Janus Literary

the herb garret

Kate Hargreaves in pelting sop-footed rain on the South Bank belly warm with jackfruit & espresso I held the rope railing & […]

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Kate Hargreaves 1. Unroll foxes, hares, and long-tailed birds from foliage in unintrusive neutrals. Mark with pencil, pattern repeat ensuring an excess […]

She Remembers it Like This

Emily Devane Always, the sun shines and the black telephone dangles from its cloister wall like a stricken beetle. Always, […]

Rock Song

Mary Ford Neal It’s a small stretch of sea, but it boils with anger. Still, it will be the colour of my […]

I took my skeleton for a walk today

K.A. Nielsen My skeleton tilted their skull up, stretched their bones wide in the cool, crisp sun. We stood in the […]

Yours,

Kate Crowcroft the letters are there, they are ink holding patterns multi-cursive hand at the door late in suit and tie round […]

Alien

Kate Crowcroft A few months before the crashyou slid chicken skin down the vegetable shoot. How you get here, girl? She ran […]

Cold Comfort

Laura Pike I lie in bed, shivering in cold sheets, waiting for the nightly crumb of her affections in an otherwise […]

A Fable of Two Halves

David Luntz Writer’s Note: Myths and fables have long interested me. So, I tried writing a quirky fable that shows how we […]

Seed of a Rainbow

David Luntz Writer’s Note: Seed of a Rainbow is the third flash in a series I’ve written about a fictional uncle (“Uncle Kev”). […]

Two Flash Fictions: After Dad Fell Down to Earth And Mom Deflated & As a kid, I thought Canada was the place you went when you died

Rosie Garland and Meg Pokrass Writers’ Note: Since 2020, we – that’s Meg Pokrass and Rosie Garland – have been collaborating on flash fictions […]

On Amoxicillin

Adrian Dallas Frandle Writer’s Note: The title of the piece “On Amoxicillin” invokes the dual sense of “on” as both a polemic […]

Two Prose Poems: It is May and I am still waiting & After picking you up from the house I grew up in

Lindsey Heatherly Writer’s Note: “It is May and I am still waiting,” was inspired by one of my walks. Most of my […]

The Psychic Plays Dress-Up

Chelsea Stickle Writer’s note: The psychic snuck up on me one day. She tapped me on the shoulder and introduced herself as […]

Embezzeled Emotion

Catherine O’Brien If I say ‘I love you’ and you don’t say ‘I don’t love you’, I cry fraudulence, have we even […]

False Flat

Caroline Gonda It’s a thing in cycling, apparently, an incline you don’t recognise as one because it’s not that steep so you […]

Welcome to the Pixel Exhibition

Paul Thompson On screen you are an abstract masterpiece. I secretly take screenshots as we talk, print and rearrange them on my […]

The Things Sally Hardesty’s Best Friend, Pam, Never Speaks Of (CW: body horror)

Jan Stinchcomb What it’s like to be the first, instead of the final, girl. How it feels when your ass, […]

This Seagull

Richard Barr This seagull was bigger than my cat. Noticeably so. It was rush hour. All at once the people, so many […]

Osmosis

Shannon Frost Greenstein It doesn’t taste as bad as you would expect. I thought it would be like swallowing a mouthful of […]

I’m a Corpse Flower, and I’ve Got a Bone(r) to Pick with You, Botany

Shannon Frost Greenstein So. Botany. Let me just say it, right out loud, because it’s what everyone is already thinking, anyway. I’m […]

The Vanishing

Jared Beloff 1. The house went without a sound during Mrs. Thompson’s daily trip to the mailbox last fall, her back turned […]

Sirens

Jennifer Furner Whenever I hear sirens, I think of Sister Liska, the older-than-dirt nun from my childhood parish (may she rest […]

The Side Show of Birth

Amy Barnes I give birth to the longest baby ever on the longest day of the year. 144 inches. A gross […]

Clothesline Number 9

Amy Barnes The sun dries my paintings where Mama can’t see me. I’m supposed to be doing chores but instead I’m […]

My Boyfriend’s Wife

Iona Rule When I’m with my boyfriend, who is also her husband, he serves me spaghetti in their pond green bowls. I […]

Untied

Al Kratz Skitter scattering critters of the ceiling, we’re trying to sleep around here. I guess boundaries and borders. I guess party […]

Babydoll

Sarah Jones A moment of silence, please, for my missing left breast. For the spreading lumps bubbling through me. Ripping me […]

God knows what to do with our bed

Kik Lodge Down in Grignan, a man called Didier has a comfortable clic-clac. He’s a self-diagnosed poet and truffle-hunter, says all treasure […]

Long After the Long Ride into the Sunset

Marvin Shackelford First thing in the morning I draw a blue mark in the shallow dimple of my cheek, so near my […]

How A World-Famous Pianist Arrives At His Venue Where He Plays Liszt’s Hungarian Rhapsody No 2 In A Slightly Out-Of-Tune C Minor

Noémi Scheiring-Oláh All I see are eyes, staring at us as we leave London Waterloo Station, carrying our heavy load across […]