I’m delighted to announce that Vanesa L. Perillo and Kit Flynn are joining The Hoolet’s Nook as our new Editorial Consultants! With their passion and dedication for storytelling and the written word, Kit and Vanesa will be invaluable in helping curate a diverse and inspiring selection of poetry and prose.
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Their insight and dedication align beautifully with The Hoolet’s Nook’s mission to nurture writers and showcase engaging, impactful work. I’m so excited to have them on this journey as we continue to grow our creative community.
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To learn a bit more about Kit and Vanesa, feel free to visit our Editorial Team page. And please join me in giving them a warm welcome.  

We’d also like to extend a heartfelt thank you to all our contributors for your ongoing support and submissions--The Hoolet’s Nook is off to a wonderful start because of you!
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For extra editorial notes and updates, be sure to follow us on Instagram @the_hoolets_nook. 

by Philippa Ramsden

As autumn settles, 
poppies continue to appear 
and bloom, albeit 
under a veil of raindrops.

* * *

Following a career in international development, Philippa Ramsden returned to Scotland somewhat adrift and has now settled in East Lothian. Her writing draws from life and work in Nepal, Mongolia, India, Sri Lanka, Myanmar and Rwanda and her Scottish surroundings.

by Elysia Rourke

I am born on a whisper of your breath. A sigh of wind volleys me skyward, the corners of your mouth in close pursuit.

Can you see all you’ve created, mirrored on my cellophane skin? The garden, masterpieces scrawled in colourful chalk, and two children with remnants of homemade raspberry jam sparkling from spring-kissed cheeks.

I settle on the grass, its blades dulled by winter. There is still time.
​
You lift your wand again. My siblings flutter from your lips. The children squeal, “You made a rainbow, Mummy!” You’ve made their smiles too.

Here, enough simple joy I could burst.

* * *

Elysia Rourke lives in Almonte, Ontario with her husband, two sons, and dog. She has a weakness for London fogs, Christmas morning, and a salty ocean breeze. Her writing can be found at www.elysiarourke.com.

by Linda M. Crate

let me change like autumn,
transform into my prettiest colors;
let everything dead fade
away into the sky;
bathe me in a golden sunset
that could heal every
broken thing in my soul. 

* * *

Linda M. Crate (she/her) is a Pennsylvanian writer whose works you can find at her social media links: 
Facebook
Instagram
Twitter

by Natasha Mihell

Wraith; fearless. She inscribes a course over root, under branch, kicking up snow glitter with her leaping. Borne by shadow, she ignites. Relentless. The forest is noiseless no longer; she sings into its maw. It returns the favor. She smiles. She has known loneliness, and hers does not live here.

* * *

Natasha Mihell is an artist-at-heart living amidst the forests and urban decay of Canada’s West Coast. Her writing explores the reclamation of self-love, hope, and power, amidst systems and circumstances that threaten hearts and minds. Connect at natashamihell.com and @natashamihell on Instagram. 

by Miranda Ray

He started out growing matchbooks in his backyard when he was ten. Every year, and every subsequent science fair, his craft evolved until he was growing birdhouses, doghouses, toolsheds, and drive-through espresso stands. By the time he turned twenty, he could seed the earth with a shingle, a doorknob, an unbitted key, and grow a one-bedroom one-bath house complete with an antique claw foot tub.

The houses gestated in two weeks, and could be moved into by the third. In six months, he had single-handedly solved the homelessness problem on all six habitable continents. The middle class moved out of suburbia in droves, trading Venetian blinds for venation wallpaper, electricity and wind power for chloroplasts and photosynthesis.

He was the youngest living recipient of the Nobel Prize, and went on several well-documented dates with many well-received actresses. He was invited to demonstrate at TED Talks, and was the keynote speaker at the New Earth Summit. In autumn, when houses around the world were just starting to change their colors, he delivered a rousing commencement speech at the University of Oxford and unveiled an orchard of new dormitories. Amid rapturous applause, a lone student put her hand up and asked:

"So what's the plan for when the roofs fall off in winter?"

* * *

Miranda was raised on a small island in the Pacific Northwest. She is the author of Lustily Ever After, the first erotic audiobook musical for adults. Visit her online at www.mirandaray.com, or find her @dammitmiranda on Instagram.

by Lisa Lahey

We don’t act like them, the xenophobes
and kinemortophobes,
each of us with a peculiar
look and a lamentable odour.
We’d love to run among the blue green grass
on frozen glass mountains,
with the cannibals
and their turquoise camels.
There is the one who sheds her skin 
every birthday so she can grow
while the skin melts into the ground.
There is another whose eyes
are moonlit lasers that x-ray every bone
and dream in a demon’s head.
You fear us all, that’s why we stay hidden.
It isn’t fair, shetani,
but what is?

* * *

Lisa Lahey's short stories and poetry have been published in 34th Parallel Magazine, Five on the Fifth, Bindweed Anthology, Spadina Literary Review, Vita Poetica, Ariel Chart Review, VerbalArt Journal, and Altered Reality.

by Sarah Das Gupta

Witches steal the milk from cattle,
shapeshift into brown hares.
In the hidden witches’ garden
grow pink foxglove fingers,
yellow clumps of spindly ragwort,
deadly to man or beast.
Witches ride in the Wild Hunt
high in inky darkness,
they form dark silhouettes
across the face of the harvest moon.
In elder trees they hide,
under the spiked blackthorn,
among monkshood and aconitum,
mixing strange concoctions,
bringing certain death and gloom.
Yellow and red flames
consumed them once.
Yet in the darkness of the pinewood,
in that other land under the hill,
they survive, to curse and cure us still.

