Winter 2022/2023
Letter from the Editor
i am running into the new year
and i beg what i love and
i leave to forgive me
– “i am running into the new year” by Lucille Clifton
Here we are in a season of a solstice, holidays, and traditions that are celebrated through words and song, and regardless of what we believe or do not believe, winter brings us some certainty through our chosen traditions. We have symbolically imbued the new year with magic that we believe in. There’s a power to create different ways of being and a power to connect with ourselves and others.
In the new year, as poet laureate of Clark County, Nevada, I will be teaching a year-long virtual class, A Year With Poetry, through Henderson Public Libraries. Not a year of poetry, but a year with it in relationship, communing with brief literature in a way that is open to being shaped by the energy of story. To be tethered to each other through the words.
I have had Lucille Clifton’s “i am running into a new year” saved on my phone for a few years now. It’s one of two poems I keep on hand, the other being Natalie Diaz’s “From the Desire Field.” But for the first poem, it invites us to be intentional with what we need to leave behind, what is possible to leave behind now because it no longer serves us. Maybe there are things we can come back to, but for now we are running into the new year lighter. It is like those dreams in which running leads to flight.
Our Winter Issue holds a very special place for me because we temporarily close submissions in December until February 1st. The pause for me coincides with the most holiday and vacation time with family and friends that I take in a year. I look forward to reading as many books as I can, and I always read the Winter Issue again as a reader, not an editor. If you have not yet done so, please visit our nominations for Best of the Net, The Pushcart Prize, and Best Microfiction which are also included in this issue.
It’s been almost eight years since we’ve published a mini-issue dedicated to Creative Nonfiction, and this time we will be publishing an all-genres issue centered on love and desire in early 2023. Submissions will open on February 1st until filled. All submissions already in the queue will also be considered.
On behalf of The Citron Review, wherever you are this Winter, we wish you and yours well.
Angela M. Brommel
Editor-in-Chief
Poetry Editor
The Citron Review
IMAGE ABOVE: Montana Black, The Holly King, 2020.
IMAGE AT RIGHT: Jill Katherine Chmelko, Winter Berries, 2007.
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Table of Contents
Poetry
Notes on the selections by Angela M. Brommel
| Jim Daniels |
Sitting Outside Her Door | |
| Katie Kemple | Under the Buck Moon | |
| Nicolette Ratz | Ash to Soil | |
| Autumn Koors Foltz | devotion poem in branding | |
| Scott T. Hutchison | Flies and Moths | |
| Jak Emerson Kurdi | My Grandmother’s Eyes | |
Creative Nonfiction
Notes on the selections by Charlotte Hamrick
| Jen Soong | Bound | |
| Emily Lowe | Underbelly | |
| Jenna Devany Waters | A Passed-Down Story | |
| Ronan Fenton | The Prodigal Nothing | |
| Billie Hinton | Longing is Not Regret | |
| Jennifer Todhunter | When a House Is Not a Home | |
Flash Fiction
Notes on the selections by Elizabeth De Arcos
| Sacha Bissonnette | ||
| Timothy Boudreau | Everything You Loved is Here, When Are You Coming Home | |
| Chloe Yelena Miller | Deep | |
| Kim Magowan | Mirror Face | |
Micros
Notes on the selections by JR Walsh
| Ariel M. Goldenthal | Family Tree After the Breakup |
|
| DW McKinney |
||
| Mikki Aronoff | Earworm | |
| Christine H. Chen | Specimen | |
| Kelli Short Borges | Grocery Run | |
| Réka Nyitrai | Bad luck | |
Zest
The Citron Review 