Don’t forget to visit! Voted one of the “Best Online Literary Magazines of 2024”, miniMAG lets OSP loose on Issue 198
Intense. Short. Weekly.
That’s how miniMAG describes itself. A short, intense, and weekly literary magazine specializing in short-form poetry, flash fiction, and flash non-fiction that you can rely on to offer a giddy mix of unpredictability and variety.
Voted one of the Best Online Literary Magazines of 2024, with each issue miniMAG serves up a potent deployment of text and image, a real seed bomb of words and color. A welcome arrival in my inbox for some time now, I loved the concept right from the start.
There’s something for all tastes in miniMAG, whether it’s punchy, wacky short stories or surrealist poems, intriguing essays or wild flights of fancy, graphic art or pictures drawn with big, thick crayons, delicate line art or great booming splashes of color… miniMAG has it all, set into a slick template that remains reassuringly the same: black pages, white type.
When Alex, miniMAG’s editor, agreed to let Old Scratch Press produce an issue, I was stoked. And it was great fun seeing it all come together. At 30 pages, it’s a little longer than usual, but hopefully just as intense.
And just as multifaceted, seeing as all ten OSP members contributed work:
Robert Fleming supplies much of the art (some of it ICE-themed), including two visual poems. OSP’s newest member, Beatriz Fernandez, contributes two poems and a photo. That most Neapolitan of Californians, Alan Bern, presents two photo-poems, while Virginia Watts provides two poems and a flash-fiction piece titled “War”. Dianne Pearce gives us a taste of what to look forward to from her upcoming poetry collection, “In The Cancer Cafeteria”, with a poem, a short story, and two collages. Gabby Gilliam is also here with a piece called “Reawakening”, while R. David Fulcher turns things spooky with “The Weird of the Water”. Nadja Maril supplies three poems and a photo of the most Napoleonic rooster you’re ever likely to see, while Morgan Golladay brings things to a thoughtful close with her poem “Sky Cast”. As for me, I’ve got two illustrated poems and a piece of flash fiction in there, and a couple of illustrations thrown in to boot.
For a collective work by a short-form collective, I really can’t think of a better vehicle than miniMAG. To read it, visit miniMAG and subscribe, or stop by miniMAG Press While you’re at it, recommend it to some of your friends, or all your friends! And also come visit the OSP members’ Subs too! And if you have a Substack yourself, let us know so we can drop by.
So, a special thank you to Alex at miniMAG for letting us take on Issue 198. It was a real pleasure, and I hope you’ll have us back in the not-so-distant future!
Voted one of the “Best Online Literary Magazines of 2024”, miniMAG lets OSP loose on Issue 198
Intense. Short. Weekly.
That’s how miniMAG describes itself. A short, intense, and weekly literary magazine specializing in short-form poetry, flash fiction, and flash non-fiction that you can rely on to offer a giddy mix of unpredictability and variety.
Voted one of the Best Online Literary Magazines of 2024, with each issue miniMAG serves up a potent deployment of text and image, a real seed bomb of words and color. A welcome arrival in my inbox for some time now, I loved the concept right from the start.
There’s something for all tastes in miniMAG, whether it’s punchy, wacky short stories or surrealist poems, intriguing essays or wild flights of fancy, graphic art or pictures drawn with big, thick crayons, delicate line art or great booming splashes of color… miniMAG has it all, set into a slick template that remains reassuringly the same: black pages, white type.
When Alex, miniMAG’s editor, agreed to let Old Scratch Press produce an issue, I was stoked. And it was great fun seeing it all come together. At 30 pages, it’s a little longer than usual, but hopefully just as intense.
And just as multifaceted, seeing as all ten OSP members contributed work:
Robert Fleming supplies much of the art (some of it ICE-themed), including two visual poems. OSP’s newest member, Beatriz Fernandez, contributes two poems and a photo. That most Neapolitan of Californians, Alan Bern, presents two photo-poems, while Virginia Watts provides two poems and a flash-fiction piece titled “War”. Dianne Pearce gives us a taste of what to look forward to from her upcoming poetry collection, “In The Cancer Cafeteria”, with a poem, a short story, and two collages. Gabby Gilliam is also here with a piece called “Reawakening”, while R. David Fulcher turns things spooky with “The Weird of the Water”. Nadja Maril supplies three poems and a photo of the most Napoleonic rooster you’re ever likely to see, while Morgan Golladay brings things to a thoughtful close with her poem “Sky Cast”. As for me, I’ve got two illustrated poems and a piece of flash fiction in there, and a couple of illustrations thrown in to boot.
