FLASH CREATIVE NONFICTION
What I Want to Know by Alizabeth Worley

One day when I was little, I trespassed the aluminum gate that was next to our little orchard in search of a Frisbee or Nerf ball or some such thing that we had sent flying, accidentally, over the barbed…
Read MoreDrawing My Mother by Jesse Lee Kercheval

My mother’s been dead since 1982, two thirds of my life. Today, I am perched on a stool at a table in the Comics Room at the University of Wisconsin–Madison trying to remember what she looked like so I…
Read MoreConundrum by Will McMillan

Elvis Presley’s warbling on the overhead speakers as Mom and I browse a warm, wood-splashed Barnes & Noble. She wants to buy a puzzle for my nephew in Florida. She turns to me. “Oh god, the day Elvis died?…
Read MoreMary Ruefle Drives Me to the Dentist by Kelly Luce

Peterborough, New Hampshire We get lost and it’s my fault. I think I know a shortcut. Mary knows only the long way around. I have an appointment for a man to look into my mouth and tell me my…
Read MoreWomen’s Hospital by Anne P. Beatty

They are tearing down Women’s Hospital, where I gave birth to my youngest two, a girl against the flame-bright maples of November, a boy in June’s fat sweat. For years, the hospital stands silent, as we drive to the…
Read MorePageant Queen by Ryan Kristopher Jory

This used to be my go-to anecdote when warming up to strangers in bars: the one about my pageant for the repairman. It had been my parents’ first color television, a Zenith workhorse in a wooden case, complete with…
Read MoreThe Word Disorder by Allison Field Bell

I insist I need a corset for under my dress. A wedding. My cousin’s. A purple strapless with a layer of chiffon. My mother is outside the dressing room. She asks if anything fits. I stare down the mirror.…
Read MoreHere and There at the Lake by Janice Vis

Content Warning—sexual assault Along the western shores of Lake Ontario, the water splits the land and pools into a marshy inlet webbed with bike trails and bridges. I walk these paths every day, just wandering about, here and…
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