FLASH CREATIVE NONFICTION
Census by Jade Hidle
They always knock with questions and promises. They assure me that checking these boxes will only take a few. forward. minutes. But time winds serpentine when so many voices crescendo with each box that asks me to fit inside.…
Yield by Jolene McIlwain
Content Warnings—cesarean section, traumatic birth I could not milk. Was it due to upset levels of oxytocin, prolactin, beta-endorphin? May have been the morphine pump I kept firing like a trigger from my hospital bed in the postlabor/delivery room.…
We Were the Wild Hunt by Myna Chang
Riding the night streets wrapped in our tight young skin, brave-stupid and untamed, magic bursting from our pores like new stars. We met under the sign of the flying horse, the vacant shell of an old gas station, our…
The Pythagorean Theorem: Three Micros by Beth Gilstrap
The Pythagorean Theorem In a photo of her when she was eight months pregnant with me, my mother looks up at the camera. High sun. Her sweaty hair clinging to her jawline. A powder blue top swinging in the…
Kept by Jane Marcellus
Moores lived next door. He worked construction; she stayed home. I don’t know how old he was, but I remember that on her birthday, she turned twenty-two. It seemed old. I was twelve. Moores had a baby, Sidney. Their…
Like Water Flowing by April Bradley
You came and I was longing for you You cooled my heart burning with desire. — Sappho, fr. 48 The days run together now Monday is a Wednesday is a Saturday is a Thursday and most days I…
Little Things I Hug Huge by Sudha Balagopal
The way Appa held the sponge-tipped brush of white shoe polish. The way he ran the snowy viscosity over my scuffed canvas shoes, on top of the laces, around the eyelets. The way he placed my shoes under the…
This Century, the Last by Kristine Langley Mahler
Everyone is coughing behind a mask. The papers warn that the only way to avoid the sweeping sickness is to limit contact, but kids are still playing together in the streets because October in Cloquet, Minnesota is rarely this…
Gun Case by Charlie Geer
Later, after my uncle’s suicide, the gun cabinet would be moved into the attic, but in the early eighties it still stood in the upstairs hall, just outside my bedroom door. An unassuming wooden display case with twin glass-paned…
Antediluvian Animals by Keely O’Connell
The plane lands in the one hour of tilted midday light that January sees daily. I step down onto the icy runway, and my new principal throws my bag into the bed of a red pickup. I climb in…