Mistake House 2026
Issue 12, May 2026
Current Staff
Editor-in-Chief, Zoe Houseman Zoe Houseman is a Junior majoring in Creative Writing. When she isn’t playing soccer, she’s either spending time with her brothers, drinking a chai and reading a book, outdoors hiking, or watching movies. This is her first year with Mistake House and her favorite part of being Editor-in-Chief has been working with her fellow editors and seeing the creativity in every …
From the Editor’s Desk
Welcome to Issue 12 of Mistake House Magazine. Our name is a fond nod to Bernard Maybeck’s experimental structure on our Principia College campus, a small “house” that was built to test materials and architectural techniques for the College buildings. Mistake House Magazine channels Maybeck’s process by publishing writing and art that is experimental, explorative, and …
Saúl Hernández
What Lies Under Blue I spend a whole summer swimming in bluebonnet fields. Every time a breeze dances through each stem, the field speaks. Except I don’t know where the sentence begins or ends. …
Saúl Hernández
Mistake House Magazine: Images of water recur throughout How to Kill a Goat and Other Monsters, often in dream sequences. Early on, these images feel surreal and resistant to containment, as in “The Boy Who Lives in Dreams,” where the speaker tries to “nail water to the wall,” only for it to slip away. But as the …
Saúl Hernández
In an interview with Bryan Washington for A24 Podcast, “All The Ways to Be,” Ocean Vuong said, “Being queer saved my life. Often we see queerness as deprivation. But when I look at my life, I saw that queerness demanded an alternative innovation from me. I had to make alternative routes; it made me curious; it made me ask, ‘Is this enough …
Saúl Hernández
Saúl Hernández is a queer writer who was raised by former undocumented parents. He has an MFA in Creative Writing from The University of Texas at El Paso. Saúl is a 2025 National Endowment for the Arts Fellow. His debut poetry collection, How to Kill a Goat & Other Monsters, is a 2025 Lambda Literary …
Ron Young
Mistake House Magazine: We’d like to begin with a question about materials and memory. In an interview with St. Louis Public Radio, you talk about riding through historically Black neighborhoods in North St. Louis, collecting bricks, burnt wood, and rusted metal from streets and neglected buildings, and reassembling these materials into sculptural forms in your studio. You point to …
Ron Young
Lost and Found The Art of Ronald Young I scrounge the alleys, boarded-up buildings and vacant lots of the city like an archeologist searching for buried treasure. The ghosts of a once thriving community have a story to tell, before all memory of their existence is erased. A treasure-trove of materials left behind for me to collect that help tell …
Ron Young
Ron Young
Ronald (Ron) Young, an artist and educator based in St. Louis, Missouri, channels stark realities of social, political, and cultural decay into his studio practice. His mixed-media sculptures are born from the remnants of a crumbling urban environment—weathered doors, rusted tools, decaying wood molding, and abandoned bricks, among other discarded objects. These materials, once symbols …
Mornings with the Canada Geese
Issue 12 Editor’s Prize for Poetry Their long necks dip when I toss the last of my frozen peas. Gray bodies slick with Midwest morning rain, slowing their insatiable wandering as they bend to gorge on the worms beneath the mud. But always, there’s one who stands still, her attention on me, her eyes cool as the first morning to hold a …
The Lingering Moment
Before the sun sets, the prairie grass lights up as if it’s going to burn forever. I wish it would burn forever. I wish the soft, orange-pink hue would stay past this time. The warmth of the sun seeps into each blade while the fire continues to burn. Burning brighter as the moment lingers, I know that it will …
SHOEGAZERS
You say it’s easy when it’s faster I still can’t guess what you’re after – Catherine Wheel, “Black Metallic” We get everything we want, but— this day (so many days joined together) has become a chorus of swirling pinks. Somewhere, it’s July 4th, and Paige dances underneath a breaking canopy of fireworks; she spins like a roman candle and the light from …
THAT’S ENTERTAINMENT
Catching a flying knee, courtesy of a drunk-ass teen diving in peace punk gear, concussion stars and Crass logo fusing as one. Sobbing heavy into a street dog’s fur. Coaxing a pigeon onto your shoulder with an orange, back against brick newly spraypainted, where Nicky fell out, dopesick. Observing the pregnant and tumbling wave of rats pulse and contract in the dark zone …
did jesus have a comfort food?