For a collective work by a short-form collective, I really can’t think of a better vehicle than miniMAG. To read it, visit miniMAG and subscribe, or stop by miniMAG Press While you’re at it, recommend it to some of your friends, or all your friends! And also come visit the OSP members’ Subs too! And if you have a Substack yourself, let us know so we can drop by.
So, a special thank you to Alex at miniMAG for letting us take on Issue 198. It was a real pleasure, and I hope you’ll have us back in the not-so-distant future!
If you’ve never encountered miniMAG before, it’s a literary space built around immediacy, intensity, and voice.
Known for publishing short, powerful work, miniMAG has created a home for writing that lands quickly and lingers. It’s a platform that embraces experimentation, emerging voices, and pieces that don’t always fit neatly into traditional categories. The emphasis has often been on brevity, but more importantly, on impact.
Which is exactly why it’s such an exciting space for Old Scratch Press to step into.
For this upcoming issue, we’re not curating the work. We are the work.
Old Scratch Press is taking over the issue as contributing writers and artists, bringing a collection that reflects the range of what we do. That includes longer pieces alongside shorter ones, visual work alongside written, and voices that move between forms rather than staying confined to one.
This isn’t about fitting into a format. It’s about expanding it.
You’ll find work that holds tension, work that experiments, work that stretches. You’ll find pieces that are immediate and pieces that take their time. And yes, you’ll find writing that pushes beyond the expectation of what “mini” might suggest, and art as well. Many of us make with words and with other mediums too.
At Old Scratch Press, we care deeply about voice, about risk, and about creating space for work that feels alive on the page. This issue of miniMAG gives us the opportunity to bring that energy into a platform already known for bold, concentrated storytelling, and to widen the lens just a bit while we’re there.
by Nadja Maril,a founding member of Old Scratch Press Collective
Food. We spend a substantial part each day preparing, serving, and eating. The tastes, aromas and textures bring back memories. And over the winter holidays, the sensations become magnified as we taste the turkey roasting in the oven, the creamy mashed potatoes, the fragrant puddings, the sweet and savory carrots, onion topped green beans, latkes and apple sauce, cheese blintzes, and buttery chocolate chip cookies.
This is why I enjoy writing about food. It’s easy. All I have to do is close my eyes, remember and think of words to describe memorable dishes, new tastes I discovered, and meals I’ve shared. Try it. Think of a favorite meal, why it stands out in your mind and the emotions you associate with that time. Write down you uncensored thoughts. Read over what you’ve written. Maybe cross out a few sentences and rewrite others. You’ve begun to write memoir, the start of what is called Creative Nonfiction and it wasn’t hard at all.
You can take those food thoughts and memories and turn them into fiction as well. There’s no shortage of food in fairy tales: the witch in Hansel and Gretal with the house made of gingerbread and candy, the red apple in Snow White, the porridge eaten by Goldilocks and the Three Bears.
Wonderful poems have been written about food ingredients. One of the most important items I use in savory dishes is onion. Chilean poet Pablo Neruda (1904-1973) wrote a wonderful poem about the onion I’d like to share.
ODE TO THE ONION by Pablo Neruda
Onion, luminous flask, your beauty formed petal by petal, crystal scales expanded you and in the secrecy of the dark earth your belly grew round with dew. Under the earth the miracle happened and when your clumsy green stem appeared, and your leaves were born like swords in the garden, the earth heaped up her power showing your naked transparency, and as the remote sea in lifting the breasts of Aphrodite duplicating the magnolia, so did the earth make you, onion clear as a planet and destined to shine, constant constellation, round rose of water, upon the table of the poor.
You make us cry without hurting us. I have praised everything that exists, but to me, onion, you are more beautiful than a bird of dazzling feathers, heavenly globe, platinum goblet, unmoving dance of the snowy anemone
and the fragrance of the earth lives in your crystalline nature.
