Editor’s Page for Yellow Mama Issue #84 – Feb. 15, 2021

Happy Valentine’s Day, you guys!

Yeah, I know. What’s happy about it? In the midst of this never-ending pandemic, and lockdown for so many, who feels like celebrating love? Too many are alone, and miserable, not even allowed to hug, much less . . . And some locked up with spouses might want to hack up . . . Well, you get my drift.

At Yellow Mama we’re trying harder than ever to provide escapism from the real-life nightmares we face every day. As always, our this Valentine’s Day issue features chilling stories and poems about heartbreak, revenge, and other fun stuff.

Hillary Lyon’s “Hearts in Retrograde” gives us a psychotic surgeon obsessed with a horror film fanatic. “Her Passion,” by Kenneth James Crist, ends with retribution for a mobster’s suicide. In Roy Dorman’s “The Right Tool for the Job,” a homicidal waitress comes to the aid of a damsel-in-distress. Jan Christensen’s “The Map” leads to a “kidnapped” gigolo.

Other disturbing “love stories” include Janet Hartwell’s “Lisa’s Revenge,” where a “payback” website aids a guy whose coworker rejected him, and Matthew Copes’s “Fat Trucker, Hot Wife,” in which a neglected husband force-feeds his wife for cheating on him.

For something really different, check out “Ruby in the Red Hoodie,” Ryan Priest’s urban take-off on “Little Red Riding Hood,” and K. Marvin Bruce’s tongue-in-cheek “Between the Sheets,” in which sheets mysteriously change themselves. And for all you cat lovers, M. A. De Neve’s “Gatophobia” will make you glad whose side you’re on!

Our V-Day “Poetry Extravaganza” includes twenty-eight poems, featuring touching works from Meg Baird and Luis Cuauhtémoc Berriozábal, down-and-dirty poems from Bradford Middleton. Also check out C. W. Blackwell’s noirish “Daybreak Over I-15,” Otto Burnwell’s torturous “Scar,” and awesome poems by  the Nielsens (ayaz daryl and his wife Judith Partin), and others.

Full-length and flash fiction stories (and some poems) are individually illustrated by our gifted artists: Kevin Duncan, Hillary Lyon, Noelle Richardson, Steve Cartwright, Ann Marie Rhiel, Henry Stanton, Michael D. Davis, A. F. Knott, Keith Coates Walker, Darren Blanch, Sean O’Keefe, Cynthia Fawcett, Londyyn Thomas, John Thompson, Terry Butler, W. Jack Savage, Mike Knowles, Jack Real and Lonni Lees.

And let’s hear it for Ann Marie Rhiel’s scintillating V-Day 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 revised Archives, to catch recent stories or poems by your favorite writers you might’ve missed.

 Most of all, thanks for reading!