Previous Competitions

The Quarterly Contest

Summer 2026 (Motivation)

Prompt: What pushes you to get up every morning and fight your battles? Our motivations are often just as revealing as our actions. Mad Woman Publishing invites you to write a short story or poem exploring the fire that burns inside of you.

Winner: Hridoy Kundu

The Market for Morning

At six, the market opened under rain,
its awnings stitched from yesterday’s goodbyes.
They sold small reasons bottled against pain,
with handwritten instructions, weights, and lies.

Ambition burned in jars of molten gold.
Revenge came cheap and tasted faintly sweet.
The courage aisle was nearly always sold
before the church bells startled every street.

I bought one dram of spite to face the day.
The clerk said, “Shake it twice before you rise.”
It kept my knees from folding on the way
to work, but left a darkness in my eyes.

My mother shopped there every Monday dawn,
though she had neither work nor war to win.
She hummed off-key and kept her apron on,
then hid the vial where winter coats had been.

“What keeps you going?” I would sometimes ask.
She’d smile as though the question had no teeth.
“Some mornings simply come with such a task.”
Then tuck the silver deeper underneath.

One March, she failed to rise before the rain.
The kettle clicked and cooled beside her chair.
The market bell kept ringing down the lane.
I called her name and heard it nowhere there.

We buried her beneath a crooked pine.
The preacher praised her patience, soft and brave.
I thought of all the bottles in a line,
each bright enough to purchase one more day.

That night I searched the pockets of her coat
and found the silver vial, cold and clear.
A paper label circled round its throat:
FOR WHEN HE ASKS WHAT KEPT ME HERE.

I broke the seal. No fire touched my tongue.
No choir rose. No sudden courage came.
Instead, I heard my own voice, small and young,
still learning how to spell my mother’s name.

Then every Monday opened in my head:
her coins, her shaking hands, the market floor.
Each vial bought her passage out of bed
to wake beside me for one morning more.

The final drop lay trembling, clear and slight.
I held it like a planet, cold and small.
Outside, the market flickered into light.
Inside, I understood the price of all.

At six, beneath the rain, I joined the queue.
The clerk looked up. “What motive will you take?”
I set the empty bottle into view.
“My mother’s. I have mornings left to make.”