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Myth of Harvest
by Srijani Dutta The female ones tiptoed to the forest To unburden the agonies of daily wages, Instead they heard the cries of the dead; Wind carried the leaves from the old tree And placed around the yellow swamp At the backyard of a lady’s hut; They went there to listen To the music of the earth And count fireflies like the fate lines of palms In the dark autumn night, Eyes stumbled out Reminding themselves Of their origins and history As their eyes came across None B
Srijani Dutta
12 minutes ago
Agate
by John Swain Agate the sea wreathes mosaic, we wade in the shallow, we float on gold rosettes to the diamondback sandbar, your eyes fletch the sunlight, the sun stills in prism. The sky shines to billow the skirt of your dress like a sail, you move to tilt the wild sphere, you curve to mindful blue. We wash transparent, you necklace sun inscripted on the pendant clasped with agate bound like wind behind my neck.
John Swain
1 day ago
Rooted Silence
by Iván A. Salazar M. translated from Spanish by Stefania Rodríguez Castro The pillow cradles a furrow of voice where every echo turns to salt. (A tide‑less moon lets fall a sigh into the silent receiver.) Your name is now a moth, a silent thief that feasts upon the chronicles of days. August has a hole and December bleeds black ink. In the mirror, someone unravels a skein of shadows —is it you?— but logic rots between my fingers: only a clock without hands remain and a tree
Ivan A. Salazar M.
2 days ago
Beneath the Buzz
by Tazeen Erum The Drone In a ring of happy blossoms— some clamped by stem, others brushing petals by chance— a single drone buzzed, unwinged, earthbound, hating the pull of gravity. The Blossoms Caught between the soil and the air, they wished for him to circle for their nectar errands: to ferry pollen, to chase sun, to scatter their colour-dust across untended gardens. The Tether Sometimes he wandered away, for a garden of his own, but a bitter incense tether fetch
Tazeen Erum
4 days ago
Open Ending
by Renz Chester R. Gumaru We look and stare, Pretend that we don't care. Hearts start to race, But we hide the trace. Words stay inside, Feelings we set aside. Almost, but not yet. A love we won’t forget. No start, no goodbye. Just you and I. Smiles still sending, Our sweet open ending.
Renz Chester R. Gumaru
Jan 1
Things
by Roksolana Zharkova I will remember you Even after memory loss, Losing you like a sandal off my foot in very tall grass, like an earring from my left ear when I was little, like a panama hat from my head in a strong wind from the sea, like the letters of a language I didn't learn at school, like the streets of a city I've never been to, like the suitcase I happily carried, like an umbrella (I often lost umbrellas I left them on buses or at bus stops, on park benches, in the
Roksolana Zharkova
Dec 18, 2025
Heads or Tails
by Kersten Christianson Another summer road trip and she was off the island like a chickadee in flight. Winters were for clam digging by lantern, gathering, steaming, chowdering of bivalves; whereas summers were for pickle hunting, parachuting into one Saturday market, or another, searching for the best, magic dill pickles jarred by hand, proffered by cornichon connoisseurs. Saturday markets sparkle like a campfire. Iridescent bubbles drift on the warm winds, flutter around s
Lynn Peterson
Dec 17, 2025
Three Poems by Ibrar Sami
by Ibrar Sami Return The city is strewn with bodies, Just now, a few return alive. At the bus stand, a guest was supposed to arrive, Instead, a famished soul has brought the news. The stray dogs on the street, halted in their unadulterated mating rituals, stand frozen in their tracks. To uncover the truth behind the veil, with paralyzed consciences, every single scoundrel has lined up in waiting. Suddenly, a stranger, carrying a fiery blaze within his chest, stands at the cro
Ibrar Sami
Dec 15, 2025
Three Poems by Erica Swallow
