A Literary Magazine Sponsored by The University of Maine at Farmington
The River is a representation of the Sandy River itself, which runs alongside the university and what inspired the name of the journal. It is a constantly flowing, ebbing and surging, body of content filled with contemporary work. To submit to The River please visit our Submissions page to the left or e mail TheRiverEditors@gmail.com directly.
by Jonathan Sload Admit that you’re stuck in the chimney. Stop using the phrases “sliding down” and “squeezing through.” You stopped doing those ten minutes ago. Stop … Continue Reading A User’s Guide to Escaping the Chimney
by Willy Doehring, River co-editor The “Writer’s Workshop” blog posts are meant to be a collage of writer’s tips, tricks, and strategies, including the first steps to publishing, writing prompts, strategies … Continue Reading Voice: What Keeps us Reading
A new season is here, and with it comes a new wave of submissions along with the introduction of the Spring 2018 editors. We’re both looking forward to publishing new … Continue Reading The New Editors of Spring 2018
By Thomas L. Winters
You know nothing
about the snowfall
the coming blackness, or
the silver rain bolts spying
By Tom Larsen
It was always autumn when Charlie Sikes emptied the machines at North Shore. He could still recall that first year driving the lake road through flaming trees, listening to the World Series on the radio, the sun warm on his left arm and Drysdale setting them down in order. Some men would envy him, he remembered thinking.
By Griff Foxley
A lonely heart invited me over and was elated I’d seen the scroll in the bottle,
And had responded of all things, yes. Of all things, yes.
So I ventured. But frittered away on dirty stoops and dim, private alleys along the way,
Lost my way a time maybe two maybe two hundred. But here I stand at the scroll’s address.
By Jen Rouse
You trap the sun
in endless Ball jars,
line them up like
tiny souls on
the window sill.
By Mark Belair
I was maybe 20
in this taut dream, not
looking back to that age or
knowing I’d returned to it, but simply
by Michael Hammerle
That boy’s gonna’ be
a heart taker.
He’s got
our father’s eyes;
By Z.Z. Boone
Except for the blood pressure, Parisi is a healthy seventy-five-year-old. He swims at the Y four mornings a week, his spine is straight, he maintains the 34-inch waist he carried through college. His mind is sharp; he reads historical novels and sees an occasional play, and he can still knock out the Sunday Times crossword without having to wait a week for the solution.
By Marc Swan
Three in the morning,
AC howling like a banshee dancing
on a wire. I shut it down
with a punch of the button.
By M. Stone
Dear stained glass Jesus:
they tucked me between pews
so I could imagine my heart
as a cardboard box, flaps open
to entice you.
By Barbara Alsop
The soft paw strokes my face
purr rumbling like a deep earthquake.
by Matthew Campbell
“My kind of loyalty was loyalty to one’s country, not to its institutions or its officeholders. The country is the real thing, the substantial thing, the eternal thing; it is the thing to watch over, and care for, and be loyal to; institutions are extraneous, they are its mere clothing, and clothing can wear out, become ragged, cease to be comfortable, cease to protect the body from winter, disease, and death.”
― Mark Twain, A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court
By Elizabeth Kane
[This story is the official winner of the Fall 2017 Flash Fiction contest, “200 in 2 Weeks”]
She would’ve gone anywhere. Her tap shoes scraped the pebbly sidewalk, the tulle on her skirt fluffing in the cool wind. The light from her dance studio blinked out down the street as her teacher locked the door.
By M.J. Iuppa
[This story is a runner up in the Fall 2017 flash fiction contest, “200 in 2 Weeks”]
No one suspected that she’s the one who said, so long. Until
someone called—the sudden blast of the cell phone, ringing
like Paul Revere, like Chicken Little fearing the sky’s falling.