The story of the week for November 27 to December 1 is…
Keeping Up Appearances by Lynn Kozlowski
All posts by Tim
MARY HARWELL SAYLER: Left Behind
Left-handed people often get left out. Like, when I attended a poetry class at the local university, I saw rows of right-armed desks, but none to accommodate me. Oddly enough, in that particular class, many poets were left-handed, which just goes to show, you can’t be right all the time.
Mary Harwell Sayler wrote this story.
LYNN KOZLOWSKI: Keeping Up Appearances
The old man can no longer drive this whole trip himself, starting predawn without stop to make his brother’s place by lunch. His wife leaves late, drives slow, takes breaks. But she gives him the last mile, so he might seem again, on arrival, something of what he was before.
Lynn Kozlowski’s writing has appeared in such places as The Quarterly, The Malahat Review, pif magazine, Poetry Breakfast, and failbetter.com. He has a volume of short pieces, Historical Markers.
ANGELA CARLTON: Christmas in the ER
It’s Christmas in the ER. Mother’s got infected wounds.
The hospital has beautiful wreaths, staff members’ wearing reindeer headbands for cheer. Next door, a woman’s crying-laughing. When I exit, I hear, “She’s coming off heroin.”
The woman looks up, sees my blonde hair, and whispers, “Oh, you’re my Christmas Angel.”
Angela Carlton lives outside Atlanta with her husband and two daughters. Her fiction has been published in EWR, Every Day Fiction, Pedestal Magazine, Long Story Short, 6S, High Noon and Friday Flash Fiction among others. Her story “Swallowed,” was nominated for the Pushcart Prize in 2023.
JOHANNES SPRINGENSEISS: Arrival
TRAIL END!
Unexpected; isn’t the path supposed to go on for another mile? I look at the map, check my compass and turn back.
Soon I come across another sign.
DANGER ZONE: QUICKSAND!
Perplexed; didn’t I just hike up this way?
I sit down on a log.
This is home.
Johannes Springenseiss is a world citizen and a raconteur. He mostly writes speculative fiction and creative essays.
JEFF FRIEDMAN: Another Orpheus
“Isn’t this cosy?” I said.
“We’re in a box,” she answered. “I want out.”
The sun shone in the window, and a rainbow fell across her face. Over the years, our house had grown small. I pulled out a match stick and played my tiny violin. Even the dust listened.
Jeff Friedman’s tenth book, Ashes in Paradise, has recently been published by Madhat Press. Friedman’s poems and mini stories have appeared in American Poetry Review, Poetry, Poetry International, New England Review, Flash Fiction Funny, Best Microfiction 2021 and 2022, 2023, and The New Republic. He has received an NEA Literature Translation Fellowship and numerous other awards. Meg Pokrass and Friedman’s co-written collection of microfiction, The House of Grana Padano, was published by Pelekinesis Press in 2022
FC MALBY: She Laughs with the Breeze
She laughs with the breeze
as it sweeps through the town,
men — liquor-fueled and free
with their words — lean on the
bar as the music plays, the
streets are alive with the full
moon and the festivities. Trees
outside rattle and shake, the
town thrums and the night is
young.
FC Malby is a contributor to anthologies published by Reflex Press, Unthology, and Litro. Her collection, My Brother was a Kangaroo, includes stories published in various journals worldwide. See more at fcmalby.com
JOSEPH LEWIS: Older Brother Going Through a Divorce
I’m picking at the callous on my hands while he talks. He says he’s been crying for the last few nights. He tells me he’s missed work. I dig deeper with my nails, peeling off thick layers of white crust, as if I’ll find helpful words underneath the hardened skin.
Joseph Lewis is a monkey at a typewriter who occasionally produces work coherent enough to be considered fiction. Currently he is making peanuts while he studies and works as an online English language and literature tutor.
GENE NEWMAN: Cocktails for Two Hundred
We’re freezing in our slit trenches waiting
for the menacing Migs to fly back to North Korea.
Another sleepless night for the Comm. Squadron.
Later I will provide a comforting elixir, a fifth of something soothing,
secretly added to our 50-gallon medicated water bag
when TopKick McGlumphy is prowling elsewhere.
Gene Newman was a USAF cryptologist during the Korean War and is a retired engineer and journalist, including stringing for the N.Y. Times and being a crossword puzzle creator for the New York Times and USA Today.
Note from the author: I was a cryptographer at a Kunsan, Korea USAF base during the Korean War. My buddy Bob and I did improve the Lister bag’s contents with a 5th or two of Kentucky’s finest one dark night. Morale improved noticeably the next day, but we denied involvement!
CHELSEA UTECHT: Monster
Mother read that story with the crumbs and the kids. So when she sent me into the forest, she gave me some bread.
I’d have crumbled it if there were witches, or bartered with wolves. But because my monster was the one sending me out, I ate it up instead.
Chelsea Utecht is an American abroad in Tbilisi, Georgia where she teaches literature and writing. A recent participant in the renowned Iowa Writers’ Workshop, she has been previously published in Fifty-Word Stories and her work is forthcoming in Shooter Literary Magazine.