Categories
cover

issue eleven

Cover Art: Andrew Furey

Spring 2023

FLASH NONFICTION:

The Heart and Other Organs by Nancy Jorgensen

Nonfiction:

Nocturnal Lagophthalmos by Christi Krug
The Truth About My Old Haunts by Elizabeth Collis

Translation:

You Shall Be the Earth by Roberto Azcorra Cámara, Translation by Pennell Somsen

Poetry:

War Time, 1942 by William Trowbridge
Mugshot by Sara Burge
I Remember Good Days by Ellen June Wright
Love Poem for My Mother by Patricia Aya Williams
Mass in Quarantine by Tania Runyan
The Last Trick by Eric Lochridge

FICTION:

Roger and Flight 8124 by Dustin Moon

Flash Fiction:

Good Friday by Richard Stimac
Two Micro Stories by Lauren Dennis

I have taught you all you need to know. A grosbeak skittered across the path,

 

but my dog was not distracted.His eyes shone with new understanding.

– The Last Trick

the eyes, mustaches, and cheekbones
for years settling on your dreams like dew.
You didn’t want to say Mass alone.

– Mass in Quarantine

Always her voice from the trenches,
rifle rising, taking aim:

 

    life isn’t easy, you know  
    good isn’t good enough
    I’m the only one can tell you this

– Love Poem for My Mother

On a Sabbath afternoon, we might watch men filling buckets
with slick, gray fish from the even grayer river

– I Remember Good Days

Just a face on a shirtless body,
a body so much older than the last time I saw it.
Mom texts
            Alcohol?
but I know the difference in wreckage,
how the body puffs when pickled, eats itself
when sleep or food is forgotten.

– Mugshot

                        …In a month,
my father will be sent by ship into battle,

unaware of the utter darkness there,
till his unit enters Buchenwald.

War Time, 1942

At first, they removed the dirt with naked hands, the rocks hurt them, as if they were fighting them to avoid uncovering the hell of a son, a daughter stretching out their hand waiting for the fingers, the palm freed from solitude and abandonment.

– You Shall Be the Earth

 

Fear, misery, love, desire for vengeance are emotions strong enough to worm their way into the bowels of a house, coil into the walls, lurk in the long dim corridor shadows, fester at the back of musty cupboards and bedroom dresser drawers…

– The Truth About My Old Haunts

I had gone in to get her, confronted by dazed residents sitting like barnacles on ripped red vinyl chairs in a hot, smoke-filled lobby that burned my eyes and turned my stomach.

– Nocturnal Lagophthalmos

One day, you led me to a shadowy corner of the narthex where tilty circular stairs mounted the air. We tiptoed the steps, like a series of half-tones, to the pipes in the loft.

– The Heart and Other Organs

Introducing Micro Monday! Featuring brief fiction, cnf, and poetry. It’s like a shot of literary adrenaline to jump start your week.

This week’s Feature…

Clothes Rack by Niles Reddick

The Sears store was cold compared to the hundred degrees temperature and humidity outside in inland Florida where the coastal breezes cease, and Mom was lured there after receiving the sales circular in the mail. I had eaten my gummy bears and fidgeted with the clothes on the rack. “Leave the clothes alone,” she said. “Play…

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

The Good Life Review nominates for the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net

2022 Pushcart nominations
2022 Best of the Net nominations
2021 Pushcart nominations
2021 Best of the Net nominations

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 themas…

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.

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: Scarred Beauty by Gerburg Garmann

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.