by Erica Swallow Contented Cat Lady I don’t need to tell you That you make My mornings bright My afternoons light And my evenings just right. Tucked under my arm While I sip tea and read. On my desk, While I write. At my feet, While I sleep. You are the best companion. Without words, We know. Slow blinks, Low purrs. And just like you are the lioness of this manor, I am your tiger mom, Hunting canned fish and chicken goop sticks Like it's my god-given life purpose. And
Erica Swallow
Dec 14, 2025
Two Poems by Doug Tanoury
by Doug Tanoury Hudson River Day Line I would walk to the river in the morning To watch the sunrise In the early days after I left her For no reason other than — I Could! And every personal choice I made Conferred some dignity on me. The sunlight on the blue water paved A golden path to each new day, And I listened to the soft respiration Of the river, the sleepy, quiet sounds On a summer morning That I alone heard. The Redness of the Morning Light It was an ocherous sunrise,
Doug Tanoury
Dec 10, 2025
Two Poems by Esther Sadoff
by Esther Sadoff Moving Past I am moving past demarcation. I am moving past dates. I keep trying to close containers, to close each door, the last page of a book, but the leaves won’t stop curling, won’t stop blackening. The bed of flowers collapses: bright bulbs, bigger than my fists—soft implosions. Sudden pillage I can’t ignore. In School I Learned To Knit I assigned it to muscle memory. I could knit the air the same way. I played piano on any silent surface, moving my fin
Esther Sadoff
Dec 9, 2025
Two Poems by K. Lipschultz
by K. Lipschultz Poem for Roberto Bolaño, Boscoe and Me Death’s cheek he brushed, did he, the Latin American poet? I brushed my sleek black cat. Lucky boy, my sleepy friend, who doesn’t know about his late-stage cardiomyopathy as we brush cheeks or any other time. The Latin American died waiting on a transplant. Fame inched closer as his organ failed. My cat is blinking, he is waiting too, to hear the lines that will eclipse the lines that Kit Smart wrote for Jeoffry. We
K. Lipschultz
Dec 4, 2025
Three Poems by Vivian Faith Prescott
by Vivian Faith Prescott What To Do If You Crave Fish Tacos? 1. Wake up in the 4:00 a.m. daylight. 2. You’ve packed your go-fish bag the night before— notebook, pen, snacks. Don’t forget the herring bait. 3. You and your husband and dogs load up the boat at the nearby harbor. 4. Decide on salmon or halibut before you go—halibut it is. 5. Your father’s been gone-fishin’ in the spirit world for 6 months now, so head to his favorite bay. 6. At the halibut hole, jig and jig to th
Vivian Faith Prescott
Dec 3, 2025
Marzipan
by Diane Funston The pastry held no visual memory. Round, flat, sugar-iced, upheld on a crystal platform, cut into rustic triangles, dessert after literary repast. After the first taste, memories melted as a moist dense almond filling from the flaky butter shell broke, sugar coating cracked, mixed together, like old photographs in a newly unstuck drawer. After the third sneaky slice, I was lost in grandmothers kitchen, at my old vinyl upholstered chair, coffee time in late af
Diane Funston
Dec 1, 2025
Three Poems by Sumayya Arshed
by Sumayya Arshed Morning Nihari the pot opens at dawn, red rivers of spice thickening with bone marrow, steam rising like a sermon, coating the kitchen walls in devotion. bread balloons on the griddle, each tear of naan a covenant, and my mothers hand dips first, steady, practiced, into the stew. the broth carries fragmented echoes of empire, remnants of the alleys of lahore, where nihari is medicine, memory, and morning all at once. ginger slivers gleam like sunlit scyt
Sumayya Arshed
Nov 27, 2025
Food TV Fantasia
by Giuseppe Farina Each morning espresso or cappuccino at historic chic cafe’s in rome, milan, venice and florence Under a rising Mediterranean sun At noon Ligurian olives, kissed with extra virgin oil Prosciutto di parma Pasta made by milanese hands Tuscan wine in murano goblets Bocconcini di bufala and basilico Al fresco beneath a Mediterranean mezzogiorno Vistas of dream cities in background Evenings Are slow passeggiatas Arm in arm Along ancien
Giuseppe Farina
Nov 26, 2025
The Barista
