FLASH FICTION
In the Tearoom by Tara Campbell
I followed Horace’s horns as he walked ahead of me into the tearoom. No matter how many times he visited me, I couldn’t seem to keep my eyes off the silky brown pelt of his neck, or the gentle…
Read More
Buoyancy by Chloe N. Clark
I carry her in my fingertips when I’m far from home. Feeling the heat of her skin if I press thumb and index finger together hard enough. I can trick myself into her softness if I brush my thumb…
Read More
Crop Maze by Gary Fincke
In late August, his son began to insist aliens lived in the cornfields that stretched west from the outskirts of the town they lived in. Not playacting. Not childlike. They needed, his son solemnly said, to be ready for…
Read More
Babushka by Kristen Loesch
The television gives off a low hum, like a bumblebee. Buzz. Buzz. I make the sound too, hoping she will turn away from the screen, but tonight my granddaughter is entranced by the grainy sight of hundreds, thousands of…
Read More
I Scream, You Scream, We All Scream by Chelsea Stickle
There is a town at the edge of things where women hold in their screams. They die young: high blood pressure, heart attacks, strokes, cancer. The girls watch their mothers and grandmothers and aunts play Ring Around the Rosie,…
Read More
Mother, Prey by Tara Isabel Zambrano
I was ten when I discovered I had a womb. It bloomed red. The same year I learned about space. Booster rockets to escape gravity, separated and lost forever. My mother bagged items in a grocery store, Mary, an…
Read More
A Girl Is Grown Like a Poem Is Grown by Abbigail N. Rosewood
A girl is trained first and foremost to satiate and please, to induce salivation from: boys, men, priests, teachers, plumbers, fathers, brothers, dogs, occasionally horses. A girl is trained to survive others’ pleasures, others’ desires, her own saliva…
Read More
In Just Thirty Minutes by Jemimah Wei
7. And They Lived Happily Ever After Every day, her father begins with the end. He draws out their meetings like he is Scheherazade, and Death the king. It’s so transparent, but June simply holds her iPhone out. Recording.…
Read More
The Barbershop by J. Isaiah Holbrook
On the day I turned fourteen my dad told me I was old enough to go to the barbershop on my own, even though every ounce of me wanted to remain hidden behind his broad shoulders and tuck my…
Read More
Everything Is Haram and So Are You; or, What to Do with a Birthday Card by Arshia Simkin
In high school, you know a girl who disappears months before graduation. One day, she stops coming to school, and you never see her again. Usually, you avoid the other Muslim kids—the ones who dance to bhangra music during…
Read More