because what else were you supposed to dowait for her to check-in at the pearly gates just because she was your one cigarette per day that summer because she grinned like a slinkycould unbutton your jeans without breaking eye contact you’re supposed to wait – some sailor’sghost in your desk chair – the distant creeping…
[ Digital Edition Available On Request | Print Edition SOLD OUT ] Issue 37, Neon‘s first issue of 2014, features the work of Paul Bavister, Shanalee Smith, Noel Williams, Christopher Owen, Tracey S Rosenberg, Erric Emerson, Meg Eden, and Joe Evans. The cover image is by Timur Cetintas. In its pages you will find guns and…
I could never remember what had riled us uplike a nest of snakesshaking our rattles andsinking venom into tissue.Just the intensesensation of my ownblood, jackhammeringthrough my pulse points.We were born and bred for malice, tossed to the familial oubliette,taught to eagerly eradicatesoftness or axiom. Unexpectedly, you boltedabandoning our altercationin favour of the dark chambers offering…
I see them coming from behind the layer of mesh glass being lead by a white coat to the table of pastels and crayons where us fuck ups scribble serenity onto a blank page. They’re not not my friends or family, it’s the emaciated late teen’s next to me, the one who’s too lost to…
Sometimes I look from the classroomto the low grey building by the car park and remember I have photocopying to do so run down then run back before the class starts. Last week I got locked in the copier room. I rang security but no one answered.I could see the students gathering for the last…
Find a pot of nail varnish: “ConfidentCoral”, by Jessica, perhaps. Fetchthe stainless steel nail scissors and walkbeneath the flying March shadows. Lie on the grass; adjust your scaleof focus to the miniscule. The cat, hull-downamong the crocuses, observes with mildinterest. Select and mark your snail. A scarlet shell-top will allow no laterconfusion of identity. Now…
We’ve now sent in Neon’s four nominations for the Forward Arts Foundation’s 2014 poetry prize. Each of the below have been entered into the Best Single Poem category – congratulations and best of luck to all of them…
We’re pleased to announce Neon’s nominations for next year’s Pushcart Prize. These three stories and one poem are picked from all of the work that the magazine published over the course of 2013. Congratulations to all of the authors and poets involved…
[ Digital Edition Available on Request | Print Edition SOLD OUT ] Issue 36 of Neon features the work of Paul Ebbs, Simon Collings, Michael Hemmingson, CJ Opperthauser, Amy Schreibman Walter, Dan Coxon, and Helen Addy. The cover image is by Sarah Katharina Kayß. There’s time travel, mannequins, failed attempts at kindness, a haunting retreat…
a. I wanted to be kind but all I could achieve was cruelty. I wanted to be kind to the friend who had been dumped by a guy she thought she would marry and grow old with, only to realize all he wanted from her was sex; I acted concerned and hugged my friend and…