• Submit to Five South

  • Submissions are open for flash, poetry, long fiction, and non-fiction. Read our submission guidelines.

  • Recently Published

    • Robbing the Pillars by Marie Goyette
      Ruth stood on the narrow iron bridge, gripping her father’s obsidian necklace, and wondered how many years it would take before the river wore them both down to nothing.
    • Roll for Love by Cidney Mayes
      She holds the dice up to me. “For good luck?”
    • The Call by Eben E. B. Bein
      I hungered into that quiet until— there—unbelievable!— a wolf spider scuttled onto a leaf.
    • Saturation by Claire Oleson
      I no longer harangue every desk nurse at every hospital for a taxonomic breakdown of her bills. I don’t ask for the numbers of the Benadryl, the water cups, the abdominal touches done with gloved hands. I am the most American I’ve ever been—she costs what she costs and I eat it.

    • Caught by Chris Bullard
      Old lungs puffing like gills, I beg to be thrown back to boyhood’s clear waters.

The End of Any Month Is Reason Enough to Grieve by Amorak Huey

February 13, 2024
Reading Time: 1 Minutes

January is 31 tiny Januarys in a trench coat trying to buy tickets to the rest of the year. Sure, we all want to be part of something bigger until we are. The only response to feeling so insignificant is anger. Have you ever looked up into the deep dark mouth of the sky on a moonless night like this? It’s so cold out here my eyes are freezing open. It’s so cold the snow is on fire. I hate it. The dog whines to go back inside. I hold out my gloved hand and wait for you to take it. The body never gets used to absence.


Share

The Weekly

Huey, Amorak
Amorak Huey is author of four books of poems including Dad Jokes from Late in the Patriarchy (Sundress, 2021). Co-founder with Han VanderHart of River River Books, Huey teaches at Bowling Green State University in Ohio. He also is co-author with W. Todd Kaneko of the textbook Poetry: A Writer’s Guide and Anthology (Bloomsbury, 2018).

You might also like

The Call by Eben E. B. Bein
February 25, 2025
Caught by Chris Bullard
November 19, 2024
Second Winter Solstice During an Epidemic by Marianne Worthington
September 26, 2024