Editor’s Page for Yellow Mama Issue #109–Apr. 15, 2025

Happy Easter, all!

At last, it’s spring. Warm weather, and OK, warm rain. Cherry blossoms on the tree outside my house. Plus, Easter! It’s time for rebirth, all over. OK, there’s lots of bad stuff going on out there. But there’s good stuff, too. Even great.

Like Bernice and Joe’s wedding! Yup, on March 22, Yellow Mama’s assistant art director, Bernice Holtzman, married fellow artist Joseph Richkus. They didn’t meet at YM, but how cool is that? Congratulations, you guys! We love you both and wish you much happiness.

In this issue, noir rules. In Louis Kummerer’s tale, “The Money Follows” once Robo discovers what he’s good at. In Anthony Lukas’s “Death of Mr. Putnam,” a blonde dame greets our guy with a gun. Robert Petyo’s “The Bridge” features two crooks who plot a fake suicide. In Zvi A. Sesling’s “The Color Red,” the narrator is obsessed with redheads. And in “Clink,” by flash fiction god Paul Beckman, Louie the Lip and Jilly end their romance with a bang.

Other awesome stories include Shari Held’s honey-sweet “A Stinging Rebuke” and John A. Tures’s “Burying the Lede,” in which a reporter allows herself to be kidnapped by terrorists. Also check out Kenneth James Crist’s “The Dream Machine,” in which a wife is plagued by nightmares that her husband is not who he seems to be. (Or is he?)

Our poetry lineup welcomes back Brian Rosenberger (We missed you, man!), one of YM’s greats. Also check out fine poems by J.J. Campbell, Richard LeDue, Dr. Mel Waldman, and others.

Full-length and flash fiction stories (and some poems) are individually illustrated by our gifted artists: Bernice Holtzman, Joseph Richkus, John Sowder, Kevin Duncan, Hillary Lyon, J. Elliott, Sean O’Keefe, Sophia Wiseman-Rose, Luis Cuauhtémoc Berriozábal, Steve Cartwright, Michael D. Davis, Kelly Moyer, Darren Blanch, Cynthia Fawcett, Henry Stanton, April Lafleur, W. Jack Savage, and our newest artists Katherine Sikes, Adrienne Black, and Zachary Wilhide.

And check out Hillary Lyon’s “Death to Winter!” cover.

If you want to submit full-length fiction, flash fiction, or poetry, check out our guidelines page.

Also, please sign our guestbook! If you have comments about Yellow Mama or any stories or poems we publish, you may leave comments there.

And check out our Archives I–III to catch recent stories or poems by your favorite writers you might’ve missed.

 And thanks for reading!