Our contributors use form, content, and subtext to create work that dissolves boundaries set by traditional publishers.
Pinch and PJO offer an escape hatch from the echo chamber of monetized content. That means no ads—just poetry, nonfiction, fiction, and art. Our print issues come out in the spring and fall, and you’ll always find new work in our online journal
In honor of Chill Subs naming Pinch A 2026 Damn Good Read, we are featuring great work from our online archives
This absolute stunner of a poem uses animal evolutions as a way to reconsider the violence and despair of our current world.
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"I think it means you don’t mind the friction of the living; that sequitur and non-sequitur, nonsense and a great hope can all be together, and the work included in Pinch requires those tensions. "
— Poet Darren C. Demaree on what it means to be pinchy.
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"A sweet spot as a journal that’s super selective but also down-to-earth—a little gritty, a little weird, and I’ve never left an issue and found the work pretentious or over my head."
—Writer Michael Chin on what it means to be pinchy.
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"There’s a hint of mystery, that “pinch” of something extra you can’t quite name. It leaves you savoring the unknown. You don’t know exactly what the flavor is, but you want more."
—Poet Kelsey D. Mahaffey on what it means to be pinchy.
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"Pinchy poems trust that strangeness will carry them through. They aren’t afraid to stumble toward meaning, or to let the image lead the logic. A Pinchy poem keeps its nerve when the world starts to tilt."
—Poet Kerry James Evans on what it means to be pinchy.