Susurrus, A Literary Arts Magazine of the American South

Susurrus, A Literary Arts Magazine of the American South A Literary Arts Magazine of the American South

⏳ A little over a week remains! Submit today!
11/19/2025

⏳ A little over a week remains! Submit today!

Guidelines Submissions for our Winter 2025 issue are open from October 15th - November 30th.Susurrus accepts previously unpublished poetry, flash, fiction, creative nonfiction, and photography from artists across the American South. We publish three times a year, during April, August, and December.W...

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11/07/2025

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Guidelines Submissions for our Winter 2025 issue are open from October 15th - November 30th.Susurrus accepts previously unpublished poetry, flash, fiction, creative nonfiction, and photography from artists across the American South. We publish three times a year, during April, August, and December.W...

"I had achieved a version of the erasure I was looking for: I was a skin color, a passport, a nationality. A lifelong in...
11/05/2025

"I had achieved a version of the erasure I was looking for: I was a skin color, a passport, a nationality. A lifelong inability to fit in ceases to matter in a place where you’re never going to fit in."

"Metro, Metro" by Marshall Moore

  Metro, Metroby Marshall Moore   1.When I moved up to DC from North Carolina back in the early ‘90s, I lived on campus at Gallaudet University for one semester. To catch the metro, you had to hike about twenty minutes to Union Station through the kind of neighborhood with an evening soundtrack ...

"'We’re too old for all that,' Sharon insists. But the water makes her playful. We skip rocks and sing the songs she lik...
11/03/2025

"'We’re too old for all that,' Sharon insists. But the water makes her playful. We skip rocks and sing the songs she likes. Mariah Carey. Janet Jackson. That’s the way love goes."

"We Are Twelve" by L. Bellee Jones-Pierce

  We Are Twelveby L. Bellee Jones-Pierce   Smushed between the car door and Sharon, I count historic markers and sing with the radio, my hair whipping and tangling in the hot summer air. Mama tools down the Natchez Trace, looking for a creek and waterfall she saw on Look Around Mississippi. Magic ...

"I keep the space around it still. Nothing will crush it. It will not be broken. It will be here, when they’re ready.""W...
10/31/2025

"I keep the space around it still. Nothing will crush it. It will not be broken. It will be here, when they’re ready."

"Where the Work Gets Done" by Matthew Hand

  Where the Work Gets Doneby Matthew Hand   Morning is not announced here. It leaks. Light seeps in through the slats above the sink and catches on the grime that no one has the heart to scrub. It lays soft across the counters, tracing yesterday’s coffee rings like crop circles—evidence of a l...

"The boy stared at himself in the mirror behind the bar. He wondered if he looked that way to everyone. It was hard to t...
10/29/2025

"The boy stared at himself in the mirror behind the bar. He wondered if he looked that way to everyone. It was hard to tell what people saw. Sometimes they just looked away."

"The Last Nickel" by D Bedell

  The Last Nickelby D Bedell   OneA clump of July flies rose from the Angel City Cafe screen door as Tom Stackwood opened it to let the boy go in first. Two or three flies made it inside where the counterman waited disapprovingly with flyswatter in reach. Tom followed the boy and let the screen do...

"That’s how you know it’s Isabella’s rock, she says, because it’s pink. I don’t really like pink, but I like the rock.""...
10/27/2025

"That’s how you know it’s Isabella’s rock, she says, because it’s pink. I don’t really like pink, but I like the rock."

"Rocks" by Gabby Kiser

  Rocksby Gabby Kiser   At Grandma’s house, there’s a pond out back. It’s covered in green, and she says she’s going to have them bring fish in next summer. She says they pack up a truck with pond fish and take it out to people with ponds, and that the fish eat up all that green and make i...

"Real grief never ends. It’ll buffer, lose its sharpness, you’ll forget it’s searching for a signal in the background. B...
10/24/2025

"Real grief never ends. It’ll buffer, lose its sharpness, you’ll forget it’s searching for a signal in the background. But once its introduced to your operating system, it functions from the start to each day."

"A Test of Our Bodies for the Resurrection" by Matthew Hand

  A Test of Our Bodies for the Resurrectionby Matthew Hand   Every town has a woman who speaks to the dead. We just didn’t expect her to get better at it with Wi-Fi. Folks used to call Helen Abernathy a God-fearing widow. Now they just call her “buffering.” I heard one of the teens say that ...

"The tiny trees inside me bore fruit that weighed me down. My skin had a greenish hue that briefly made people believe i...
10/22/2025

"The tiny trees inside me bore fruit that weighed me down. My skin had a greenish hue that briefly made people believe in my invisible illness, my inner struggles. My untold stories were swaying and brushing up against each other."

"Crown Shyness" by Chelsea Stickle

Crown Shynessby Chelsea Stickle And so the untold stories planted themselves in my nervous system. With every passing year their roots dug deeper into my psyche, pinching my nerves so they sparked at the slightest whisper of familiarity. The tiny trees inside me bore fruit that weighed me down.....

"I told the office manager. She shook her head. Called the cops to search. There she was, the body. Like it was, inside ...
10/21/2025

"I told the office manager. She shook her head. Called the cops to search. There she was, the body. Like it was, inside my misty circle. It’s women and girls who end up dead."

"Dead Daddies" by Nicole Brogdon

  Dead Daddiesby Nicole Brogdon   Mama’s perched on the plastic chair in our kiddy pool wearing cutoffs, baking her legs sweet-potato-brown. We set the pool on the lawn of our apartments, Bastrop Pines. Nobody stops us. Gripping a tumbler of spiked iced tea, Mama lolls her head. Crooning throwba...

"'I don’t want a deep grave,' he’d said once, like it was nothing more than weather talk. 'Just enough for the earth to ...
10/17/2025

"'I don’t want a deep grave,' he’d said once, like it was nothing more than weather talk. 'Just enough for the earth to cover me. I want to feel the rain.'"

"The Rain Knew" by B.C. Brock

The Rain Knewby B.C. Brock The digger, in canvas work pants and a flat cap, leaned on the worn, warm handle of hisshovel. He paused his work for a brief moment of rest. He wiped sweat from his brow, thenremembered the browned handkerchief tucked into his back left pocket. The ground was soft.......

🔔 Submissions open for our Winter 2025 issue! Submit your poetry, flash, fiction, creative nonfiction, and photography t...
10/15/2025

🔔 Submissions open for our Winter 2025 issue! Submit your poetry, flash, fiction, creative nonfiction, and photography to Susurrus, A Literary Arts Magazine of the American South! Send us your gorgeous and compelling, your thoughtful and tender--all open to artists across the American South. Learn more at

Guidelines Submissions for our Winter 2025 issue are open from October 15th - November 30th.Susurrus accepts previously unpublished poetry, flash, fiction, creative nonfiction, and photography from artists across the American South. We publish three times a year, during April, August, and December.W...

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