Flash

SECOND HONEYMOON by Michael Czyzniejewski

August 30, 2021

I met my wife on our honeymoons, the ones we were taking with other people. Both of us went parasailing when our newlywed spouses were too afraid. A storm came in just as we lifted into the air and we were caught in its path. Our lines got detached, sending us parasailing into the horizon. We woke up on a deserted island. Two months later, firmly in love, we were found by crab photographers. Coincidentally, our spouses back home fell in love, too, assuming we were dead. At the press conference after our rescue, the four of us laughed about

BEAN HEADS by Mila Jaroniec

August 26, 2021

In the little free library was a hand-sewn chapbook with poems from all the poets who had read at Bean Heads. The open mic was every Friday and gray men would shuffle in to crinkle coffee-stained pages at the microphone. It was an Event. There were gasps and snaps and silence. I didn’t understand it. Here I was, fifteen years old and crafting big papers about The Count of Monte Cristo, and someone had written this: Amoral Amnesty A parliament of stalking butlers Deafening silence over the telephone The Pope flows like running water Calligraphy makes the Queen go blind.

OGOPOGO LIVES by Sheldon Birnie

August 25, 2021

It was Canada Day by the big lake and everyone was right fucked up. After the fireworks show on the beach wrapped up, the crowd took to the streets. Things were getting messy. Drunk girls held on to each other, hiking miniskirts up around hips to piss off the wharf into the black waters below, howling. One fell in, came up splashing, laughing. Muscle dummies squared off in the road, blocking traffic, letting the blood out of each other. Strip clubs up and down the lakeshore were packed, dancers raking in the money hand over fist. A police helicopter circled

SPLENDOR IN THE CORN by Kate Jayroe

August 24, 2021

I am such a hot, sad wraith. Open-mouthed, I sob in the park on quarantine walks. I listen to ‘Til Tuesday. I ramble as far as possible from every other person there. Fuck the Frisbee golfers. I’m processing the three most harrowing break ups of my life. I’d been with none of the people involved, save myself. One is the man I’d been sleeping with. A hot, aging punk with a scarred nipple from self-piercing as a teen in his parents’ kitchen. I liked to squeeze the scar tissue in bed between two digits, other hand busy down

THE MASTIFF by Max Halper

August 23, 2021

“My life is over,” I said in the dark my first night inside. A full minute passed. “Shut the fuck up,” said my cellmate. A month later I hanged myself. I did it from the bunk with my undershirt. There was no pain. My cellmate slept through it. When he woke up I was so dead I seemed more a facet of the cell than an occupant. He looked at me and nodded, as if my body imparted some keen insight. He determined I had managed to escape, had bored a tunnel through the only wall in the prison they

BOY RACER WILL HAVE HIS REVENGE by Brendan Sheehan

August 19, 2021

Boy Racer fell from the sky, fully formed. He was born a lanky sixteen-year-old with perfect skin and a tricked-out car. Boy Racer couldn’t remember anything before 1996, the start of his junior year at Santa Carla High. He couldn’t remember buying his car—a purple Maxima with a super wing spoiler, suicide doors, and lime-green underglow. He couldn’t remember choosing his wardrobe—a closet full of wifebeater shirts, Cuban link chains, and Adidas 3-Stripes pants. He couldn’t make sense of why he always smelled of Cool Water cologne or why even after a shower his Caesar cut was still shellacked with

SIMON & SCHUSTER by Marc Tweed

August 18, 2021

Bill Gunderson was more than a coworker to me, in fact I’d gone kayaking with Bill maybe three weeks before they chucked his severed head off the 29th floor of the Pemberton Building. He was our top seller the year before that ordeal, three out of four quarters. The guy was a data security sales machine. It was a windy evening this happened. I remember his head making a sound like an empty coconut when it hit the concrete and bounced twenty feet in the air, coming to rest directly in front of my girlfriend, Veraldine, whose exquisite face elongated

THE WHALES WILL THANK HER by Julie Chen

August 17, 2021

She seeks to save water when using the toilet. If it’s yellow, let it mellow, though she knows that can lead to malodor, so she makes sure to flush before she goes out or to bed, or if she hasn’t hydrated well and her pee is a deep autumnal mustard, like her favorite sweater. When she goes grocery shopping, she uses tote bags, of which she has many. The real challenge is to also bring those plastic bags in which one weighs produce. One can avoid them with fruits like bananas, whose peels are thick enough to shield from germs,

TO RIDER STRONG by Jade Hidle

August 16, 2021

You won’t remember me. It’s been twenty-nine years since my last letter. I always did my homework alone, because my mother didn’t know enough English to help. I always finished it early, so that I could watch you on Boy Meets World. Your gapped-tooth mischievous grin, your chokers, your hair-flipping. I knew bad boys at school, but we didn’t have any like you. You were a white bad boy, which is a good bad boy. And you made being wounded look so cool. I thought you would understand and that you would then elevate me to your level, turn my

STRAWBERRY by James Jacob Hatfield

August 12, 2021

It’s not because I have Alzheimer’s, I’ve always been like this. The most fun I get nowadays is when I find things I lost. But I do remember her journal is underneath the couch. Before I’d never think to read her journal. But now that she’s gone I’d better retrieve it or else I’d forget about her completely. Reaching under our couch is like sticking your hand into that ominous hole in the wall of a cave. Feeling for a lever. Pencils. Dog toys. Remotes. Items that are sorely missed only when they’re needed. And are treasured only for the