by Heaven Santiago She tamps to tame her temper, tampering with silver tools on dull, dead, decaffeinated mornings. She pulls dreadful all-nighters, sticks tricks up her sleeves, and can pull a strong shot of espresso. She takes in vicious insults like barrages of boxing combos or lime-brimmed shots of vodka. She soaks in her rage, to compact like a puck—like a machine would a strong shot of espresso. She yearns to break past some scumbag’s dry advances; The sly try to trespa
Heaven Santiago
Nov 24, 2025
My Mother's Table
by Giuseppe Farina i kept my mothers' kitchen table eight chairs long, solid wood large enough to hold a feast of plates and all of us to sit around sharing food and lives she made bread upon it, sometimes twice a week and Sicilian sweets none of us could duplicate even with her recipes found handwritten in her Sicilian slanted script if i had been born the daughter she had always yearned for could i have learned her secrets, memorized her hands as they mixed, kneaded and bak
Giuseppe Farina
Nov 20, 2025
Monster Cookies
by Kristen Baum DeBeasi For Flossie winter’s day — you will not leave my mind all afternoon four years before, I keep your house, my weekend job: face cloths all folded the same direction for your gnarled hands upstairs, houseflies buzz their last, then fall silent in the closet, your shoes right heel inches higher than the left under the eaves, your teacher’s certificate sits yellowed in its frame in autumn, before I leave for college you set out lunch we talk and eat, you s
Catalina Bonati
Nov 12, 2025
Two Poems by Martha Clarkson
by Martha Clarkson The Last View Teenager, trying to fall asleep I worried my father would die driving home drunk, crash into the big oak along the speedy median and I’d be stuck with my mother. But when the time came at 94 it was just an undramatic fade huge oxygen tank heaving by the bed, my stepmother asleep on the living room pull-out. I paced the assisted-living halls wandered into in a game room where we’d once played bridge felt-covered card table the thrill of a six-h
Martha Clarkson
Nov 10, 2025
Articles
Dreaming of Kalbarri
by Meredith Stephens “Wake up! If we don’t get going now it will be too hot!” urged my fiance Alex. I couldn’t understand why we had to leave for Kalbarri National Park at 5:30am in darkness. Was it really going to get that hot? We quickly arose and headed to the car for the long drive. By the time we arrived, the day was breaking and we were among the first tourists to arrive at the famed Nature’s Window. We made our way along the trail to the window where international tour
Meredith Stephens
Nov 2, 2025
Between Two Skies: An Egyptian Heart in Albany
by Walid Abdallah When I first arrived in Albany, New York, in the winter of 2014, I felt as if I had stepped into a painting. The air...
Walid Abdallah
Oct 13, 2025
A Little Bundle of Fur/ A Not So Little Bundle of Fur
by Charles Stott I go for a walk most afternoons, and this Saturday in June was no exception. I felt good so I thought that I would go...
Charles Stott
Sep 22, 2025
Reviews
Refugium Book Review
by Catalina Bonati 3.75/5 stars ★★★⯪☆ Refugium by Eric Nicholas (2025) is a novel set in the Pleistocene, where several different types of pre-humans co-habitate as they take refuge from the Toba super-eruption aftermath in Sumatra. Set in an unspecified area of lower Asia, an Homo Erectus named Last is the lowest-ranking person in the tribe who must make do with scraps but who is sustained by the love of his little brother. The Erectus tribe is beset by a tribe of Homo Deni
Catalina Bonati
3 days ago
The Cold Visitor Book Review
by Catalina Bonati 3.75/5 stars ★★★⯪☆ Jonathan Butcher’s The Cold Visitor (published October 4, 2025) is a haunted house and cosmic horror novel that centers on the marriage of Sally and Herbert, who have reached their twilight years and now live in the retirement village of Heaven’s Sent. Sally comes from an accursed family who every half a century must complete a gruesome ritual in order to keep a demonic cosmic monster at bay, and the time has now come for the ritual to be
Catalina Bonati
Nov 16, 2025
Willow Rose Book Review
by Catalina Bonati 3.25/ 5 stars ★★★☆☆ Willow Rose by M. Kevin Hayden (to be published October 28 2025) is a short novel of...
