Happiest of holiday seasons to you all! Welcome to the December 2025 issue of Defenestration, weary travelers. Pull up a chair or a futon, grab your beverage of choice, and stay a while. It’s a weird world out there, and we think you’ll be much more comfortable in here with us. I mean, it’s pretty weird in here, too, but it’s the nonthreatening kind of weird you can introduce to your pets and your parents.
If you thought our last issue was packed to the gills, wait until you take a look at this one! We held on to even more stuff this reading period and decided to publish 12 short stories and 6 poems this month, because after the year we’ve all had, we thought you deserved it. This issue starts with some humor to get you into the holiday spirit, and then we go completely off the rails. We’ve got a genie, at least two dead guys, a demonic cat, a zoo of eldritch horrors, and the Mandaean god of the underworld, not to mention weird relationships, weird restaurants, and a trip down the Oregon Trail. Was any of this stuff on your Christmas list? Probably not, but if Defenestration has given you any ideas, you still have a few days to let Santa know.
Also, the Defenestration inbox is now open to poetry and short story submissions, because we love you and your writing. Seriously. If the number of things we’ve been holding onto each reading period has been any indication, there are more of you out there writing funnier stuff. So let us see those short stories and poems you’ve been working on. The April 2026 issue is just around the corner, and we can’t make it awesome without you. And give us a follow on social media so you don’t miss any of the cool stuff we’re publishing. Our official social media presence in this hellscape is over at Bluesky.
Short Stories:
Sean Cahill, “That Special Time of Year”
Kate Horsley, “What Ephesians Said”
Christy Hartman, “Ben Dover Has Died From Dysentery”
K. G. Kirkland, “My Hot Broker”
Remington Bishop Lamons, “The Coiled Snake”
Joy Kennedy O’Neill, “Build-a-Grudge”
Olly Blackburn, “I Am Your Puppetmaster, Now I’m Going To Critique Your Crudités Selection”
Michael Fowler, “Do Not Resuscitate”
James Rumpel, “Court Night”
Gregory Jones, “An Audience at the Cumberlisheen Regional Historical Society, 19th August 2018, 4:12pm”
Richard Jones, “Leon and the Zubman”
Susannah Shepherd, “Beef Curtains”
Poetry:
Chris Turner, “Sylvia Plath Goes to Whole Foods”
Jeff Cove, Two Poems
Marvin Garbeh Davis, Sr., “A Conversation With My Bath Bucket”
Susan Page Deutsch, “my cat is possessed by a demon”
Brandon Yu, “Hurry Up and Wait”
Downloadable Copy:
Defenestration, December 2025