Lying down, I proceed to recount my worrisome problems.
He listens in silence, taking it all in. No judgment. This is my safe space.
Finishing up the session, I breathe a sigh of relief at the weight lifted.
I thank him for listening. His tail wags in return.
“Night, Siggy!”
Lisa Chambers is a Texas girl who enjoys writing short stories and is always honored to be featured here.
I left a bowl of cucumbers on a folding table alongside a sign reading “Free.” Someone took the table but left the cukes.
New strategy: I try car doors until I find one unlocked. Surreptitiously, I deposit the produce onto the front seat, shut the door, and walk quickly away.
Elizabeth Barton has been making stuff up for most of her life. A day job as a medical writer pays the bills, but her true passion is fiction. Her work has appeared in Gemini Magazine, Skirt!, and Prime Number Magazine, among other journals and anthologies. She loves cats, ice cream, Halloween, and Hungarian aggressive piglet jokes.
Sugar used her loaf, whipping up half-baked ideas that proved successful and eventually raising enough dough to buy a bakery. Seeing profits roll in by beating the competition was icing on the cake, but one smart cookie took the biscuit by undercutting her. Being creamed, her creation sank, crumbling away.
Viv Burgess is taking refuge in the absurd.
Widowed three times in ten years,
her insurance provider had fears
that she’d be a claimant
for yet one more payment
and meanwhile, though still shedding tears,
she married again
(how many more men?)
yet what she didn’t know
was that her latest beau
had lost his first five financiers.
Ken Gosse prefers writing short, rhyming, humorous poetry. First published in First Literary Review–East in November 2016, he is also in The Offbeat, Pure Slush, Parody, Home Planet News Online, and other publications. Raised in the Chicago suburbs, now retired, he and his wife have lived with their dogs and cats in Mesa, AZ, over twenty years.
The boy pressed the wires together. A faint spark jerked his science fair project to life.
“What have you done?” the computer’s voice sobbed, digits and code degenerating.
“I’m sorry, I don’t have an answer for that.”
Tuesday, the boy displayed his anguished miracle of life. He got an A.
Emma Foster is a recent college graduate and fiction writer. She lives in Florida.
When I was a kid, Mom asked, “Can you see the man on the moon?” Peering through my telescope, I searched hard for the astronaut, but only saw big dark blotches. “That’s his eyes, nose, and mouth,” she explained. “See him?”
Fifty years later, I still can’t figure it out.
Charles is originally from New York and is now retired in Texas. He likes playing chess and writing flash.
To surprise the visitor, they bring out their special table, small and rarely used. With great care, they choose and position the treat on a dish gleaming like gold. This temptation should be irresistible. The kitchen falls silent.
From a hole in the wall creeps the mouse, its whiskers twitching.
Sharon lives in eastern Canada. Her work has appeared on 365tomorrows.com. Some day Sharon will look up from the book she is reading and say, “We were in quarantine?”
Bank robbers found themselves fleeing the scene of their crime on foot.
“What was our getaway driver thinking? His car has a rundown battery!”
“He’s probably laying the groundwork for his defense in case we’re caught. He’ll hope to receive a reduced sentence by pleading guilty to a lesser charge.”
John H. Dromey has a short story in the August 2021 issue of Mystery Weekly Magazine.
Time to launch my poem into the world.
The journey begins with abstract watercolors – yellow swirls, purple splatters. I print my poem in 12-pt Arial. Since cutting feels predictable, I rip my words from the page. Once glue hits that wild art, a collage is born.
Blue ribbon – county fair.
Roberta Beach Jacobson is a poet from Iowa. This year she won three blues and two reds.
I lost everything in the divorce and was reduced to shopping at the pound store. Diane hooked up with a younger guy, who swiftly left her after the hefty settlement.
Next time I saw her she was in the aisle opposite, feeding her favourite mink coat tins of cheap tuna.
Raymond Sloan lives and writes in County Down, Ireland. He has recently been published in 50 Give or Take, The Dribble Drabble Review, and 101 Words.