* * *

Sarah Das Gupta is a slowly emerging poet from Cambridge, UK who started writing a year ago when her mobility became limited to 20 metres. Her work has been published in over 20 countries and she has been nominated this year for Best of the Net and a Dwarf Star award.

by Lucy Barker

I watch you enter. Sunlight penetrates the stained-glass, suffusing your pale cheek.
Once, from that  pulpit, the Reverend Swales preached forgiveness, his gimlet eyes resting upon me; the sinner of his flock.

I reach out. I have come too close. Startled, you flee towards the headstones encircling those weathered walls. My empty, unmarked grave lies beyond; above the wind-buffeted waves raging far below.

He waits for you by the lych gate.

With venomous whispers I bid you not to go.
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Convinced it is merely the rustling of trees, you rush inexorably towards him; oblivious of my pursuing shadow.

* * *

Lucy is a retired tutor living on the beautiful South Coast of England, which inspires much of her work. For some strange reason she is fascinated by the eerie and macabre, but that’s another story!

by Cortni Merritt

I saw you with the box today,
pink and mirrored,
dark-skinned figure,
twirling to that tune I know but not by name.
It was in your hand but it held something you'd forgotten or maybe misplaced,
a dream or a wish or a past person you thought you would be.
I pretended not to see you
wipe your eyes when you asked, 
"Do you think she'll like it?" and you whispered,
"my little girl." 
It was perfect, even though empty. 

* * *

Cortni is a mother, writer, editor, and college instructor living in Central Florida. She enjoys cats, karate, and a well-cooked curry. Find her at www.srdeditingservices.com.

by Cheryl Snell

I was selling raffle tickets but he knew a long-shot when he saw one. Told me he was a cook and right off the bat invited me in for his homemade soup. “So you’re the literal girl next door,” he mused as he brought the steaming bowls to the table. “That’s what we should tell people.”

“Who would we tell?” I said. He was getting way ahead of himself, but the next Friday we went out to dinner. “I listen to the scuttlebutt from the kitchen,” he said, hand partly-covering his mouth. On a whim, I pulled his hand down and kissed it. He was so rattled he could barely demystify the ingredients in the dishes on our table.

The next time I saw him, he had recovered from my gesture and his shyness. We were in his kitchen making dumplings. As he shook the packet of rice-and-lentil powder into a bowl, stirring in yogurt, he said, “This shortcut will have no bearing on the taste.” We held hands and kissed a little as we waited for the mixture to ferment. When he dropped the batter into perforated cups, I watched it puff into snowballs. The sight made me think of the coconut Snowballs my ex liked to stuff in my mouth, practicing for our wedding.

I must have made a face because my host raised his eyebrows before he went back to chopping mint, onion, and cilantro for the dipping sauce. “Spices are the friend of physicians as well as the pride of cooks,” he said, as if he knew something about me I didn’t. And when I took one perfect white ball from his fingers, I remembered that deaf people imagine the sun makes noise as it rises. I bit into the round sphere, and listened.

* * *
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Cheryl Snell's books include poetry and fiction of all sizes. Her work has or will appear in Blink-Ink, Roi Faineant, Switch, and Does it Have Pockets?      

by Louella Lester

The sun’s down and his outstretched hand seems mud-painted midair. He’s on the field side of the road’s marshy ditch. Crickets spitting out confetti streams of babel. Frogs gulping deep. Headlights sweep past, disappearing into their own dust. He only needs one set to slow. To turn. Bring the starlight.

* * *

Louella Lester is a writer/photographer in Winnipeg, Canada, author of Glass Bricks (At Bay Press 2021), contributing editor at New Flash Fiction Review, and is included in Best Microfiction 2024. 

by Lynn White

​Just a raindrop
falling,
falling into wetness.
A silvery teardrop
which splatters
then disappears
into wetness,
to become invisible
as if by magic.

​* * *

Lynn White lives in north Wales. Her work is influenced by issues of social justice and events, places and people she has known or imagined. She is especially interested in exploring the boundaries of dream, fantasy and reality. Visit Lynn's Facebook Poetry Page here. 

by Michael Brockley

The red maple rises above the crowns of pears and serviceberries. Trees an arborist planted in my yard twenty years ago. Now the maple’s roots girdle the trunk, and the bark darkens with stoic resilience. In the evenings, I spread the palms of my hands across the knobs where limbs were trimmed back so a mower could cut the grass beneath the canopy. I ask what songs the neighborhood forest sings through its underground choir. What sustenance might be received from nearby silver maples. From spring’s transient redbuds. My calendar reads mid-October. The tree’s leaves still green. And summer strong. 

* * *

Michael Brockley is a retired school psychologist who lives in Muncie, Indiana. His poems have appeared in The Prose Poem, Superpresent, and Dreams of Rust and Glass, Volume 2. Poems are forthcoming in Last Stanza Poetry Journal and confetti. ​