Dishsoap Quarterly

@dishsoapquart

Uncool & nerdy lit mag that's way too into dish-cleaning products. New piece every Tuesday. Subs always open! 🫧

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Dishsoap Quarterly@dishsoapquart· 14h

Wonderful little bullet of a piece up for you guys this week. Lose yourself in the abstract, mesmerizing patterns of "This is Awkward" from Jason Fraley. Link: dishsoap-quarterly.com/8-11-26

Dishsoap Quarterly@dishsoapquart· 2d

Absolute gut punch of a piece up this week. Strap in and enjoy the smooth ride "Tigers" from @danditty.bsky.social takes you on Link: dishsoap-quarterly.com/8-4-26

Dishsoap Quarterly@dishsoapquart· 15d

Sweet little glimpse of a moment and a lifetime up for y'all this week. Lose yourself briefly in "The Man in the Corner of the Photograph," from Arden Stockdell-Giesler Link: dishsoap-quarterly.com/7-28-26

Dishsoap Quarterly@dishsoapquart· 15d

Lovely shortie up on the site! Enjoy "The Problem with Living is that I Can’t Sit Watching the Deer at the Roadside Forever" from Sarah Carson. Link: dishsoap-quarterly.com/7-21-26

Dishsoap Quarterly@dishsoapquart· 29d

Lovely piece up this week with wild stakes that, by the end, will have convinced you are absolutely reasonable. Absolutely go tear through "Pull It Together, Wilson" from @emilyrinkema.bsky.social. Link: dishsoap-quarterly.com/7-14-26

Dishsoap Quarterly@dishsoapquart· 29d

Wonderfully strange piece that will, we're sure, in at least one small way, remind you of your relationship with your mother. Enjoy "Mom's Bigfoot" from Ashley W. Cundiff. Link: dishsoap-quarterly.com/7-7-26

Dishsoap Quarterly@dishsoapquart· Jul 4

Lovely, raw, voice-y piece up this week. Take a short, needed, break from the fireworks and festivities to sit with "Lua" from Lane Devers Read it on our site: dishsoap-quarterly.com/6-30-26

Dishsoap Quarterly@dishsoapquart· Jun 24

Wonderfully grounded, dreamy piece up this week about, well, dreams. Sink into "Waiting on a Dream" from @imbutashadow.bsky.social Link: dishsoap-quarterly.com/6-23-26

Dishsoap Quarterly@dishsoapquart· Jun 16

Our second bird piece in a row! And just like last week's, this one hits so hard in all the right, bittersweet ways. Enjoy "My cat sits on me, incubating Sad-Away" from @thanhpb.bsky.social Link: dishsoap-quarterly.com/6-16-26

Dishsoap Quarterly@dishsoapquart· Jun 14

funny, bittersweet, duck-filled piece up this week that captures a romantic vibe that is oh-too relatable. Enjoy "A brief obsession, and how to form one." from Nicole Davis. Link: dishsoap-quarterly.com/6-9-26

Dishsoap Quarterly@dishsoapquart· Jun 8

Stellar, wonderful conversation up this week. Hold both sides of the conversation in your hands and enjoy "Ars Poetica as Transcription" from Claire Salvato Link: dishsoap-quarterly.com/6-2-26

Dishsoap Quarterly@dishsoapquart· May 26

Lovely, lovely, lovely piece up today. Curl up with your dog, or cat, or corn snake and enjoy "A Beginning with No End" from @joeltomfohr.bsky.social Link: dishsoap-quarterly.com/5-26-26

Dishsoap Quarterly@dishsoapquart· May 19

Wonderful, bittersweet, funny piece up today. Look in the mirror or bite an apricot and read "Paul From the Future" from @sarpsozdinler.bsky.social Link: dishsoap-quarterly.com/5-19-26

Dishsoap Quarterly@dishsoapquart· May 13

Gorgeous, gorgeous, gorgeous poem up this week!!! Go to the beach, or sit by a stream, or maybe even submerge yourself in a pool and read "blue body" from @kmhanslik.bsky.social!!! Link: dishsoap-quarterly.com/5-12-26

