Flash

THE LUCKY ONE by Pamela Painter

December 6, 2023

She walks with purpose over to a gangly tree and dumps our mother’s ashes at its base, then smears them around with the toe of her purple sneaker. Then she turns to face me as if to see if I’m going to object.

MY FRIEND LOUISE… by Susannah Felts

November 29, 2023

Amber beads, electric blue billowing, jasmine. Here comes Louise, here she comes, into the kitchen.

FARM HANDS by Mark Abdon

November 15, 2023

The rocking horse was hideous, though. It was the eyes. Wide open and vacant, set too high on that giant head. The foot-pegs had snapped off on Black Friday.

DOCTOR’S VISIT by Paula Gil-Ordoñez Gomez

November 8, 2023

While we wait for the fruits of deliberation, my mother asks me to get personal. I tell her I’ve been nightmaring about getting kidnapped and beating the captor up.

POWER OUTAGE by Zsófia Czakó; translated by Marietta Morry and Walter Burgess

November 1, 2023

She looked at that tree as if it were a murderer, and with hate in her eyes told me that in her dreams every night she sneaks over with an axe and chops it down with two strokes.

SPILL by Christina D’Antoni

October 25, 2023

At night I dreamt of pelicans strung up in the oaks by their beaks, choked in Spanish moss, the storm’s winds blowing them down. Cars sliding through gasoline, smearing their bodies into the street.

WHATEVER by Emma Estridge

October 18, 2023

She emails me a PDF of instructions. The first is Learn to sit quietly with yourself. I feel that we have already skipped a step.

HEATERS by Brett Biebel

October 11, 2023

There was a fence, and there were holes in it, and she looked like a lizard sometimes, a shitload of speed coiled inside some slender frame.

THREE by Amanda Gersh

October 4, 2023

I used to say I couldn’t travel because I didn’t have the time, but now I’ve got all the time in the world because the world isn’t using it.

THE CARRIAGE ROOM by Mary Ann McGuigan

September 20, 2023

He returned home silent, even more sullen. I asked him about Mrs. Marra once, but he looked at me as if all memories, good or bad, had been erased.