white rice noodle veins–or bone fiber. unsure anatomy. not-cilantro, but soap for not-pho soup slurping not-salt, but still briny eyes stomach fat rendered down to chicken broth boiling, licking lard-sheathed lips you need it to hold flavor. shredded flesh frayed with the grain stirred in a sriracha sanguine. clucking thing, forgive my trespasses give me strength to forgive those who trespass against me. what is …
Getting up for Seconds
Within is without, without is not within, brine the tit, mysterious bird feathers the bed a gust emerges black floaters tersed in unknown billow as the cat licks maple …
Photography
In our sixth annual photography section, we’re pleased to include the work of five student photographers.
Naked Vampire Wearing a Feather Shawl
Naked Vampire Wearing a Veil
Naked Vampire Wearing a Painter’s Apron
third place
it was a cold midwestern night when the pastor of the town wondered about your departure. the fragment of your life you let me know didn’t allow me to answer. the agony almost made bearable by tasteless jokes and a cigarette. your unwanted hand made me remember the feeling of a ritual salvation. despair and celebration, the floor misses the sole of your shoes and even when seasons are still the same the bell at the door reminds me the hours to come will bring pain. the mornings are as cold as the expression on your face. my legs took me to that place once and when i did not have them anymore, …
Haunted Presence
The Art of Returning
I Could Not Sleep
Somewhere In Between
Issue 12 Editor’s Prize for Photography
Where Laughter Caught Wind
Ms. Lemmo is what you’ll call me. Say it, I want you to say it.
What Happens to Girls Who Think
I want to write the way I think Overwhelming phrases marrying Metaphoric language The suffocating urge to make sense Of why I stay up at night craving A cigarette when I’ve never smoked When he told me I looked chic was it Only because I was craving hunger even When I knew it would kill me I …
Wind Up Doll
You insert a large metal key into the hole in my back, twist until my smile clicks into place— hand lifting, hips turning, steps measured to your liking. I can only stop when you do, suffocating in a plastic-coated box, holding my position, upright, chin tilted, eyes fixed forward, until you permit me to move again. Rust gathers quietly in the …
Beginner
Beginner is a dirty word So I flirt with it We tease and toss Wrestle in the folds of my bed until the dawn hours Drenched in sweat Sticky like the honey nectar the bees labor for We hide in secret because I am ashamed She has seen too much of my tender soul And of my endless mistakes My life’s …
A Rich Plum Wine
A woman dances free, Lust lingering On her tongue. Purple skirt whirls …
A Snail’s Tell-All Personal Account of the Incredible and Abundant Luxuries of Captive Living
Issue 12 Editor’s Prize for Fiction I am lying in the heady decomp-heat of some assorted grocery-store vegetables that have been delicately laid out for me weeks before. I am sleeping in the oil-slick dirt. There’s something I’m infected with. An itch that originated from somewhere underneath me, coming to rest under my shell, wherever …
Daughter of the Mill
In the harsh lands of the west, where sand and dust polish the stone, the country folk still remember Garina’s legend and her father, the terrible giant Gondol. Though few elders agree on the ending, all say it happened many winters ago when men lived more frightened than in our days. The villagers hid, sitting …
Maggie Elliot
If you want the truth, I really don’t think Maggie Elliot was trying to kill herself. Or she was, but only in order to do something else entirely. Something a lot less tortured. And I know that’s hard to believe and all, seeing as she was a beautiful lady, slipping naked and weeping out of …
Train Ride on a Wednesday Evening
The hard plastic seat seeped cold through Ainsley’s thin sweatpants as she waited on the train station bench. She should have dressed warmer, but the sun had been deceivingly bright that morning. Barely a few snowflakes had fallen all winter, but there she was, pulling the faux fur neckline of her parka tight around her …
A Sound Perspective
It was morning. She felt the chill of the wind come in through her cracked window; it was colder than usual for fall’s sweet hum. In bed, her blankets burritoed around her body, leaving only her face and mouth exposed. Mittens, her 12-year-old cat, lay at her feet. The air crackled; she could see her breath cloud around her face as …