Dishsoap Quarterly@dishsoapquart· May 5

Hilarious, funny, all-too-real piece up this week. Enjoy "Limerence Dingus" from Gretchen Uhrinek Link: dishsoap-quarterly.com/5-5-26

Dishsoap Quarterly@dishsoapquart· Apr 30

Incredibly lovely piece up this week that captures the little things so well. Lean back and enjoy "Scenery" from Rachel Sherman Link: dishsoap-quarterly.com/4-28-26

Dishsoap Quarterly@dishsoapquart· Apr 23

Presenting our wonderful Best New Poets 2026 Nominees! Congratulations to @ashleyvarela.bsky.social and @m-demarco-words.bsky.social! You should go check out these incredible pieces & poets :)

Dishsoap Quarterly@dishsoapquart· Apr 22

Lovely, spiraling, a-little-too-real piece up this week. Put on your tinfoil hat and read "The Girlfriends Of The Propeller Plane Disappearance Victims" from @dallonwrites.bsky.social Link: dishsoap-quarterly.com/4-21-26

Dishsoap Quarterly@dishsoapquart· Apr 15

Lovely doozy of a prose poem up this week. Find a cat, hold it, and read "Juno" by Trinity Richardson together. Link: dishsoap-quarterly.com/4-14-26

Juno by Trinity Richardson:

February was concrete in its application; October was more theoretical. The cashier tells me kittens shouldn’t have cow’s milk. The bottle splatters against the pavement in a way that reminds me I don’t know what I’m doing. I keep her cradled to my chest hoping if she can hear my heartbeat she’ll know what I can’t say. The years wash over me—what feels like one is actually three. This is a confession. The powerline hums and I imagine an angel running through the wires. I imagine taking the train to work. I am afraid I will never know what has become of you. Or worse, what will become of us. I am lonely in a way I’ve never been, because this time there is no reason for it. I go to work. I pick up groceries. I make cheesecake and let her have a small bite. It’s not that good, but it keeps me busy and I like the way the cream tastes before I bake it. She likes it. She is fixated on fire and sometimes I forget to put a candle out of reach and she singes her fur. I always feel guilty. This is a confession.

Dishsoap Quarterly@dishsoapquart· Apr 8

Wonderful, meandering piece that coasts at a nice speed limit groove up for y'all this week. Strap in and enjoy "Things I thought about while driving across the country" from Nick van Osdol Read it on our site: dishsoap-quarterly.com/4-7-26

Nick van Osdol
Things I thought about while driving across the country
What goes on in McDermitt, Nevada. What goes on in Unadilla, Nebraska. What it’d be like to drink four beers in Montezuma, Iowa (I only had two). What it’s like to live in Palestine, Tennessee. You know, considering. What Cape Disappointment in Oregon is like (foggy). Whether New Moscow, Ohio, harbors a statistically significant number of latent communist sympathizers. Who named it that. How many European cities with a population above 50,000 have a namesake somewhere in the United States. How many, beyond, say, Paris, Texas, the modal American could name off the top of their head. Here’s another: Prague. There’s actually a Prague in both Oklahoma and Nebraska. The more you know.

Whether the thought of giving a Turkish hair transplant to a bald eagle has ever occurred to anyone but me. Whether the medium-sized creature I saw scampering over ice and snow near Jeffersonville, Indiana, was a woodchuck or some other similar species. Why hawks so often sit on telephone wires or electrical distribution equipment near roadways. What percentage of Americans know that a prairie is a scientific term for an ecosystem, not just some other amorphous, ambiguous thing. Whether there are personal injury lawyers who write breathtaking poetry. Why there aren’t billboards adorned with poetry. What it would cost to adorn a billboard in a random, out of the way place with a poem of my own. Which of my poems I’d put on it, and why. Whether anyone would stop to take a photograph of it.

