Each week, Hidden Peak Press highlights poetry, short fiction or flash fiction authors who move us.
To get your work under review for the Spotlight and also for our biannual digital magazine, head over to our Submit page.
Mother Nature Rising
“TRUST IS A MUST!” The sign was hung on the wall along with other, saccharine yet somehow frame-worthy aphorisms. “Babies are Citizens Too,” was a nurse favorite and reminded occupants of their reason for being in the birthing suite. These…
Spread Strawberries On A Sleeve
And you still tied to the buttery spread of a desert’s yellow light frustrated as your heel strikes sharp at the coarse-haired withers of your camel draped in Bedouin wool, stopping short, once again, to chew green shoots off a…
Can Furniture Affect The Soul?
THERE IS A TOWN in Central Europe where I have spent some time. For many years I enjoyed strolling down to a café nestled under a large willow tree. I especially liked the old wooden furniture which I imagined must…
Small Mammals
The boss who expects more of you, is a small mammal, facing up to a bigger world. The people you love, are small mammals, living on a small blue rock, floating through space. We are thousands of miles from where…
Gutting A Blunt
On break, I walk the dirt trail behind the library branch and sneak a smoke. There’s some wild blackberry brambles back here, too. I pick some berries off and annoy some birds because they want what I have; I want…
Snack
I ate a can of sardines by the Gulf of Mexico— tin peeled back like a tongue. I felt envious eyes in every hinge of shell that would not close. My heels burrowed into the sand as if I, too,…
Trudy
IT ALL STARTED three and a half weeks ago when Trudy died — four days after my tenth birthday. One day our beloved family goldfish was swimming in her fish tank, her long translucent fins swishing along behind her, then…
Mouser
Cornbread crumbs cascading Down hairless, burly chest Honey butter eulogy of afternoons Spent in-office Steel toe boots untied by the door From nights alone prodding factory floor Infants snooze in cribs or with wife I bashed a mouse’s skull in…
Age In
KELLY LOOKED AT THE DARK BLACK SHADOWS swirling along the inside of his right forearm, repulsed by their symmetry. Wisps of gray shading traced the sharpest lines, adding dimension and depth and… despair. Two weeks since the last drops of…
The Swallow As Seen From A Factory Window
For nine long hours I believe that swallow is a prisoner of the air. It did not knot its tie this morning, did not read its paper. Nowhere in its soaring is one clue as to the cold razor cuffed…
Ashes
BERNICE NOTICED THE TUMOR before Stan did. “What is this squish?” “Don’t worry, I’ll never have tits compared to yours.” “It’s not your tits.” The tumor spread up Stan’s chest and wrapped around his esophagus. Four times he checked into…
Remember
When you unearth a corpse and it’s still fresh, and you see it writhing with maggots and larvae and nymphs moments from exploding into flies remember: this is their home, and you’re as much a disturbance to them as they…
No One
we feed on the dead in the night wilderness of the apocalypse killed words cut throats of thoughts bullet marks on the body of weightlessness attempt at silence blade of bite the torn mouth of heaven unpacks star teeth across…
The Wisteria Falls Hideaway Inn
“WISTERIA FALLS HIDEAWAY INN – let’s make your vacation a big win.” Marigold McTaft answered the phone behind the front desk moving from side to side in her swivel high chair grinning at Furman Chase, a long-time friend. It was…
My Doctor Says I Have a Special-Needs Placenta, and M. Night Shyamalan Can’t Write Dialogue
I will defend the city of Philadelphia/until the day I draw my last breath/go birds/so I am ethically obligated/therefore/to wholeheartedly espouse Philly’s native son/filmmaker M. Night Shyamalan. Unfortunately/M. Night Shyamalan can’t write dialogue/and I am not optimistic that this state…
Art History
AN AUTOMAT AT NOON. A comely redhead in a cornflower blue dress sits by the window, showing too much cleavage for 1958. A man on his lunchbreak at the next table, eying her hungrily as if she’s the meatloaf special.…
The Offering
The crows settle in the field outside noisily fighting over the things I left them. One flies right past my window, a cheap necklace studded with tiny glass beads clutched in its beak, another bird tight behind, contesting its claim.…
I Am Godfather
IT WAS JUST OCCURRING to me that Dirk and Charlotte thought I was from Thailand, or maybe even that Thailand and Vietnam are the same country, and that was why they’d taken me out for Thai noodles, when the…
Picture Window
My yard sits on forty feet of fog minus the dimensions. Now, I can see the exceptional letting go of things: The woman down the street, upset, choosing not to groom her Scotties. The man walking along his pole barn,…
They Stopped Serving Peanuts At The Steak House
SO I STARTED BRINGING MY OWN, in my own damn aluminum bucket like the ones the steak house used to have, when they served peanuts, but not the same kind of bucket exactly, since mine was to tote beer around…
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