Categories
cover

issue thirteen

Cover Art: Ann-Marie Brown

Lucky #13 ~ Autumn 2023

Released October 17th, 2023

Featuring:

Two Poems by Bob Hicok: Fire and Green Thumb
& Amazing by Nebraska State Poet Matt Mason

More in Poetry:

La Niña by Gathondu Mwangi
Limerence by Levi Cain
Mosaic by Muiz Ọpẹ́yẹmí Àjàyí

Flash Fiction:

Rock, Shore, Thunder by Maria S. Picone
Moon by Mrityunjay Mohan

FLASH NONFICTION:

Grandfathered by Haley Larson

FICTION:

Clam! by Jason Arias

Nonfiction:

Radio by Chelsea Yates
Life Must Go On by Cynthia Landesberg

Seeking comfort, I composed a list on it: how dying begins. Thought, in browns, by souring, sweetening, softening bodies, in blackening
The ways evenings bring darkness: sharpening edges of trees, closing my eyes, resting my outsides so my insides can unstill, can regenerate, can seek out damage. 

– Grandfathered

My eyes fixated upon the creeping sherbert sunrise reflecting on the towering glass buildings around me and creating the illusion of a sun that rose from every direction. I mumbled my way off the phone, and stood before the fiery sun, its blistering light paralyzing me like a gargoyle mid-cry.

– Life Must Go On

I see your loneliness
and raise your jumping out a window
with trying to catch you,
the only sport that matters.
One day you’ll return my cordless drill
and the favor, and I’ll build
a new set of bookshelves
and try to live forever
in the time I have to live awhile.

~ Fire

sometimes
the journey has a hum, the endless road
of orbit and tidal pull
hits a chip, a swell, a crack, my legs
take a sec to steady

~ Amazing

I didn’t leave my apartment the Saturday before Ike made landfall. I didn’t know anyone in the city, and I had nowhere to go. Only in the early hours of the morning did I finally decide to shelter in the closet.

~ Radio

Razors need to be dug because they have a strong survivors’ instinct and a digger appendage. Razors fight like hell to stay alive. Once you start digging down, they start digging down. It’s a race through sand and silt for both the hunter and hunted.

~ Clam!

Oars of moonlight filter into the sea, splash like sinking bodies, and thrashing arms. The moon is a watercolor on the black sea under the boat. Mama isn’t on Earth anymore. Mama is not alive on land anymore. Mama is in the moon.

~ Moon

She wakes mashing the phone screen, finding service enough to see that this was the eye, not the end. Walking, caulking what she can. Surveying slices of flesh the wind already sheared, putting visuals to sounds that orchestrated her sleep. The final message from her parents reads, This is serious.

~ Rock, Shore, Thunder

December and the rains arrive
out of time, inundate my dreams
nests waterlog, drop like plops
from yellow fever trees.

~ La Niña

… & sometimes yr reborn by the yes & sometimes yr body
cannot escape the rage & i watch u stand in it,
all of u vibrating like a bumblebee. & my heart pretzels
itself into the familiar waiting…

~ Limerence

Micro Monday

Features brief fiction, cnf, and poetry. It’s like a shot of literary adrenaline to jump start your week.

This week’s Feature…

How to Hear God While Making Thanksgiving Dinner by Charlene Pierce

The turkey is raw and waiting to be stuffed. The pies are done. The oven isn’t beeping yet, or maybe it is, but you can’t hear it, and you smell the browning crust taking over the pumpkin’s spices. You used to make them by hand, back when you had time or when you thought you had…

Keep reading

TGLR Spotlight…

Author Q&A with Cynthia Landesberg

Born in Busan, South Korea, and adopted by Jewish parents, Cynthia Landesberg grew up in the suburbs of Washington, D.C., where she still resides. She is a mother, lawyer, and writer. You can find her writing in The Washington Post, Witness, and on her website, http://www.adoptionsquared.com.

Her nonfiction, Life Must Go On, is featured in Issue #13. Read on to learn what she shared with us about the piece, writing, and life as both an…

Keep reading
For all the news, interviews, book reviews, and Micro Monday features visit The Buzz

We are a 501C nonprofit and paying authors as of Issue #7

read update

from the archives:

Summer Elegy II by Todd Robinson

Summer Elegy II | Todd Robinson Nebraska’s bare branchespaw at skies full of pointless blue, mercurial daymoon.Powerless like me or my disabled wifewobbling our broken palace in cashmere and bracken. She…

read more

dear sister by Sequoia Maner

dear sister | Sequoia Maner   i’d like to think we never experienced a world where foster care fostered absence. we went to the roller rink for birthdays. later we…

read more

What They Carried With Them by Ellen June Wright

What They Carried With Them | Ellen June Wright They carried everything one can bring              when one can bring nothing. They carried everything they knew:              languages and dialects, songs mothers taught…

read more
For more good stuff from all our issues
visit our Archive


submissions:

We are currently open for all genres plus artwork! We nominate for Pushcart and Best of the Net and are a paying market ($25-$75 per published piece).

The Good Life Review is seeking previously unpublished work by writers from all walks of life. Please read submission guidelines and when you’re ready, head over to Submittable to submit your work.

Cover Art: Sarah Louise Wilson

The Good Life Review is a 501C nonprofit literary journal made with ♥ from Omaha, Nebraska. We are committed to exploring the overlooked and are taking active steps toward a more diverse and equitable publishing platform.