The Helix had a nondescript booth at AWP ‘26 and 400 books to give away. Nadab Rana, the publisher at the time, knew our looks did little to draw attention and so devised a plan to attract it in other ways. Mainly, with a sign that said “FREE BOOKS” and a spinny-thing à la Wheel of Fortune, only smaller and on someone’s iPad. If you wanted a copy of our tastefully bound 2026 Annual, all you had to do was spin the wheel and complete a prompt for whatever genre you landed on (Fiction, Non-Fiction, Poetry, or Art) in under a minute.
Attendees were terrified at the prospect of laying bare their souls in 60 seconds, but most soldiered on with surprising enthusiasm. The prompts melted any conversational ice quickly and it was a strange thrill observing other artists’ processes in real time. After three days of setting countdowns, we were left with 127 shocking, sharp, and sensitive works of art. Below are some of our favorites.
There was a bean
Plant/ fetus in a bag/
Water/ Paper towel/ “It’ll
Pop up overnight/ My
Father swears to me/ it
Will/
Nikki Howard, @nikkimaehoward on Instagram
I wish my mother was funny like my father instead she is generous with her time and I suppose with her illness but in acquiring a bit of both I have found my fathers humor has helped me access what my mother still has to give.
James Passaro, @passer.italiae on Instagram.
Of course it says, “Come Over,” & this kind of desperation only happens at 2 am when all the ppl you love are not awake.
Amber Isaac, @amber_isaac_kisses on Instagram.
I did my homework
I cleaned my room, took out the
trash,
I know where I put my passport,
And you don’t need to worry,
And this will never come up
in therapy
Somehow snagged in my memory
Caught like a hangnail
Sarah Paulos
It’s jellyfish season in
the Chesapeake
for my birthday
the water stings and
the welts burn salted
on the shore:
you, watching
Paula Molina Acosta
We often pretend we don’t care about rejections, from Litmags or jobs or that guy down the street with the cool lion tattoo on his forearm, but we do. It makes our face red.
Anonymous
Exhaust pipes like muffled shotguns. White boys talkin’ like they think they know the hood. Unleashed dogs cussin’ each other out. The dam rushing like the freeway cuts through Main Street. Silence at the wrong times. Crickets after 11pm. Dunkin Donuts drive thru always
Nicole Byrne, @nicolebyrnpoet on Instagram
I like to pee in public pools
Asrid Henry
the sun glistens off the lake.
a crane drips its delicate beak
into the still water.
time is passing
but it passes slow.
Sarah Debian
The last time she left-the real last time, not the time after the snow threatened the roads or when blooms were breathing through bark of the trees outside, she left a glass in the sink, lipstick on the rim.
A goodbye that isn’t said.
Robin Seiler
Callista White (@cwunshine IG, YT, Tumblr & Substack) is an aspiring artist-musician-poet-laureate and English major at CCSU. She can most reliably be found making gay zines in Coventry, CT.