Every year, independent presses from across the country, no matter how small, get to nominate up to six works for consideration for the annual Pushcart Prize, the best of the small presses. It is a prestigious award and just being nominated is an honor.
This year’s Pushcart nominations are bittersweet. I am so proud to get to nominate such beautiful works. I feel a little melancholy that this will be my last set of nominations, at least for several years, as the journal goes on hiatus while I deal with some health issues and support a teenage cellist, all while running a farmstead and teaching writing full time.
I don’t know if I will come back to Farmer-ish journal or if someone else will take up the torch, but this year’s nominations feel extra special to me. They represent the best of what we have done at the journal, and I feel like we have done some really good things. We have published essays and poetry that bring readers into the hearts and minds of those living close to nature, close to the land. These stories are important, I believe. Last week, we reached 200,000 visitors to our site since we began in 2020. Realizing that 200,000 people, from all over the world, have visited our journal and read these powerful stories gave me pause and reminded me of the good that I have done. And I so want to do good works.
It is my great honor to present the 2024 Pushcart Prize nominations from Farmer-ish journal. We have curated a special issue of the journal to celebrate these brilliant authors, as we want to draw attention to these beautiful works.
Please join me in honoring these talented authors. It is has been one of the great privileges of my life to get to publish such brilliant writing. I hope you enjoy!
The Nominees
The Barn by Randy Graham
“Today, after a funeral, I drive up the lane to my childhood home. The lane ends in a picked-over cornfield. The house, the barn, most of the trees, and all the other buildings are gone. I get out and walk into the field, across snow-covered corn stubble. The barn stood here. I look around at the bare ground, disoriented. I shut my eyes. The barn stood here. Stripeshirt’s faint rumbling purr tickles my ears. The breeze carries the subtle aroma of cow manure with just a hint of disinfectant. And there’s a tinny radio playing softly over the quiet chugga…chugga…chugga of the milking machines.”
Pruning by Lauren Kessler
“The sky is that fragile blue. The blossoms give off a faint sweetness. I am overcome with the feeling—and I mean feeling, as in visceral, a total-body rush and awareness—that he is out there. He said he would be. He told us, right before he took the end-of-life medication sitting on the hospital bed in our living room, surrounded by me and kids, that he was energy, neither created nor destroyed. That he would be with us, that we should use his energy. I do.”
Rebuilding a Modern Farmhouse Kitchen by Christina Lundberg
“And yet, no one is coming. And it is not until you are under the weight of all the wooden beams that you know what you have been wondering all along, the very thing that went missing from the floating shelves of your life that had always been missing is now nobody else but you.”
Where This Beef Burgundy Came From by Sarah Walker Caron
“Perhaps it’s what I am still doing — breaking so that I can become something better, smoother, lovelier. Sometimes I worry though that my trauma has left me curdled, unable to become a smooth broth that can cover the flour covered beef and one-inch carrots and frozen pearl onions and perfectly minced garlic to make this magnificent dish. But I don’t think that’s the case anymore.”
Meditation: Moon by Sarah Kilch Gaffney
“How moonlight is just sunlight and earthlight—reflected.
How we are all just phases and stages of illumination.
How, in the end, we all wax and wane.”
The Eastern Towhee Is Back by Hope Miller
“How long
have you been here?
Always.
How long will we last?
It depends.”
photo credit: Joshua Fuller, Unsplash
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