Centaur Lit

08/01/2025

The summer issue is now live with art by Lorette C. Luzajic and writing by Kelli Short Borges, Stephanie Frazee, John Jordan, Kim Magowan, Rina Palumbo, Meg Pokrass, and Jie Wang. Site design and maintenance by Adam Robinson.

https://centaurlit.com/

07/25/2025

"We must have filled the space we’d created for the passage of the body, unmade the narrow aisle. We must have filed in, taken seats in the bleachers. There must have been lions and tigers and fiery rings, elephant tricks, and shimmering women leaping."

Read "Circus" by Dawn Raffel

https://centaurlit.com/circus-by-dawn-raffel/

07/19/2025

"I step into a carcass of memory, checking into a hotel she worked the night shift at when I was a child, a Holiday Inn next to the hospital, a place she labored while I slept in my cradle—and when I cry, I see her wiping down the bathroom sink with disinfectant soaked cloth, the sharp scent of bleach mingling with the Eagle oil on her skin, I see her count down until she’s home with us, I see a young woman, I see someone I never knew, I see a fiction."

Read "Watching Your Mother Die" by Hien Nguyen

https://centaurlit.com/watching-your-mother-die-by-hien-nguyen/

07/12/2025

"Your saviors have a five year plan and a thirty year mortgage all thought out for you.

Eyes as blue as o***m poppies harvested by orphans in authentic traditional costumes.

Goods and services in the service of the greater good. In the service of saviors better and greater than you."

Read "Imperial March" by Amit Majmudar

https://centaurlit.com/imperial-march-by-amit-majmudar/

06/29/2025

Congratulations to Centaur contributor Colette Parris for making Wigleaf's 2025 short list and to contributors Ulrica Hume, Kathryn Kulpa, and Sumitra Singam for inclusion in the long list! Hooray!

https://wigleaf.com/

06/26/2025

"He has laid out a dress like a deflated ghost, small cities of antique perfumes, as if to trick back time, as if to bring her back warm and breathing to this room."

Read "The Projection" by Ryan Griffith

https://centaurlit.com/the-projection-by-ryan-griffith/

06/20/2025

"I wonder where Layla is. If someone is gifting her watermelon, her licking from their fingers. If she’s doing zoomies in a sunflower field under an eclipse. If she’s waking someone’s monster. Smelling turpentine, if she’s planning on returning. I prepare an homage to all the lost dogs."

Read "Smiley" by Kim Chinquee
https://centaurlit.com/smiley-by-kim-chinquee/

06/02/2025

"I remember air-kissing my child as she sat in her usual seat—eighth from the front, towards the left—clutching an arrangement of clematis she and I put together for her third-grade teacher."

Read "Fortune Cookie" by Sara Siddiqui Chansarkar

https://centaurlit.com/fortune-cookie-by-sara-siddiqui-chansarkar/

05/24/2025

Please join in congratulating writer Scott Garson, whose story "Lottery" from Centaur's Spring 2024 issue was accepted for inclusion in Best Small Fictions 2025! This will be the 10-year anniversary issue of the anthology and is guest edited by Robert Shapard.

"Lottery": https://centaurlit.com/lottery-by-scott-garson/

Best Small Fictions: https://altcurrentpress.com/best-small-fictions/

Overview and guidelines for the Best Small Fictions annual series, published by Alternating Current Press.

05/16/2025

"On four limbs you’ll run to me, with topaz eyes and te****le curls, gloriously alive. I’ll know you even with horns pointing like thumbs. Remember reading about the Goat Boy, recovered in the Andes? Researchers renamed him 'Daniel,' flew him to Kansas City, studied him."

Read "Goat Boy" by Nicole Brogdon
https://centaurlit.com/goat-boy-by-nicole-brogdon/

05/01/2025

It's our third anniversary! The Spring issue is up and running with new writing by Nicole Brogdon, Sara Siddiqui Chansarkar, Kim Chinquee, Ryan Griffith, Amit Majmudar, Hien Nguyen, and Dawn Raffel, and art by Sergio Manto!

Shout out to web designer Adam Robinson!

https://centaurlit.com/

04/23/2025

"In the time it took for the girl to guess, light traveled from the Sun to Mercury, the rabbit ear TV singing its white noise ostinato to anime battle music over the sweet perfume of ci******es and old men and disinfectant."

Read "At the Dentist’s in Arlington Heights" by Tina S. Zhu

https://centaurlit.com/at-the-dentists-in-arlington-heights-by-tina-s-zhu/