THE KEEPING ROOM
The Keeping Room is an online magazine for all women writers, poets, and artists.
We are looking to publish your short stories, essays, free writing, poetry, and photo essays that touch on topics related to Women’s Wisdom, Lessons Learned, Self-care, Bodies, Relationships, and Community.
Writers selected for publication will be paid $25 via PayPal. Submit via Submittable.
***Simultaneous submissions are accepted, but please notify us immediately if accepted elsewhere.
***All material must be original and unpublished.
Chicken Feet by Andreea Ceplinschi
I could only love you the same way our mother loved chicken feet.
We weren’t rich, but our grandparents raised chickens and mother could make one bird go a long way for a family of four …
FICTION
Matriarchs by Sarah Stubbs
PROLOGUE I want a yoga instructor with boobs. Real boobs, not those piss-poor B cups; not even C or D will do, although that’s progress. No, I need a yoga instructor with great flapping double F’s, the kind of boobs that make you hot in summer but keep you warm in...
The Gifted Class by Mary Morris
It happened during the sweltering summer that they lived out of town, the summer of the white Ford station wagon’s inevitable demise. The Ford had lasted them for two years, despite having been purchased by Caroline’s mother for a mere $200 in a moment of pure...
Seedlings by Jody Lisberger
The day I caught my twin sister Eliza kissing Danny Quinn, I never stopped to think they had a secret. Is that how the kiss felt to her? Like she already knew they were both gay? On that warm afternoon near the end of third grade, as the three of us kicked stones from...
SEX & SPATULAS by Pat Ryan
Betty never thought food would be important. She never thought about food at all, certainly not about cooking it. Since leaving home, she ate most meals in the way she liked best: with a book or magazine on the table, her eyes on the page, not the plate. Now Betty...
Notes from Camp Chaparral By Hillary Tiefer
Date entry: Sunday, July 12, 1970 I’m coping by writing these notes. I got the idea from Fyodor Dostoevsky’s Notes from the Underground that was assigned in my AP English class during my last semester of high school. I purchased a notebook and a pen and here I am...
CREATIVE NONFICTION
Chicken Feet by Andreea Ceplinschi
Alexandru & Andreea ca. 1987, photo from author’s family archivesI could only love you the same way our mother loved chicken feet. We weren’t rich, but our grandparents raised chickens and mother could make one bird go a long way for a family of four. She’d...
Anticipatory Grief by Debbi Welch
Isn’t good old-fashioned grief enough? Loss, tears, the flooding of memories? I’ve grieved and am still grieving my mother, father, stepfather, and brother, as well as many other relatives and dear friends. I’ve sat with others through their losses. It’s a fact of...
Sonata by Julie Lockhart
C-sharp (#): Compositions in a minor scale, such as Beethoven’s “Moonlight Sonata in C# Minor,” can evoke a misty evening of sad contemplation, moody ruminations, even grief. When Michael lived with me before we married, I set a Type-A goal to learn the sonata’s three...
Grandma Helen by Stacy Alderman
The only picture I’d ever seen of my maternal grandmother was her wedding portrait. Its muted hues, her close-lipped smile, the bundle of blooms in her hands, were spread in canvas across a 10x12 frame, and this image rested on a darkened shelf in our garage. I felt...
Educating Grandma by Marilyn Morgan
A product of the fifties, I grew up with Donna Reed, Pat Boone, and the most daring heartthrob of all, Elvis Presley. So when my fifteen-year-old granddaughter, Lia, said to me, “Grandma, I’m not a girl,” I felt the wind ravel right out of my lungs. When I came to,...
POETRY
![[Robert]: A Lipogram Apology by Monica Prince](https://minervarising.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/01/MonicaPrince_poem-400x250.jpg)
[Robert]: A Lipogram Apology by Monica Prince
[Robert]: A Lipogram Apology Note: A lipogram is a type of Oulipian constraint where each stanza represents each letter in a word that is missing;the stanza must use every other letter of the alphabet except the letter that’s missing. Another name for this is the...
After Dark, by Ellie Altman
After Dark Relishing permission to sleep,I wrestle the day to surrender the pulled curtains, narrow the second-floor window view into a nearsighted blurwhere Queen Street meets Riverside Terrace— a three-way, catty-cornered crossroads under the streetlamp’s glow. An...
SWIM by Jonny Ransbottom
SWIM I found my femininity with him inside of meI was unfamiliar with the skin beneath the tuft of thick hair, that spiral flowerAnd the triangle it forms between my legs I let it grow long like a jungleLeaves cowering and vines twisting I keep this flowerNot to hide...
The Plan by Irene Watson
The Plan Capture shade of sundials in curled hands. Shutter hours passing with a shield of metal marker. Ponder elegance of stone numeralsin their plainspoken steadiness, their correctness. (If) I can move the trapped umbrage south, then maybeit will stifle the dark....
Devour by Eve Croskery
Devour I run the shower, water hot to wash off the day.Almost instantly comes the soundof small palms slapping on cold tiles. You crawl desperately towards my undressed form, my body your lighthouse, reach your arms skywardsand I move to scoop you onto my hip where...