How many road fatalities there are on different states’ highways every year (in Nebraska, in 2024, there were 252, as reported by a sign cautioning drivers to drive safely and wear a seat belt). Whether and when we, as a society, will look back in abject horror and astonishment at the level of senseless vehicular violence we once acquiesced to.

How disgusting the modal motel room must be, if you could really see everything. How many people have sex with strangers they meet at motels. How disgusting the modal gas station restroom must be, if you could really see everything. How many people have sex with strangers they meet in gas station restrooms. What the finer intricacies and social norms of sex work at trucker rest stops entail. Whether someone has written a sort of ethnographical or sociological study thereof. How many people actually pray in the truckers’ chapels they sometimes have at some rest stops. Who pays for the chapels. How many people have sex in those truckers' chapels. Whether there’s a term, like the mile high club, for the people who have had sex in them. What a catchy term for that might be.

What the heck I’m out here looking for, doing all this driving, besides for interesting photo opportunities, and a way to pass the time. Whether and when the next unexpectedly wonderful thing will happen to me. When I will see a coyote again. What the larger theories and symbolism of encountering coyotes is across different belief systems and traditions. What it would feel like to be a coyote. How the way they think must differ from how I do. Why coyotes are alone at times and why they travel in packs at others.

Why I’ve decided to push myself to the periphery, both to the physical periphery—into and across America’s hinterlands—and the social periphery, isolating myself, once such an ardent pack animal, now mostly alone in the cab of my truck. Whether the way I and coyotes think might not differ that much. Whether I’ll make it to the next gas station as I cross the notoriously treacherous, six-mile, six percent grade over Dead Man’s Pass in Oregon. Why I missed the last sign saying “no services for [X] miles” before going over the pass. How much effort, time, and money that will cost me if I run out of gas on this pass.

Whether I might meet my demise out on these roads someday. Or today, because this fog is so dense, and the night is so dark, and I can barely see ten feet in front of me. Statistically, in aggregate, it’s more likely with every passing mile, I guess. Though any individual, modal mile isn’t any more or less risky than the last. They’re like a roll of the roulette wheel; no matter how many times it’s landed on red already, that doesn’t make landing on red more likely on the next spin. Whether the modal American understands that about statistics.

Whether I digress on tangents like the one above and drives like this to distract myself from the real stuff, whatever that is. Whether putting another fifteen thousand miles in behind the wheel will put sufficient distance between me and the past to create the space for something new to arise. How remarkable it is how little can happen for so long. How I keep revolving around the same spaces in my interiority under the same sun, moon, and stars.

Whether and when, someday, maybe tonight, I’ll finally run out of gas without making it to a station, or my engine will break down, and my cycles of rumination will cease alongside my car as it grinds to a halt somewhere in a ditch. Whether I might finally stop thinking of you then, too. Whether all this isn’t an attempt to decrease the frequency with which those thoughts return. Then again, given how far I’ve driven and how faithfully my thoughts still return to you, I’m not convinced it will work, nor that that was ever my project. In fact, the further I drive, the longer I go, the less convinced I am that any of this ever ends at all.

Dishsoap Quarterly@dishsoapquart· Apr 1

Poem up this week that's fresh like a breath of outdoor air. Take a moment and read "Slow it Down" from @jackbedell.bsky.social Find it on our site: dishsoap-quarterly.com/3-31-26

Jack B. Bedell
Slow It Down

somehow.
That's what I keep telling myself. And then
the sky burls all pink along the horizon,
then purple, then deep blue to black, and
a nighthawk chases mayflies across
open space, and breath after breath after breath
just escapes into sky.

Dishsoap Quarterly@dishsoapquart· Mar 24

Piece with a whole lot of energy and buckets of heart up for y'all this week. Enjoy "My Father Bought a Generator in 1997 and It Is Still Running" from Oluwanifemi Bakare Link: dishsoap-quarterly.com/3-24-26

The generator's name is Mike. I named it this when I was six because it was loud and it came on at night and it smelled like something working hard, which seemed like a Mike kind of thing. My father thought the name was funny and then forgot he thought it was funny and started calling it Mike too, and then my mother started calling it Mike, and now when NEPA takes the light — which is always, which is every day, which is the basic grammar of existence in this country — someone shouts Mike! from wherever they are in the house and my uncle who is actually named Mike no longer flinches because he has learned that the house has two of him and one of him requires petrol.