If you need more inspiration, start reading the latest issue of Instant Noodles Literary Magazine .All the stories and poems are inspired by GRAVY.
One of my favorites in this issue is “Thanksgiving Leftovers” by Arielle Arbushites which begins “Gravy gravy everywhere/and not a drop to drink” Hear her read the poem by clicking this link.
Forty-two creative expressions inspired by GRAVY! Who would have thought we’d get so many fine submissions on this topic. Read them and enjoy the writer’s different takes on the subject. Maybe it is a holiday dinner that goes wrong or a humble food offering that needs a splash of pzazz but all the stories have something to do with gravy.
My creative nonfiction includes a nod to my great-grandmother’s Limoges covered gravy dish and a recipe. You can access it here or if you don’t want to read, you can listen here
Writers and Readers, don’t forget to forget to follow us on Facebook to get the latest news and learn about submission opportunities.
Nadja Maril is an award winning writer and poet who has been published in dozens of online and print literary journals and anthologies including: Lunch Ticket, Spry Literary Journal, Invisible City Literary Review, Instant Noodles and The Journal of Compressed Creative Arts. She is the author of Recipes From My Garden, published by Old Scratch Press (September 2024), a Midwest Review California Book Watch Reviewer’s Choice. An Anne Arundel County Arts Council Literary Arts Award winner, her work has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and The Best of the Net. She has an MFA in creative writing from Stonecoast at USM.
Old Scratch Press Short Form and Poetry Collective is pleased to announce that Beatriz Fernandez has recently become our newest member. “I am thrilled and honored, “she says, “to join an online community of fellow writers from around the globe who support each other’s work, provide feedback and share our various skills and strengths.”
Although she didn’t try to get published until she was in her late forties, Beatriz has been writing all her life.
“I write in both form and free verse, both mainstream and genre, and have recently begun to write flash and short fiction. In poetry, I favor historical persona poems written in the voices of women, whether historical, mythological, or fictional figures. I also write speculative poetry and short fiction. I try to include my love of robots, androids, or time travel in most of my stories.”
Over the past ten years, Beatriz Fernandez’s work has been nominated for the Pushcart prize four times, and has been published in anthologies and journals as various as Label Me Latina/o, Prime Number Magazine, Strange Horizons, and Whale Road Review. She’s authored three poetry chapbooks: the most recent, Simultaneous States, (Bainbridge Island Press, 2025) included some poetry set in Puerto Rico and some speculative poems. Her eco-science fiction flash fiction piece, “Flow Time” was published this summer in a special Florida themed anthology by Gaslamp Pulp, a division of Nat 1 Publishing. That publisher also just accepted her Puerto Rican Frog Prince adaptation titled “The Coquí Captain” for a children’s anthology of reimagined fairy tales.
Beatriz grew up in Philadelphia, Spain, and mostly Puerto Rico and then came to Florida to attend college. During her junior year she established her Florida residency, met her husband, and began working in libraries. “I fell in love with all three,” she says, “and subsequently found no reason to leave any of them!”
Describing herself as a late bloomer in both her library and writing careers; she became a professional librarian in her mid 30s. On the way, she obtained an M.A. in English literature but found herself to be too much of a generalist to focus on a dissertation topic.
“During this time,” she says, “I seemed to be under the impression I was a budding novelist while the reality was that I was writing more poetry than anything else. My lightbulb moment came when I won a Writer’s Digest poetry contest that I entered on the very last day. That stroke of luck seemed to finally put me on the right road and actively seeking to improve my poetry style. I embarked on a long-distance phone tutorial with poet Andrea Hollander, who is a brilliant teacher and mentor, for several years; she helped me find my true voice. “
“Many writing classes, confabs and workshops later,” she says, “I’ve published almost every poem I’ve ever written! Now I feel I have come full circle—after starting out my writing career with long-distance tutorials, I’ve joined an online community of fellow writers.”
