Over the past several weeks, I’ve returned again to the pieces we published this year, and revisiting these last four issues has renewed my appreciation for the generosity and craft that our contributors bring to the journal. Choosing which works to nominate for The Pushcart Prize: Best of the Small Presses is never simple, and this year was no exception. The process reminded me just how lucky I am to share space with writers who explore the natural world—and our place within it—with such clarity, courage, and imagination.
As in years past, this announcement includes the opening lines of each nominated piece. I hope these brief glimpses encourage you to spend time not only with these works but also with the many other remarkable pieces that shaped our 2025 issues.
Right here, I see god,
not some man,
but on the hill looking toward the wetland
a flash of the red-winged blackbird—
from “A Portrait of God” by Ahrend Torrey
Issue Thirty-Eight: Fall 2025
It was many raking seasons here
before I got it cleared up in my mind:
I may know it in blisters and aches,
kindling piles, burrow holes,
but in common law
it’s the overlay of lines . . .
from “Boundary Monument” by Jeanne L. Bamforth
Issue Thirty-Six: Spring 2025
The cities will have emptied, the stadiums, the colleges, the movie theaterers,
and the forests, like this one,
will not be crowded by
—not a team, not a band, no, each of them is trying so hard to be solitary—
an asphyxiation of poets . . .
from “How We Will Know When There Are Too Many Poets” by Amber Burke
Issue Thirty-Five: Winter 2025
We left in daylight and arrived
past sunset on foot in the midst
of night . . .
from “Lighting the Cathedral” by Becky Boling
Issue Thirty-Seven: Summer 2025
The word for muscle means little mouse,
so I don’t feel badly when I flex my small arms.
When I was young, Raymond, a drug addict whom
everyone in town knew, would call me Mouse,
my size I assumed gave him permission.
from “Body Parts” by Cynthia Pratt
Issue Thirty-Six: Spring 2025
Tonight, I stepped outside, and it was still there.
Those white flowers floating from the crossed swords
of that plant I don’t know the name of.
Purple spider-wort
lifting and falling down upon itself.
from “Ataraxy” by Robert W. Hill
Issue Thirty-Six: Spring 2025
WILLOWS WEPT REVIEW 