Mike the generator is twenty-seven years old. I have friends who are younger than Mike the generator. Mike has survived three house moves, two floods, a thunderstorm that bent the zinc roof of the outdoor shed at a forty-five degree angle, and my father's periodic conviction that he could fix Mike himself, which always ends the same way: my father crouched over Mike's open body with a wrench and a look of deep personal betrayal, and then the mechanic from down the road arriving on his okada and fixing it in eight minutes flat for five hundred naira.

The mechanic is also named Mike. We pay him in cash and sometimes in fried plantain and he has never once commented on the coincidence.

What I am trying to tell you is something about reliability. About the way that in the absence of reliable things, the things that do work become sacred. Mike the generator is sacred. We do not speak harshly in Mike's presence. We do not run Mike dry. We check Mike's oil with the seriousness of a man checking his own pulse. When Mike coughs — and Mike coughs sometimes, a low diesel cough that means the petrol is getting low or the air filter needs cleaning — there is a quality of attention in the house that I have never felt in any other context. Everyone listens. No one moves.

Dishsoap Quarterly@dishsoapquart· Mar 24

Dishsoap Quarterly@dishsoapquart· Mar 18

Funky and wonderful flash up this week. Don't sleep on "The Master: some considerations..." from Simon Firth Link: dishsoap-quarterly.com/3-17-26

Dishsoap Quarterly@dishsoapquart· Mar 13

Dishsoap Quarterly@dishsoapquart· Mar 10

Poem up this week with incredible voice and such lovely, striking imagery. Take a seat, hug a pillow if you need to, and enjoy "Closure" by Ashley Varela Link: dishsoap-quarterly.com/3-10-26

Dishsoap Quarterly@dishsoapquart· Mar 3

Quietly lovely poem up for y'all this week. Take a deep breath and sink into "Still Life With Lithium and Light" from Jeffrey Heath. Link: dishsoap-quarterly.com/3-3-26

Jeffrey Heath
Still Life With Lithium and Light

This morning, the honey caught
in the jar’s rim glows from within,
a cathedral window
rendered in clover and glass.

I watch it tremble
when I reach past,
hand not quite steady.
No grand lurch,
just the quiet rehearsal
of what I might become
by noon.

There are days I am
a house with all the lights on,
radiant, overdrawn.
The mirror won’t meet my eyes.

Emails bloom like algae,
texts left on read.
I pace the rooms
for no reason but momentum.

Then the dimmer switch draws down—
not darkness, exactly,
but a kind of unspeaking,
a silence lowered
over every gesture.

Still,
the coffee cup holds heat,
the shirts tumble dry.

Sometimes I think
the world forgives me
by being indifferent.

The tide doesn’t care
what shape the moon is in,
only that it keeps
its strange appointments.

I’ve come to rest in
the minor key of maintenance:
three white pills
quietly waiting
on the counter.

I’ve learned to say
today I am upright,
as though that
were a kind of prayer
to gravity,
to incandescence,
to the low, gold light
wobbling in the jar.

Dishsoap Quarterly@dishsoapquart· Feb 24

Weird, wonderful, and incredibly human piece up this week. Enjoy "Clearance Aisle" from @softpromises.bsky.social Link: dishsoap-quarterly.com/2-24-26

Dishsoap Quarterly@dishsoapquart· Feb 17

Gorgeous, devastating poem up this week. Sink into the damp, earthy smell of "Nocturne for the Flowers" by @mjyoungwrites.bsky.social Link: dishsoap-quarterly.com/2-17-26

Dishsoap Quarterly@dishsoapquart· Feb 10

Gorgeous piece about cabbages and your place in the world. Lose yourself in "Wake" from @m-demarco-words.bsky.social Link: dishsoap-quarterly.com/2-10-26