FLASH FICTION
Photo of a Nine-Year-Old Girl Smoking by Kat Moore
Inspired from a photo by Mary Ellen Mark Lisa’s sitting in the baby pool with chubby Annie even though they aren’t babies anymore. The plastic green pool is in the driveway of Annie’s Aunt Jean’s house. Lisa is nine…
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The Tired Day by Benjamin Woodard
Nobody at the Powers That Be figured out the source. But something happened. And below, the town experienced a tired day. Everyone woke. Carol showered. Alfred ate breakfast. Sandra contemplated suicide. Others kissed spouses or parents or pets or…
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In Memoriam by Kyra Kondis
I can’t wear my black V-neck to take yearbook pictures today because I wore it to a funeral last Friday, so now it’s my funeral shirt. Which is crazy, I know, because it’s not like I’ve worn it to…
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Sacred and Profane by Melissa Goode
Our hotel in Rome is a former monastery, darkly shadowed, stone. There is no elevator. He hauls both of our suitcases up three flights of stairs. I wait for him at the top. His muscles flex, his forehead creases.…
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After Dinner / Girls in the Woods by Jacqueline Doyle
After Dinner A woman sits at a kitchen table, sipping chamomile tea and reading a book. The dishes have been rinsed, the counters and sink cleared, the dishwasher hums. Outside the window over the sink, the night is…
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How Loudly We Dead Howl by Sarah Arantza Amador
The approach is by boat—the passage is narrow. Our steamer slipped through the still, dark water. Us passengers, bewitched, red-eyed and scorch-lunged refugees from the burning south, reached out to touch the icy granite, scraped clean as a birth…
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I Married This by Meg Pokrass
My husband, Gordon, looked as though he’d found religion—as though he’d never tasted real food before this beef stew meal at Angie and Ron’s. He appeared to be sucking his teeth after every bite, taking his time, thinking about…
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What Your Mother Thinks While Making the Bed by Megan Pillow Davis
The bed pulling away from the wall makes a sound like (the front door opening downstairs) the unfolding of a hinge, that sharp metal groan as the legs drag across the wood. It’s the only way to get to…
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Five A.M. Ravens by Natalie Teal McAllister
Once you could sleep. At five a.m. the ravens are a collective of voices, neighbors in the apartment next door. You wake to their arguments or their lovemaking or their overwrought drunken discussions but there is no wall to…
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The Skins by Tyler Barton
The producer wanted wet hands. Sweaty and tense to where the sound really snapped. So my team detained the clappers in an overwarm anteroom beside the recording booth. Made them wait. Clammy, anxious, beating on the soundproof door: We’re…
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