June 2025
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Issue 1.01 is Live!
by Jeffrey Heath Our first issue is now live on the site. You can view the free PDF edition here. Print and Kindle editions are also available via Amazon. Jeffrey Heath, Founding Editor, EIC – January House Literary Journal Continue reading
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Telling the Bees
by Grace Massey In Celtic tradition, families tell their bees everything—births, marriages, deaths. Bees are also messengers between worlds.Three weddings this summergoth princesses, groomsmen in kilts, bride swollen out to here.The voles consumed the lily bulbs, tulips were shipwrecked. But you know this.Over lunch Doris let slip that her dogs will outlive her, they’re oldbut… Continue reading
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Moment in American Nectarine
by Michael Dwayne Smith Thus radiant, therefore unlasting, this poemthat is Cactus Wren with its jar-jar-jar, nesthatching messages from a spirit world humanshave long forgotten. Sublimity, as if it weresky. Minimalism, as if it were happiness. Yourtumor, your PTSD, your children vapingurns full of disenchantment, the slurry speechof your ancient gods, jubilant all. The past… Continue reading
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A Choice of Living
by Christina Fong It’s the kind of spring day that permeates all conversation until it can’t be talked about anymore and must simply be enjoyed. The warm temperatures promise to stay for good this time, and with that promise, all the winter frost sitting heavy on everyone’s shoulders gradually drips away. The air smells sweet… Continue reading
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My Fourth of July Grocery List Reveals What America Means to Me
by Joan Leotta From my grocery listyou might suspectmy heritage is Italian:eggplantred bell pepperfinocchioartichokesgarlicDe Cecco pastaWhen the checkout clerkasks about the finocchioI tell her it is called anise in her computerChicken wings, hot dogs and burgers,will also have a place at our barbeque.She smiles as she rings them up.She and I often exchange recipes.Eggplant will… Continue reading
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Talent
by Paul Hostovsky He played that thing all the time: waking, sleeping, walking, riding his bike, reclining in the bathtub fully clothed, where the acoustics were the best, he said. And in the backseat of the family Buick when we were trying to have a conversation up front. It was annoying. If we turned the… Continue reading
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Colour
by Kristi Ross Another day in this northern city. Even at noon the light is too diffuse to cast a shadow. For months this grey-brown winter has soaked into her skin, layering loneliness and sadness, conjuring up memories of loss. When she thinks of him, the planes of his face and the set of his… Continue reading
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Leaving a Wake
by Lori Erickson The drone of well over a hundred voices alive with muffled energy skirmished with a warbled recording of “Amazing Grace.” Finely tailored adults mingled and chatted in small clusters around the large hall. Jewelry sparkled; perfume sometimes danced with, sometimes collided with the aroma of freshly cut flowers. An occasional laugh leapt… Continue reading
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Two Poems by Lisa Delan
Poet and how will you feelknees on the groundeye level to the void whereyou must clamp coerce cut compress coax the fat resin of each phraseholding its howl swallowing its oncevoluptuous breath words braided into tight-plait wire straining against cylindric steel whose friction-singed sidesblister syntax scathed flesh of sentencesforming slim scarsas you blow ash across… Continue reading
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A Flower, Not a Tree
by Huina Zheng Lin SongBai is a girl, but her name always makes people think she’s a boy. Lin means forest, Song is pine, and Bai is cypress. A fortune teller once said she lacked the wood element, so her parents named her this. She didn’t like it. Her parents tried to comfort her: pine… Continue reading
January House Literary Journal 