Eunoia Review

Eunoia Review is an online literary journal committed to sharing the fruits of ‘beautiful thinking’. Each day, we publish two new pieces of writing for your reading pleasure. We believe that Eunoia Review can and should be a home for all sorts of writing, and we welcome submissions from writers of all ages and backgrounds.

[eunoiareview]

Red Union Suit Diaries

The sweat-soaked red union suit clung like hide to the farmhand’s skin— nothing modest, but it sure was honest. The back door of the barn unbuttoned, like an invitation. James Daniello Jr is an artist and writer based in Palm Springs, California, where he lives with his husband. He is at work on a novel.

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Multiple Drafts

I touch it and he moans a little opens like a little mouth he resists until he does not so I press harder             deeper and watch him arch edit my rhythm like he is the one in control when I stop hold it still hovering over the part wide open to me it drips pools where it should connect but I sense something true nearly true trembling beneath I can almost see it yet, when I lose it —a habit…

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A Letter to the Space Beside Me

Dear empty half of my bed, you used to embarrass me at dawn when neighbours measured my worth in paired shoes. But now I understand: you are not a wound, you are a field. My heart is a baobab rooted in its own red earth, not leaning against another trunk for survival, not asking the wind to carry its fruit. The baobab does not apologise for the size of its solitary shadow. I used to carry someone…

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My Father's Tears

The phone rang at two in the morning, and I knew before my eyes were open that something was wrong, because in our apartment, the phone almost never rang at all. It sat on the little half-moon table in the hallway, a heavy black thing that my mother polished on Saturdays when she polished everything else. It had a particular ring, the kind that fills the rooms the way cold air fills them when you…

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Prague Is Free

Under a watchful moon he drives puffing his pipe as if he rhapsodized a sheaf-full of tunes, puffing his pipe as if he could propel the vehicle with forced air along the silver shaft of river, over a bridge so ornate he feels like he is driving into a piece of sculpture. He parks on a boulevard where fir branches beat the moonlight shuffling a pocket of papers as if batting away smoke, then…

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The Physics of Breath

A woman is a body in a hymn, becoming a voice, becoming a song of bodies begging to be held the way a body confines God. She sews and on her lap, God takes form. God is a choice (but not when you have gaps in your body). God is a song in the wind (freedom), God is imagination but not when the mind deceives the eye; not when the body traps water in its knees. There is plenty that the body hides.…

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Every Chameleon Was First a Daughter

The daughter collects her mother as she spills, the winds rustling, running, rushing, to steal the scent of this liquid memory. The mother nurtures, nurtures, nurtures. The daughter endures, endures, endures. The owls hoot because they can already see, this friction becoming an evening breeze wet with guilt, wearing daughter, mother alike, a bridge between a word and its consequence, a…

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Misophonic Manslaughter

3,650 days. 3,650,000 push-ups. The first 365 nights passed easily enough. Then, a visitor began haunting me. Each night, the same dream. 365 days in a row. The dream: a man—face blurred now— enters my cell. He leans over my bunk, whispers: You love it here. Don’t you? I lash out, punching air. Nothing changes. I have a condition. It’s been with me since childhood. My sister gave it a name:…

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Union Gap

I pass many bike riders on this stretch of highway. Gappers—the folks out here—really go for a bike. Not the sexy, eco-friendly kind. These are rusty numbers, bedecked with pegs. Sometimes it’s clear a bike used to be two bikes— two welded crudely into one; a recycled steed for recycled riders. I pass one guy at 7:30 in the morning. He is on his way to work at a mill. His license has been…

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Don Marlene

My Grandma Marlene called the landline and asked me to shoot a stray cat— it kept clawing her on the front porch. Each week she read her favorite novel like it was the first time; she was still with it enough to be simultaneously aware, amused, and saddened by this privilege. I arrived at her place with a .22 long rifle, carved swans winging over its wooden stock. Last week, in Athens, I got a…

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Woodland Trails

Suspended in shades of rust and copper, the last autumn oak leaves litter gravel paths amidst fallen acorns as the year turns to December— my daily thoughts preoccupied with winter sunsets and stenciled skies on frigid evenings— where just above a whisper I still hear your voice. A Pushcart nominee, Dr. Jim Brosnan is the author of Long Distance Driving (2024) and Nameless Roads (2019). His poems…

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Dreaming of You

On blue mornings an ocean away from summer the past returns when I recall small Vermont towns we passed through, diners where we had breakfast, the whistle of a passing freight early in spring afternoon hike, quiet conversation over coffee at the close of day— shared times when I can’t recall the color of your eyes. A Pushcart nominee, Dr. Jim Brosnan is the author of Long Distance Driving (2024)…

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Unforgettable

As darkness approaches this March evening, I feel your absence, almost feel suspended in time, as I replay the Cockburn ballad we shared under stars before I hear a lingering melody in the shadows of purple violets and gunmetal clouds— recall those days when we were young. A Pushcart nominee, Dr. Jim Brosnan is the author of Long Distance Driving (2024) and Nameless Roads (2019). His poems have…

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Omaha in February

On I-80 I stare at treeless rolling prairies where sporadic thoughts race from gathering black funnel clouds. I cherish these hours, pray for nothing except moonlight on snow-covered grasslands in eastern Nebraska. Yesterday I left a stream of complex thoughts typed on numbered pages— favorite memories relinquished under a Snow Moon. A Pushcart nominee, Dr. Jim Brosnan is the author of Long…

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Landscape of Reminders

One November evening as the echo of Amtrak Vermonter’s whistle interrupted the silence of nearby wildflower meadows where we had picnics. On many bustling summer afternoons many years ago, I waited to speak to the night owl three degrees east of a cedar grove— my only chance to escape loneliness on that autumn night. A Pushcart nominee, Dr. Jim Brosnan is the author of Long Distance Driving…

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Sweet Sixteen

Golden Shovel after “ceilings” by Lizzy McAlphine The world is gone, really. Open mornings touch dawn while it falls like clouds in daybreak & this little morning bird hits the collapsing roof out its nest like it’d like to be me. Where after fires toppling over on my body, the works in my palm forget what my reflection swallows. The door opens with almost boulders smiling, blank car windows &…

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Family Tree

Tree branch shadows break into the abandoned house through paneless windows. As the sun moves dawn to dusk, shadows rummage through rooms filled with seasons of leaves and twigs wind-born for adventure. Ancestors buried on cousin floors and father siding inside rooms of wombs barren of gestation. Diane Webster lives in western Colorado. Her poetry has appeared in North Dakota Quarterly, New…