Tyler Barton

Tyler Barton is a cofounder of Fear No Lit, home of the Submerging Writer Fellowship, Page Match, and Try This: Free Workshops. His collection of flash fiction, The Quiet Part Loud, won the Turnbuckle Chapbook Contest and was published in 2019 by Split Lip Press. Find his stories in Kenyon Review, The Iowa Review, Wigleaf and elsewhere. Find him at @goftyler or tsbarton.com.

TO TEACH by Tyler Barton

Whenever she passes a picture she’s in, Jewell closes her eyes. She laughs. Jewell’s earlobes are drippingly long, and her granddaughter Tanny would like to see them pierced nine, maybe ten times. This makes Jewell laugh. Jewell has been convinced by friends to join the poetry club, because, they say, Jewell is always finishing their sentences with a slant rhyme, and damnit they want the real thing! Jewell laughs at them. The poetry teacher is a bear of a man at a pottery wheel until Jewell is told he is the pottery teacher. Jewell laughs through her apology. The poetry…

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