the structure of this poem! www.emptyhousepress.com/issue-fourte...

"[...] engineering / meets art in the cross of cap and girt, perfect interval / of line and space." — Jennifer Saunders (@magpiedays.bsky.social) in EHP Issue Fourteen www.emptyhousepress.com/issue-fourte...

"In the nettled fields of my mother’s memory, she saw them, / tawny stalkers slipping through the long grass, calling / shy lovers in the late glow of summer nights." — Maggie Doyle in EHP Issue Fourteen www.emptyhousepress.com/issue-fourte...

"It was an old part of the boneyard, people with eighteenth and nineteenth-century surnames: Barnabus, Mutterer, Winthrop, Cornelius." — Regina Rae Weiss (@reginagroks.bsky.social) in EHP Issue Fourteen www.emptyhousepress.com/issue-fourte...

"The bothy has two windows, thick walls, a white / my mother would deem spotless, at a glimpse." — Anne Ryland in EHP Issue Fourteen www.emptyhousepress.com/issue-fourte...

"I remember breaking the dry pods with you, / seeds spilling into my palm / like small promises for spring." — Hanna Han in EHP Issue Fourteen www.emptyhousepress.com/issue-fourte...

"We start with berries at / their dacha, red fruit sweet, staining my shirt; / the kettle boiling on open fire, black rye bread, / my wooden toys." — Polina Kouzminova in EHP Issue Fourteen www.emptyhousepress.com/issue-fourte...

Delighted to see my short story Communion in @emptyhousepress.bsky.social‬ with works that “trace how #time gathers quietly in stairwells & #gardens, pastures and cemeteries. . . measured not only in hours & years, but also by glances, absences, & the enduring weight of #memory.” shorturl.at/LExnq

"The tall grass hides us, she and I. We lie on bath towels in our bikinis because we can’t go to the beach." — Rachel St. Ours in EHP Issue Fourteen www.emptyhousepress.com/issue-fourte...

"The soot chute emptied from the fireplace hatch, / from the room of living, down to a door, / thick, cast-iron [...]" — Luca D'Anselmi in EHP Issue Fourteen www.emptyhousepress.com/issue-fourte...

Dear Housemates: Submissions are currently closed as we take an extended hiatus. Thank you for your support, your stories, and your patience. We'll return when it's time to open the door again. Until then—thank you, truly 🏠✨

"When a snell wind birls in from the north / our kettle spits white sparks on the hob / and the hearth booms [...]" — Pippa Little, EHP Issue Fourteen www.emptyhousepress.com/issue-fourte...

Happy to have my poem "Abandoned Railroad Trestle Bridge, Oregon" up at Empty House Press today.

"Sixty years tore like child’s play / cracking the sky. Black on its crown, / its roots held the ground." — Angie Macri, EHP Issue Fourteen www.emptyhousepress.com/issue-fourte...

"Less abandoned than re-imagined. / Splay of moss and green lichen, / leafy and curving, ornaments the posts / and sway braces." — Jennifer Saunders (@magpiedays.bsky.social), EHP Issue Fourteen www.emptyhousepress.com/issue-fourte...

"On wing-swept nights in the low meadow, I hear them, / corncrake spirits rasping, haunting pastures lost [...]" — Maggie Doyle, EHP Issue Fourteen www.emptyhousepress.com/issue-fourte...

"Once, as a young woman half asleep in a friend’s mountain yard tracing the stars, she’d been approached by a skunk in the dark, watched in stillness as it floated across the grass..." — Regina Rae Weiss (@reginagroks.bsky.social), EHP Issue Fourteen www.emptyhousepress.com/issue-fourte...

"She trusts skirts, shorts, jumpers, pyjamas to a thrawn sun: / her laundering-love, no, her love-laundering, / the ceremony of releasing them to billow and run and fly." — Anne Ryland, EHP Issue Fourteen, www.emptyhousepress.com/issue-fourte...

"In the kitchen once, / you taught me to knead dough, / pressing it firm yet gentle. / 'Patience, you said, / 'Patience is the secret.'" — Hanna Han, EHP Issue Fourteen www.emptyhousepress.com/issue-fourte...

"Potato fields stretch for miles, indented with footprints; / fire crackles in the distance, little homes dispersed / over the valley." — Polina Kouzminova, EHP Issue Fourteen www.emptyhousepress.com/issue-fourte...

"Later still, when I hear her latch open and the sound of her legs shifting over the ledge, I feel betrayed. 'Where are you going?' I ask. 'Out,' says her cat voice." — Rachel St. Ours, EHP Issue Fourteen www.emptyhousepress.com/issue-fourte...

"We knew better / than to harrow farther back into the cold / where the soot grew slimy, icier and wetter, / not thinking how it would be to grow old / in that deep [...]" — Luca D'Anselmi, EHP Issue Fourteen www.emptyhousepress.com/issue-fourte...

"this house rocks like a ship, / creaks and calls, and the corbies caw, lost souls / crying down the chimney [...]" — Pippa Little, EHP Issue Fourteen www.emptyhousepress.com/issue-fourte...

"To get a reckoning of time, / I counted the rings of the oak / after it was cut in sections / like a spine." — Angie Macri, EHP Issue Fourteen www.emptyhousepress.com/issue-fourte...

