WWPH WRITES ISSUE 97

Outside the 26-Martyr Monument in Nagasaki, Japan

We don’t remember what happened in the past, and in future generations, no one will remember what we are doing now.
–Ecclesiastes 1:11

Between the armpits of martyrs,
fat cats bathe in the sun.

Every day, old women come to feed them.
Do I have a faith I’d die for? I know sometimes

I’m just a spiritual tourist,
taking pictures and leaving. Everyone is looking

at the cats; the greened fumi-e martyrs
stare above our heads, hands folded

in prayer. Background scenery. Who remembers
the former generation? The closet Christians who hid Christ

in tea ceremonies and kanji, their belief considered
a threat to the shogunate? None of us

know anything that doesn’t show up
in the first page of google search results. Online,

history is buried in stratigraphic layers.
Those with the fewest likes, buried.

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WWPH FICTION

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Assistant in the House of Unexpected Arrivals

A dense, high hedge encircled the property where I would be starting work as an assistant. A wrought iron gate sat in a gap in the hedge, and a squiggly path led adorably through a barren winter garden to the black-painted front door.

“Are you the new assistant?”

“Christ!” I shouted, surprised to find an old woman beside me. She was well-aged but elegant. “Sorry, yes, that’s me.”

“Call me Maeve,” she said, shaking the hand I offered, her fingers soft as petals and cold as frost. And then she led me inside to the mahogany office where I would be working. “What I need you to do is to answer the phone—it’ll be quite simple, either ‘yes’ or ‘no’—and then text me if anything strange happens.”

“Strange?”

“Nothing to worry about, but you’ll know it when you see it. I expect you to be discreet, so please, no prying questions.”

I nodded, bemused, but unbothered. I’d worked temp jobs under far stranger and more concerning conditions than this.

+

“Jesus Christ!” I shouted at the end of the week when a miniature man popped into existence in the air above my desk before falling and landing with a thud like someone slapping a door. “Are you…okay?”

He said something, but as though in another language or else gibberish, voice so high-pitched it hurt my ears. He didn’t look as though he could move. Maybe one of his tiny limbs was broken from his fall. Once I’d calmed down somewhat, I texted Maeve just as she’d requested, wondering if instead I should call 911.

Maeve, a small man just fell onto my desk.

I was wondering what was taking so long. Usually, they’re much more regular, she texted back. There’s a cage under the desk. Be gentle, but put our guest in there for now so he doesn’t hurt himself. The translocation process tends to be quite discombobulating.

Feeling deeply dubious about the whole thing, I did as she texted and placed the tiny, translocated man in the ornate metal cage, watching as he slept fitfully.

“Oh, he looks quite comfortable, you’ve done an excellent job,” Maeve said.

“I’ve only done what you asked,” I said, feeling implicated and rather useless in my confusion and concern.

“No, no, not at all,” Maeve said. She lifted the cage carefully, ushering me to the door. “You can let yourself out?”

“Of course, see you Monday, Maeve.”

+

This man was but the first; there was one day when I had twenty tiny people stuffed into the cage, standing room only like on the buses I took every morning. What I told myself was not to think about who these tiny people were, where they came from, or where they were going. Maeve was paying me well enough to abide by her taboo on prying questions. A month later, however, I found my steadfastness challenged by the arrival of a minuscule person who looked exactly like a man I’d loved, and who I’d thought loved me until he disappeared.

“Jonathan?” I asked, even certain as I was by this point, these minuscule people couldn’t understand me. “You look just like…”

He didn’t respond, but at the end of the day, I lied to Maeve, told her there’d been no arrivals, and took him home with me. The whole commute on my two buses, I felt anxiously certain everyone was watching me and knew what I’d done. But I hadn’t been able to leave him to Maeve. If he were not Jonathan, I could return him. But if he were, maybe I could get my life back on track. I’d languished after he’d left me, not only romantically, but in terms of motivation as well. If a five-year relationship could end so abruptly, what else in my life was worth building? I’d even had to move out of the place we’d been renting together, unable to afford it alone.

Back in my overpriced, lonely apartment, I gave him a little cloth with a hole for his head he could wear like a poncho, and sugar water for him to sip since I knew that was what butterflies liked. And then, settled, I gave him the lead from a mechanical pencil and a sticky note.

