Despite the disasters, both personal and professional, that characterized Madame Isabel Kosinski’s days, she found renewal in the half hour when she was alone, standing by her Chevy Caprice in Rosemont Park, having two cigarettes and a cup of coffee, every day, rain or shine, surveying the netless tennis courts.
Paul Lamar lives with his husband, Mark, in Albany, NY, where–in better times–he teaches, reviews theater for a local paper, and conducts a chorus. Alas!
Website featuring miniature stories currently seeking apathetic readers. No skills required. No pay, no benefits, no rewards. Lack of enjoyment contingent on how distracted and unmindful you might be. Readers who take their time and pay considerable attention need not apply. Same with those who may wish to contemplate allegory.
Bob Thurber is the author of six books. Regarded as a master of Flash and Micro Fiction, his work has appeared in Esquire and other magazines, been anthologized 60 times, received a long list of awards, and been utilized in schools and colleges throughout the world. He resides in Massachusetts. Visit his website at BobThurber.net.
The story of the week for August 17 to 21 is…
Anti-Racism Haiku by Dan Brook
The school reopened. Ava approached her first grade classroom in her iron suit, double pair of blue hospital gloves, face shield that extended to her waist and multi-layered mask that curved around her small face.
Her mother said Ava was lucky. In many states, students were required to stay home.
Eliza Mimski wrote this story.
This is what she hated most. Breaks.
Tea breaks, lunch breaks, unfamiliar faces, groups of chatting strangers, noise everywhere.
While she tried to hide in plain sight, she wondered how they did it. The others.
Was it too soon to go to the loo, again?
She wished she was invisible.
C. Attleya lives in the beautiful garden of England. Her love for reading and writing is eclipsed only by her aversion of gatherings of noisy strangers.
The paper cranes are folded from receipts for doctors, buses and climate magazines, from my five year old’s drawings of our family, prescriptions for her meds, sweet wrappers and cigarette packets, and hang now to be counted, over her hospital bed, one more for every day since she didn’t die.
Rosaleen Lynch, an Irish community worker and writer in the East End of London, pursues stories whether conversational, literary or performed and believes in the power of words to make the world a better place.
Everyone else is a newcomer. He lived here before they built the road. Before the road gave rise to the houses. Before the houses necessitated the church and the pub. But now they need a school and an old tree can’t be allowed to stand in the way of progress.
Ben lives in Dallas where he is viewed with tolerant amusement by his wife and two small boys. He has just started writing micro fiction and hopes to get better at it.
The crack of bat on ball rings in Danny’s ears. He sprints toward first base but doesn’t watch the ball soar over the fence. His teammates yell; evidence enough for him.
As he rounds third base, he glances at the space in the bleachers where his father used to sit.
Stephen Pisani is an MFA candidate in fiction at Adelphi University. He spends his spare time working at a golf course, where he watches people chase a little ball around a big patch of grass.
Icequake from the asteroid hit on Japan. The sky blotted out by dust; snow blackened; crevasses impassable. Communications dead for the past six months.
We celebrate Christmas: dinner is protein biscuits crumbled in water and our remaining brandy. The brandy warms us; later, the cold will numb us to sleep.
Mantz Yorke is a former science teacher and researcher living in Manchester, England. His poems and prose have appeared in print magazines, anthologies, and e-magazines in the UK, Ireland, The Netherlands, Israel, Canada, the US, Australia, and Hong Kong. His poetry collection Voyager is published by Dempsey & Windle.
Stopping was easy. Stay at home, clean the closets, read a book. But the weeks and months run on, and staying home has become the new normal. It is more difficult to restart. When? How? Where? And when everyone stopped calling to say, “Are you ok?”, that’s when I wasn’t.
Eileen was intending to write her way through retirement; that has been supplanted by the need to write her way through the pandemic to once again reach retirement.