To learn more about Beatriz and to hear her radio interview on “Here and Now,” you can visit her website here
Thank you for reading this post and visiting the Old Scratch Press Blog. Next Saturday October 25th at 5:00 p.m., three members of the Old Scratch Press Team are participating in a special online reading from their newly published books. FREE. Read more about it here. And follow us on Facebook.
By Nadja Maril, a founding member of the Old Scratch Short Form and Poetry Collective.
Summer and reading go hand in hand. You go on vacation and take along a stack of all those books you’ve been meaning to read.
Sometimes, for me I have to confess I’m actually listening instead of turning pages.( Did you know that most of the books published by Old Scratch Press are available as audio books as well as ebooks?) Half of the books I enjoy these days are recorded books because I can listen and do various chores at the same time.
I can also eat lunch and be entertained by a book without smearing avocado or salad dressing on its pages.
And then if I really love the book, or just want to see it laid out on the page, I get a physical copy from the library and enjoy it again.
I try really hard not to read books by the same authors, so I can introduce myself to new voices. However, I couldn’t resist downloading Ann Patchett’s latest novel, Tom Lake, because I was curious about what it had to do with cherry orchards. The audio version is narrated by Meryl Streep. What a treat.
I’m a Meryl Streep fan and the narrator and protagonist of Tom Lake, the novel is a former actress. True, she is a different kind of actress, “a natural”, as she reveals in her story telling, unlike Streep who has portrayed a wide range of characters, but the protagonist has performed on stage and screen nevertheless. Streep does an impeccable job
What I truly want to recommend about the novel is its construction. So, writers, and aspiring writers pay attention. Not only does Patchett incorporate unpredictable twists and turns into the storyline, but she skillfully interweaves past and present.
The present setting is a farm near Traverse City Michigan during the Covid Pandemic. The past setting, that jumps back and forth into the storyline, is a summer stock theater also in Northern Michigan called Tom Lake. Part of the fun of this story is the gradual reveal of how present and past fit together.
I highly dislike predictable plotlines. Thus, I shout the praises for a novel that continued to surprise me to the very last page.
If you are a writer, continuing. on the journey of further refining your craft, you may be interested in the upcoming opportunity to join the Old Scratch Press Writing Collective or the opportunity to become published in Instant Noodles Literary Review.The Collective applications are available here and the deadline is closing soon.
The next theme subject for the Holiday/Winter Issue of Instant Noodles is Gravy.Write a true story, a poem or a piece of fiction related to Gravy. Keep it short. We prefer prose that is less than 500 words in length.
Back to my thoughts on the novel Tom Lake and not wanting to give any spoilers, I’m going to provide a WRITING PROMPT instead:
IMAGINE your very first boyfriend or girlfriend, remember what they were like to be with and then write about what attracted you to them, what you admired. Now, write about their flaws.
Take a break. Maybe wait an hour or a day. Then imagine yourself with that person and what your life would be like. The third part to this writing assignment is to first think about what you would tell that person, if you had the opportunity, write them something—a letter, an essay, a poem—whatever genre form you choose. Do you have things you’d like to apologize about, or explain, or share?
Maybe this exercise will give you an idea for a story. Maybe not, but I guarantee you’ll learn something about yourself.
THANK YOU for reading. If you haven’t already signed up (it’s free!), please follow me on WordPress. Medium or Substack and visit my website Nadjamaril.com to read more of my work.
Nadja Maril is an award winning writer and poet who has been published in dozens of online and print literary journals and anthologies including: Lunch Ticket, Spry Literary Journal, Invisible City Literary Review, Instant Noodles and The Journal of Compressed Creative Arts. She is the author of Recipes From My Garden, published by Old Scratch Press (September 2024), a Midwest Review California Book Watch Reviewer’s Choice. An Anne Arundel County Arts Council Literary Arts Award winner, her work has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and The Best of the Net. She has an MFA in creative writing from Stonecoast at USM.
Here I am with Linwood Jackson, President of the Delaware Press Association.
On May 1, I was awarded a Second Place in the Delaware Press Association Communications Awards for my book, The Song of North Mountain. This was my veryfirstever book released solely under my name, and the award presentation was exactly one year after the book hit publication.