Catalina Bonati
Aug 26, 2025
Short Stories
One More for the Essex
by James Callan She rose from her ocean bed, roused from the dark by her need to breathe. Like stars, like Cetus in the night sky, she brought light to the world off the glint of her back. She was silver in the moonlight, the surf churning pearls, a rich foam and salted spray that stirred the lookouts from the masthead. Larboard, starboard, rise ye sleepers and roustabouts! Leeward! Captain Pollard cried. Leviathan! Thar she blows! Breaching the horizon, the sun raked the sea
James Callan
2 days ago
A Small Glass of Sherry
by Owen Townend Winter’s early dark and sudden chill often sets me in search of comfort. Familiar ground for better or worse. That December night brought me to the tired town of Feldon, one of four places I grew up in. For a little over a year in my mid-teens, Feldon was home and a happy one. I had friends who led me through its streets, just watching the comings and goings of everybody else. We always ended up at the car park of the local wine bar, Your Excellent Sherris. A
Catalina Bonati
Dec 28, 2025
Anthropophagy for the Urban Hipster, Or, What to Do With Your Hands at Pretentious Parties
by Elissa Hunter Rebecca can tell Mickey’s a douchebag from the moment he introduces himself. Not just because he goes by Mickey instead of Mike or Michael or even Mikey. He’s also wearing too much cologne and has an unfortunate soul patch that looks like a bunch of blond pubes glued to his chin. Normally, even in her most desperate of dry spells, Rebecca would have run as soon as she saw him coming. But here they are, at a holiday party in a too-small apartment in Brooklyn,
Elissa Hunter
Dec 22, 2025
Poetry
Myth of Harvest
by Srijani Dutta The female ones tiptoed to the forest To unburden the agonies of daily wages, Instead they heard the cries of the dead; Wind carried the leaves from the old tree And placed around the yellow swamp At the backyard of a lady’s hut; They went there to listen To the music of the earth And count fireflies like the fate lines of palms In the dark autumn night, Eyes stumbled out Reminding themselves Of their origins and history As their eyes came across None B
Srijani Dutta
12 minutes ago
Agate
by John Swain Agate the sea wreathes mosaic, we wade in the shallow, we float on gold rosettes to the diamondback sandbar, your eyes fletch the sunlight, the sun stills in prism. The sky shines to billow the skirt of your dress like a sail, you move to tilt the wild sphere, you curve to mindful blue. We wash transparent, you necklace sun inscripted on the pendant clasped with agate bound like wind behind my neck.
John Swain
1 day ago
Rooted Silence
by Iván A. Salazar M. translated from Spanish by Stefania Rodríguez Castro The pillow cradles a furrow of voice where every echo turns to salt. (A tide‑less moon lets fall a sigh into the silent receiver.) Your name is now a moth, a silent thief that feasts upon the chronicles of days. August has a hole and December bleeds black ink. In the mirror, someone unravels a skein of shadows —is it you?— but logic rots between my fingers: only a clock without hands remain and a tree
Ivan A. Salazar M.
2 days ago
Art & Photography
Submission Guidelines
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We do not publish homophobic, transphobic, racist, or misogynist works of any kind.
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If the piece you wish to submit has italics or an image attached, please email us your submission at ultramarineliteraryreview@gmail.com rather than using the submission form.
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Art and photography must be uploaded to an email and must NOT be shared as a Google Drive document.
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Prose must be less than 3,000 words.
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Poetry must be less than 3 pages, single-spaced.
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We respond to submissions within the span of two weeks.
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By clicking on the SUBMIT button, you are agreeing to the following terms:
a) The submission is an original work that has not been previously published.
b) You have obtained permissions by the third party involved if the submitted work contains intellectual property not attributed to your authorship.
c) By submitting, you guarantee you hold the rights to the work, and you grant Ultramarine Literary Review the rights to publish the submitted work. After publication, rights revert to the author.
d) Simultaneous submissions are accepted, but the author must let us know if their work has been accepted elsewhere prior to publication.
e) Submitted articles, reviews, and short prose fiction less than 1,000 words will be translated from English-Spanish of Spanish-English by Wix Translation AI along with manual translation by the editor. The author has the right to approve or deny translation.
f) Poems will not be translated unless the author supplies their human-written translation.
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