A few weeks ago we sent off Neon’s nominations for the 2014 Pushcart Prizes. This annual award celebrates the best of the small press. We made six nominations out of all the work that was published in Neon in 2014. Congratulations and best of luck to the authors…
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Neon Literary Magazine Issue 39
[ Digital Edition Available On Request | Print Edition SOLD OUT ] In issue 39 of Neon everything goes wrong. Parties become nightmares, bridges collapse into bays, a house fire consumes possessions, cars freeze over and life plans dissolve into nothingness. But if that all sounds a bit depressing it’s worth mentioning that there are…
After the Parade
Glass crunched under my mum’s car tyres as her Corsa crawled up the road, which had been clean when we drove down it a few hours earlier, before the parades passed through. As the wheels rotated I felt each chip of glass dig into the hard rubber, tearing at the air inside. The tyres fought…
Quicksand
I was on my way to the butcher’s when I stepped in quicksand. I hadn’t really thought about quicksand in years. Maybe Indiana Jones or one of those Humphrey Bogart movies where he’s a boatsman, and he wears a hat. I imagined the sand’s texture to resemble grape jelly. It’s actually more like the inside…
The Big One
On the fourth floor of the humanities buildingin the redwood and eucalyptus forestof my university, the ground rolls uplike a steadily building Pacific wave –one of those pounding Ocean Beach in earshot of this classroom. Levelor blinds slash like daggers across the windows.Those of us raised here dive for deskstoo small for book bags.Twelve on…
Failure Day
The One Percent’s more gung-ho bitchesbitch that their taxes go towardsthis holiday. None do. It’s private,mid-spring when the crops burn. Pink slips tend to appear around that date;roaches swarm, and jellyfish. Spouses leave, and the one left waits for talk-show hosts’ routines about the day.At their desks, despite stern memos,the employed for a moment contemplatewithout…
Neon Literary Magazine Issue 38
[ Digital Edition Available On Request | Print Edition SOLD OUT ] Issue 38 of Neon begins with a world in which everyone has been swallowed by whales, and ends with a recurring nightmare story about a kitten. In between there are desert islands, floods and plagues, flings and wounds and Facebook, the possibility of…
The Death of the Motherless Kitten
I saw it from across the road, while waiting for the green man. It was mewling for its mother. Lost, I thought. Everybody, in their suits and ties and pencil skirts, turned to look, but they never slowed their strides. A mother and child might have stopped for a few seconds, passingly interested. I probably…
Déflorer
If you touch me once more,I will scream, mister.You know it’s not right. Hush. Your hand travels crisp sheets of my camp bed,finds my girly heart.Then down, pulls asidethe elastic and finds another heartbeneath a barely grown garden. Your hand rests there,as if exhausted by the journey. I open my legs to fitall of your…
The Time the Light Went Out
How did the Dark Age come? The power wound down. There’d been some temporary rationings but this time they’d been warned it was for good. Cookers lay barren, central heating stalled and kettles lacked the will to mash the tea; no candles left to burn, light chased the sun. Lids flipped, big-time; weird portents, false…