I am quoting the judge, whose name I don’t know, in their comments regarding the award. “This is a beautifully crafted collection of poems that takes readers on a journey through nature, personal reflection, and the deep connection between the land and the human sprit. With vivid imagery and emotional insight, You (sic) capture the essence of the North Mountain landscape, blending personal growth, exploration, and the rhythms of life. The poems are rich with sensory details and metaphor, drawing readers into the natural world where every “rustle of leaves, shift of light, and breath of wind carries meaning.” I find that your writing, both introspective and outward-looking, intertwines the inner and outer worlds, exploring themes of solitude, contemplation, and the passage of time with tenderness and reverence, giving the collection a meditative quality.”
Many of us, particularly of my generation, suffer from imposter syndrome, that feeling that we’re really just pretending to be . . . smart, kind, good at what we do, talented, strong, etc. I’ve been writing since I was a teenager. Mostly doggerel, lines about angst, loss, imaginary friends, and wry observations. As I’ve aged and matured, so has my writing. I’ve discovered poets other than those I was raised on (Longfellow, Holmes, Browning) and many who write in rhymed and metered verse.
College introduced me to more complicated poetry – Ferlinghetti, Hopkins, Stevens, Auden, Eliot, Yeats. And then, foreign writers, like Rumi, whose ideas were so very different from those I had been immersed in.
So, I still wrote, but still privately, only sharing sparingly, for I still did not consider myself a “good” poet.
Well, I guess I am now. This anonymous judge really liked my work! The DPA, in their wisdom, selected judges that were not from Delaware. Delaware, being such a small state, is one where everyone knows everyone else, especially in communications and writing. So all I know about this anonymous judge is that he or she is not from around here. And, they liked my work.
Being a creator, whether in writing, arts, crafts, or just about anything, we have the angels and devils on our shoulders. One says, “Perfect. Absolutely PERFECT. Don’t change a thing!”
The other angel is the voice of the imposter. “Really? You expect anyone to like this? What balderdash! This is ROTTEN!” So we hide our creation away, or simply refuse to edit it.
I think we’ve all been there. The fact is, creating is a matter of taking risks. Making changes. Wondering if what we have written can be said better. And having the courage to play with it. Editing. Changing the recipe. Adding a stroke of color.
I can certainly attest that every single poem and sketch in this book was analyzed, edited, and reworked (and rethought) at least 5 times.
Ghost Light, the poem I included in my last blog, was awarded a Second Place, also. This judge commented that “Your evocative, photographic-like details set the ghost-like mood and scene from the beginning. . . .” And, ‘the last stanza is particularly well-turned — “by chance or intent,/ catch the moment, . . . in a sudden shaft of dawnbreak.’”
The judge noticed. They noticed the internal rhyme, the alliteration, the combining of words to create a new meaning. These are ‘tools’ I labored over, hoping the reader would listen to these words and how they created an atmosphere, a feeling, a response.
We all too often hesitate to read out loud, to ourselves or to anyone else. But it is important. Whether we read to a child, or are read to, there is a chance for us to escape into the word picture created by the author. That’s what I try to do — create word pictures for you to explore.
Ben’s book is, “A captivating series of short stories, both dramatically and philosophically enthralling.” KIRKUS
“Ben Talbot excels at depicting a world both alien and familiar at the same time.” MIDWEST BOOK REVIEW
Welcome to Periscope City, a place where nothing is quite as it seems. Its citizens are those with no one to love, caught in a paradox of escaping loneliness while clinging to it. Here, human emotion is fleeting, and love is nothing more than a transaction. Each story in this collection delves into the heights and depths of solitude through its characters: a writer torn between seeking validation from fleeting romances and finding comfort in the safety of isolation; a former college football star lost in nostalgia, unable to connect with the present; a young runaway scarred by her past, drawn to this desolate town inhabited by loners and serviced by robots. Prepare for an emotional gut-punch as you enter a strange, unsettling place where the broken-hearted choose to stay broken and prefer to live in solitude. Talbot’s haunting, satirical, and often absurd interconnected tales explore themes of self-destruction and elusive redemption. Periscope City will immerse you in a world where the boundary between reality and fantasy is constantly shifting.
