Short Fiction and Poetry

I lift the basket & set it by the roots. Each orange comes away clean, no sound but the soft thump as it lands. [...]

I told you everything I told you I’m not leaving the house today Nothing feels right and nothing is okay [...]

You think you can solve this country. Go ahead — circle it with your thumb, like a penny you can throw at a fast‑moving car. [...]

But wind only feels like flight when you are dry, and love only feels like love when you deserve it. [...]

Steering with one hand at 12 o’clock and with the other wrapped around a long-neck bottle [...]

There are 47 ceiling tiles in the waiting room. I have counted them seventeen times while the receptionist pretends not to notice [...]

We travelled like stars through three forests Densely protruding through thickets And tangled unceremoniously like hair.

I cannot remember how many lives I have lived this year or who I was before them, what aching child clutched the bars of my rib cage [...]

The week my mother died, I found a feather resting like a charred star on the white shag rug in my bedroom. [...]

Prufrock measured life in coffee spoons ‘round here, it’s draughts, cheques, trips to Puerto Plata— where poor camareras change old boys’ bedsheets

In March when the days stretch swollen-jointed fingers through the grey seed hull of winter sun, [...]

I am a lone traveler with a bag of metaphors. It gets bigger with every new person [...] and place, but not in weight.

Open a window, otherwise you’re living in a tomb. Avoid dying on a humid Wednesday, slumped in the communal vinyl throne [...]

Through the crack in my bedroom door, I hear someone say, “It’s as still as death out there.” The metaphor loses me. The dead are never still [...]

DarkWinter Literary Magazine is thrilled to announce our 2026 Best Of The Net nominees!

In daylight songbirds flit in and out of bushes along our usual trail near the field and crows in threes sit in a particular dead tree beside the marsh [...]

we walk by the river talking inside ourselves, like rhapsodies in two reflections- different, but the same. [...]

My room is calmness. Here, in the haze of morning contours take shape, in this gray year that slowly lets go.

DarkWinter Press is thrilled to announce our latest release, the incredible poetry collection The Self is an Ocean by Cypher!

At Sunset Mother Speaks Of many things but Mostly of the dead. How their eyes are Open now. Finally. [...]