✨ISSUE FOURTEEN IS HERE!✨ FICTION by Rachel St. Ours & @reginagroks.bsky.social POETRY by Luca D'Anselmi, Maggie Doyle, Hanna Han, Polina Kouzminova, Pippa Little, Angie Macri, Anne Ryland, & @magpiedays.bsky.social www.emptyhousepress.com

This month's #Mondettes picked by @pleomorphic2.bsky.social ⚡️Ten wonderful flash fictions 🔍Ten splashes of analysis as to why Sumitra made these brilliant picks 🪴Three fantastic prompts to get you writing mondettes.substack.com/p/march-2025

‘…there is room for it—voicemails, our clothes limp on the drying rack, the starchiness of yesterday. One time you ran to the top of a building just to convince someone into tomorrow.’ Oh wow! Such beauty from Jun Ying Wen in @emptyhousepress.bsky.social☀️ www.emptyhousepress.com/issue-thirte...

ICYMI: We are open for submissions! We still have some room before we reach our 500 sub limit, and we'd love to read your work 🏠💕

A couple weeks back I had a fairly personal essay published over at @emptyhousepress.bsky.social and I’ve wanted to share bit of where it came from. I finally had a chance to commit some ideas to the blog about it. You can check those out here: michaeldeanclark.com/blog-1/some-...

Enjoyed this poem by Katie Moino from this issue ❤️

"The canoe of moon drifts along behind us like when I was a child, / I’d crane my neck to watch how she followed." — Katie Moino (@katiemoino.bsky.social), EHP Issue Thirteen www.emptyhousepress.com/issue-thirte...

"One time you ran to the top of a building just to convince someone into tomorrow." — Jun Ying Wen, EHP Issue Thirteen www.emptyhousepress.com/issue-thirte...

"you thank me, / and you’re gone, back to the wounding streets, / while I pack away the ointment and cloths [...]" — Tess Jolly, EHP Issue Thirteen www.emptyhousepress.com/issue-thirte...

"I’m rearranging the beach, / pulling up stones / to feel their wet colours / for a moment." — Carolyn Oulton, EHP Issue Thirteen www.emptyhousepress.com/issue-thirte...

"Some days, tying that knot weaves past and present." — Michael Dean Clark (@mdeanclark.bsky.social), EHP Issue Thirteen www.emptyhousepress.com/issue-thirte...

"In the soft summer blue, / Two red gems, one large, one small, / sing in syncopation as they fly, following." — Hope Levy, EHP Issue Thirteen www.emptyhousepress.com/issue-thirte...

"Here, / spikes top most surfaces, there’s / nowhere worth landing, some call it / hostile architecture." — Barbara Duffey, EHP Issue Thirteen www.emptyhousepress.com/issue-thirte...

One of the best editing processes I’ve ever experienced as a writer came working with Empty House and it shows in the essay they published. Get your subs in, people!

"Hester made her window / bigger, to better enjoy / the dark motion, the homey / chugging of the steam dummies / and the Shays." — Kevin Chesser (@sweat_michaels), EHP Issue Thirteen www.emptyhousepress.com/issue-thirte...

Submissions are open till January 31st for Issue Fourteen! We’d love to read your short fiction, nonfiction, poetry, prose poems, & hybrid work on the themes of home, place, and memory 🏠✨

"Those Shaker folk had hunkered here / with their simple rhythmic labor of scythe and shovel, plane and lathe, / needle and ladle." — Jennifer M Phillips, EHP Issue Thirteen www.emptyhousepress.com/issue-thirte...

"He turned ten today. Somewhere a colossal ice sheet sluffed into the sea. / The ocean rose, cells in growth plates hardened, a clock hand ticked." — Karen Sherk Chio, EHP Issue Thirteen www.emptyhousepress.com/issue-thirte...

"I circle around his / luminous heart: its golden color, / cloud cover, core of iron inside." — Meg Yardley, EHP Issue Thirteen www.emptyhousepress.com/issue-thirte...

New essay out today: it took me almost four months to write anything after my father died. This flash piece about the way he’s still here in every tie I knot is what came of that first time back at the keyboard. So grateful to Cara and Erin @emptyhousepress.bsky.social for giving it a home.

"If someone pulled a blade of grass, / unwound the fields into one bundle of darkness, / that’s where we are." — Katie Moino (@katiemoino.bsky.social), EHP Issue Thirteen www.emptyhousepress.com/issue-thirte...

"The summer swathing you up again, in the white vinegary smell of your best friend’s house, and a curfew that closes over the day like a warm fist." — Jun Ying Wen, EHP Issue Thirteen www.emptyhousepress.com/issue-thirte...

"watching the empty spiderweb / strung between leaves on the tree outside / hold and let go of the light in its catching silk." — Tess Jolly, EHP Issue Thirteen www.emptyhousepress.com/issue-thirte...

"I’ll ask her about summer dresses, / about drop scones and the Rue du Bac. / Remembering this sea, wrapped round / the shoulders of a shape that isn’t there." — Carolyn Oulton, EHP Issue Thirteen www.emptyhousepress.com/issue-thirte...

"You wonder, then and now, whether you’ll ever tie a knot he’d respect. You could never recreate any of the others he showed you. The slip. The trucker’s. The figure-eight." — Michael Dean Clark (@mdeanclark.bsky.social), EHP Issue Thirteen www.emptyhousepress.com/issue-thirte...

"Wiping the world away, I find a leaf. / It becomes a boat and floats the fledgling to safety. / For weeks a robin watches when we pass." — Hope Levy, EHP Issue Thirteen www.emptyhousepress.com/issue-thirte...