Over the last two months, I’ve spent time revisiting this year’s issues, and I continue to be amazed by and grateful for the work that our contributors generously share. The decision about which pieces to put forward as this year’s nominations for The Pushcart Prize: Best of the Small Presses was a difficult one, but reading (and re-reading) the work in these issues reminded me again what a gift it is to get to work on this project.

As has become our custom, I’m sharing the first lines of our nominated pieces in our announcement of Pushcart nominations, hoping that these introductions will inspire you to revisit these and the many other excellent pieces we’ve been able to include in the journal this year. Please join me in congratulating each of these writers, and in enjoying the chance to read their work again.

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Two weeks after Christmas. It is cold in T.J.’s Market–
no lights inside, other than that pale blue light filling windows,
 
which look like small banners of winter sky, the drab,
gray flags of a forgotten country. . . .

“The Appearance of Plenty” by William Welch
from Issue Thirty: Fall 2023

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Something is always burning somewhere
else. This is what it means to be suburban:
composing riddles about fire . . .

“How To Eulogize Oxygen Without Lungs” by Lily Beaumont
from Issue Twenty-Eight: Spring 2023

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They put me under and cut me open, removed parts of my spine and then glued my skin back together. Early the next morning, calling me by the wrong name, they sent me home.

“The Day my Dog Died” by Howie Good
from Issue Thirty: Fall 2023

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Townes Van Zandt, tonight you sit
on a faux-leather couch
in a motel room in Dallas.
It’s 3:00 A.M., just you, Eggerson
and the camera-dude.
From your right profile, I can see the scar
under your eye. . . .

“Townes Van Zandt, pulled by the gravity of the moment” by Stephen Barile
from Issue Thirty: Fall 2023

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Some dung beetles navigate by the stars,
rolling their multivalent ball by night,
Milky Way snapshots stored in their brains.

“On Evolutionary Adaptability” by VA Smith
from Issue Thirty: Fall 2023

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We found you
floundering in the ditch
stuck in the runoff sedge

“Blue Heron Blues” by D. E. Green
from Issue Thirty: Fall 2023

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