Fall 2026
Letter from the Editor
“And all at once, summer collapsed into fall”
– Oscar Wilde
It didn’t feel like Fall in the Vegas Valley until two weeks ago when the temperature dropped from 98 degrees one evening to a balmy 53 in the morning. After a middle of the night rain storm, I sat outside on my patio with a blanket and a cup of coffee while my dog, Emma, happily rolled in the clover and alyssum with the neighbors’ kitten, Weasley. Each seemed satisfied to be together again after the long stretch of nearly uninhabitable heat, a return to what had been when they first met in the Spring.
A sense of satisfaction is what good stories bring us. Even when a story is difficult and complex, it is trying to return us to some state of equilibrium. The editors have gathered a deeply satisfying selection of stories for our Fall 2026 Issue.
This issue also includes our nominations for this year’s Best of The Net. You can read the nominations here, and also find our nominations from past years on our Previous Issues page. We wish all of this year’s nominees the best of luck.
On behalf of The Citron Review, whether you are a new or returning reader, we thank you for choosing to spend your time with us.
Sincerely,
Angela M. Brommel
Editor-in-Chief
Poetry Editor
The Citron Review
Image: Autumn Treetops, Winslow Homer, American, 1836–1910, Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian, Gift of Mrs. Charles Savage Homer, Jr..
Masthead
Table of Contents
Poetry
Notes on the selections by Angela M. Brommel
Tyler Lemley, “On Living in a Male Body”
Sean Cho A., “Small Re-beginnings” and “A letter home”
Stacey C. Johnson, “ghost resin”
Kate Morning, “Wonder”
Carly Turnidge, “Eyewitness Accounts”
Creative Nonfiction
Notes on the selections by Ronit Plank
J.A. Liebl, “In This Story We Are the Deer”
Filiz Turhan, “Alegría”
Paulette Perhach, “One Must Imagine Sisyphus Fabulous”
Giuseppina Iacono Lobo, “Sudden Sensorineural Hearing Loss”
Beth Holly, “I Don’t Want to Write About My Mother”
Flash Fiction
Notes on the selections by Elizabeth DeArcos
Alyce Miller, “Hunger”
Steph Coelho, “The Woman in the Closet”
KC Courtland, “Strangled”
Micros
Notes on the selections by JR Walsh
Meg Pokrass, “Infestation”
Sherrie Flick, “Cherry Pie”
Jill Kitchen, “wound” and “minor chords”
Sumaiya Aftab Ahmed, “A Rush-Hour Rush”
Nora Maynard, “The Only Known Photograph of Your Great-Grandmother”
Kasumi Parker, “The Volcanologist”
Margaret Dunn, “My Mother Remembers, Act V, Scene V”
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