Please help me, Zach! His first message said. I hadn’t mentioned my name, and neither had Maeve; he had to have known it from before his arrival in the office.

“How did this happen?” I asked, writing down my words for him to read. “You ghosted me a year ago, you didn’t even text.”

I never would’ve left you! I don’t know how this happened. One second, I was at home, another second, you’re a giant. I’m scared, Zach.

“It’s okay, Jonathan, we’ll figure this out together.”

He ran to me on his small legs across my desk and embraced my thumb. I smiled and felt tears forming in my eyes.

+

“Maeve, who are these tiny people?” I asked the next day, breaking her taboo on prying questions.

“Zach,” she said, voice smiling in that way all employers seemed to have mastered, “since this is your last week as my assistant, I don’t feel it would be appropriate for me to reveal such private matters.”“My last week…? Are you firing me?”

“You know, why don’t you head home early, you’ve done a great job here, if you need a letter of recommendation, please don’t hesitate to email,” she said, ushering me out.

“But how did these people become so small?” I shouted, even as she closed the door in my face.

+

On the bus home, I went online and bought Jonathan a collection of doll clothes in styles I thought he would like, and then I began to look for a new job. I didn’t know what was in store for us and our relationship, but at least now I felt certain to one person in the world, I wasn’t just another temp.

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WWPH NEWS

Please join our founder, Grace Cavalieri, E. Ethelbert Miller, and many more in celebrating the life and poetry of one of the past presidents of the Washington Writers’ Publishing House, Elisavietta Ritchie, on Saturday, June 7th, from 2-4 at the Writer’s Center in Bethesda. More about this remarkable poet and literary citizen here. Free and open to all. Please RSVP here.

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CAPITAL QUEER: A PRIDE CELEBRATION FROM WASHINGTON WRITERS’ PUBLISHING is our first-ever pocket-size chapbook/anthology and we are so excited! The publication date is May 27th. NOW AVAILABLE FOR PRE-ORDERS everywhere books are sold.

Our launch for CAPITAL QUEER is at KRAMER’S Bookstore in Washington DC on Tuesday, June 10 from 7-8 pm. Free and open to all, but please RSVP and let us know you are coming! RSVP here. Jona Colson, Kim Roberts, Luke Sutherland, Dwayne Lawson-Brown, Sunu P. Chandy, and Piérre Ramon Thomas will headline this fabulous first reading!

Join us on Monday, June 30th from 7-10 pm at Rhizome DC for our first WWPH Literary Salon of 2025. Our WWPH Literary Salon: PRIDE Edition will be a three-hour fete of creative writing workshops, readings, and free-wheeling discussion–free and open to all. An RSVP is required (space is limited to 50- so, sign up now). Co-editors Jona Colson and Caroline Bock will host the event, poets KIM ROBERTS and DR. TONEE MAE MOLL will lead the creative writing workshop part of the Salon–and many writers from Capital Queer will read from our new anthology — all in a celebration of Pride!

RSVP here for our WWPH Literary Salon: PRIDE Edition, which is made possible by a grant from the DC Commission on the Arts & Humanities.   

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Stop by our table at one of these upcoming events. Learn more about publishing with us…our book-length manuscript contests are now open! We are eager to read your poetry, fiction (novel or short story collection), and poetry in translation.

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2025 MANUSCRIPT CONTESTS are now open! If you are considering submitting your book-length manuscript to WWPH, check out our guidelines and FAQs  (new for 2025!) here. 

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We are excited to be part of A GATHERING OF PRIDE: Bookfair & Open Mic on Saturday, May 31st…stop by our table for a special Capital Queer mini-gift (limited supplies!)…the Open Mic is hosted by our own Jona Colson!

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Just in time for Pride! Now available everywhere books are sold. Support your WWPH and purchase here.

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WWPH WRITES is open for submissions! We now pay $25.00 for poetry (up to 3 poems) and prose (up to 1,000 words of fiction or creative nonfiction–and we only have 4 open issues/slots for prose remaining for 2025!) Free to submit! More details at our Submittable page here.

And INSIDER’S NEWS… if you read all the way to the end, you will be among the first to know that our very popular TINY POEMS are returning this August. We are looking for AMERICAN HAIKUS. We will publish many in our two August issues! Find out more here. Submissions open June 1.

Thank you for being part of the Washington Writers’ Publishing House’s community.

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