Ben is going to read a little from his book, and then we will open it up for poems, flash fiction/non-fiction to give you a chance to add your voice to the conversation about love and loss and loneliness, and answer the age-old question, “What becomes of the broken-hearted?”
If you’re not a pro at reading, it is imperative that you come and try your luck! What better night? We can be awkward, clumsy, lonely, and literary together!
Hope to see you there, and hear you read. We’ll be sad without you….
In the meantime, enjoy this excerpt from the book!
Periscope City
A sign greeted me at the border: Periscope City: Where the Lonely Go to Live Alone.
It spoke my language, so I crossed in by foot, to the nearest place it took me to. That place was a one-story house with a long driveway called the Institute. There, they asked me dozens of questions about my immediate past and made me take a personality exam. I told them the truth: that I was a thirty-four-year-old loner whose friends had deserted him for marriage or death. They set me up in the Cramden Hotel.
During the first week, I interacted with only housekeeping and the concierge. They were all robots. It was the best the town could do to live up to its tagline.
—
Although I loved loneliness, I was still lonely as hell. After months of wallowing about my life situation, sinking into the lack of fellow humans, there was nothing I wanted more than to mix it up. I thought being lonely among robots was a different lonely as being lonely among humans. The scratch needed to be itched.
The concierge suggested a dating app called Loner, and the concierge said it had the best reputation for keeping the lonesome lonely. I filled out a profile and submitted it to the AI gods for review. It matched me with Raylene, a blonde Puerto Rican who stood over six feet. Her profile said very little about her beyond the fact that she’d moved from Buffalo, New York, and loved pets over people. In her picture, she sat on a snowy park bench and wore a fleece jacket. A French bulldog sat in her lap, and it wore a black-and-white dog poncho. It looked like a staged photo, like something in an L.L. Bean catalog, but where L.L. Bean was trying to pull off cozy, it was a cold, plastic, disconnected photo. I assumed her entire profile was an attempt at sarcasm.
Do you want to meet or not? she wrote.
Because of my lust for tall women, I wrote her back: Yes.
I have tickets to The Late Show, she wrote. Meet me at Geraldine Park at eight. I’ll be at the corner of Alaska and Winter Bear. And don’t be awkward.
—
When I showed up, Raylene was sitting on a snowy park bench in the same jacket as her photo, with her service bulldog in her lap. The dog even wore a black-and-white poncho. Raylene’s smile was all the picture was missing.
“Joe?” she asked.
Her perfume was cedar, or maybe it was the trees. Whatever the case, the scent had found its way to me, and it smelled lovely. The Loner profile was missing a smell.
“Raylene?”
“No,” she said. “Of course it is. How would I know your name was Joe?”
The bulldog barked at me.
“Sheepshead, knock it off,” she said.
Sheepshead? After Raylene fed her a pill, the dog calmed down. The pill must’ve been a fast-acting depressant, which they sold over the counter here in Periscope City. I know because of my own dog, but he didn’t need medication like me.
“You look different from your picture,” she said.
Ditto. Not only did she frown but her hair wasn’t blonde. It was purple. “How so?” I said.
“I thought you were taller,” she said.
I ignored her comment (let’s call it an insult), already being my tallest.
“Ask me something,” she said.
She was testing me, but then I remembered how sarcastic her profile had been attempting to be. The memory of it made me sweat a little with anxiety because I tried to think of something witty to say quickly, so I used a cliché. “If you could have dinner with anyone, who would it be?”
“Come on, dude,” she said. “Ask me something else.”
I gestured out to the surrounding park with my hands as if that were the explanation. “It was all I could think of,” I said.
“I told you, don’t be awkward,” she said. “What about you? Who would you have dinner with?”
I hated the question, too.
“Abraham Lincoln,” I said, and the words tasted like tinned fish.
“Why?”
“He was the first person who came to mind,” I said.
“Lame,” she said. “Now ask me a good question.”
“Okay,” I said. “Why did you name your dog Sheepshead?”
“Sheepshead Bay was the last place where I went with my husband,” she said.
“Did you separate?” I said.
She pressed her beanie down to her eyebrows, and I did the same with my trapper hat. We shared an awkward silence. It was what I got for asking a good question.
OLD SCRATCH PRESS 