I hold my tongue as I listen to my mother spin
more festive plans. No point reminding her
that she hasn’t decorated the house for years,
that no one expects a woman with a walker
to prepare a party for twenty,
that this is her last winter in her home.
Jennifer L Freed is author of When Light Shifts, a memoir-in-poems about the aftermath of her mother’s cerebral hemorrhage. Please visit jfreed.weebly.com to learn more.
The drapes of dusk
descend across the forest.
Four thin daggers of sunset
pierce the dark fabric,
shining through tightly woven wood.
Bright needles, burning orange
and red, glowing hotly.
The last shouts of daylight
in the slumbering wildwood,
quietly succumbing beneath
the gloaming’s weight.
Charles C Gaines is a recently retired former gunfighter, school teacher and coach, general dentist living in Fort Worth, Texas. At 73 years of age, he has begun to take seriously a life-long love of poetry, writing on a wide variety of subjects that capture his attention.
I freeze, listening to the curious tinkling.
Hugo taps my shoulder and signs, What is it?
A… noise? I reply with my hands.
Eyebrows raised, he gestures to his ears—as useless as mine—and awaits the punchline.
I’m too busy watching the angels descend, one by one, to respond.
Jenny Mattern is a poet, a crafter of stories, and a cake-for-breakfast enthusiast who lives with her family in Montana. She is represented by Nicole Eisenbraun at Ginger Clark Literary Agency.
He was generous, that’s what everyone said. He just passed away.
He was a Weber, lived three doors down from us. There’s never been a shortage of Webers around here.
Halloween, he’d pass out quarters. Quarters would get you into a movie back then.
Harold. That was his first name.
Victor Kreuiter lives, reads, and writes in the Midwest. His stories have appeared in Bewildering Stories, Halfway Down The Stairs, Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine, Literally Stories, Tough, Del Sol SFF Review, The Windhover, Crimeucopia’s 2024 “Let Me Tell You About” anthology, and other online and print publications. His story, “Miller and Bell,” originally published in the August, 2022, issue of Mystery, was selected to appear in The Mysterious Bookshop Presents the Best Mystery Stories of 2023.
A comet graced the violet sky of their fourth year. They swigged bottle cap equivalents of cheap wine in the produce section, then laughed their way around the sundry aisles. In the parking lot, she proposed. He wondered why she didn’t grab a knee and if he’d get a ring.
Karen Lozinski hails from NYC and lives in New Orleans. She’s a multidisciplinary artist who earned her MFA at the California Institute of the Arts. At work on a novel and poetry collection, her writing appears in Talon Review, Scapegoat Review, Red Ogre Review, The Dead Mule, Chapter House Journal, ellipsis… literature and art, The Citron Review, 300 Days of Sun, Mantis, and here and is forthcoming in Defunkt.
I bought those Hemingway baby shoes, the ones he said had never been worn. I examined them when they arrived, and it wasn’t true: a baby had clearly spit up on the laces. Why would Hemingway lie? Everything is worn, if only by the air around it, and by time.
Izzy Ferguson has written for several journals (Pank, Books in Canada, Cottage Life, Section A et al), was an associate editor at The Idler, even won a Silver Medal from the International Magazine Association. One of his essays appears in a college ‘How-to-Write’ textbook between Jonathan Swift and John Updike, a couple of guys who might vouch for him. Canada’s national literary competition (the CBC Literary Prize) shortlisted him for the Poetry Prize, longlisted him for the Fiction Prize, tacked on three longlistings for the Creative Non-Fiction Prize. And he directed a Toronto improv troupe for several years (until “The Kids in the Hall” emerged from it), more recently devolved into a Fringe Festival and cabaret storyteller.
Dring. Dring. Dring. Always three. Always 3 AM. Waking her.
Her camera points to the curb. Set motion detection. She replays the footage. Gray shadows reveal a blur—there, a flicker, her daughter rings her bell, pedals away to where the driver clipped her.
Tomorrow, she’ll adjust to sports mode.
Anne Anthony credits her steady diet of comic books for her ardent belief in superpowers. Her stories have been published in Bull, The Gooseberry Pie Lit Magazine, Flash Boulevard, Flash Fiction Magazine, Longleaf Review and elsewhere. Her micro-fiction, It’s a Mother Thing, was nominated for Best Microfiction 2024 by Cleaver Magazine. See more at linktr.ee/anchalastudio.
Christmas morning was magical as a child—the brightly lit tree, the gayly wrapped packages. Now my tree is small—the gifts are my memories. Some I rip open; others I save for later; still others prove too difficult. Yet once again, the magical gift of gratitude shines the brightest.
A prolific writer, Carol Reeves is loving the freedom and challenge of Flash Fiction. Her stories frequently reflect the vicissitudes and blessings of aging and can be found in Flash Fiction Magazine and 50 Word Stories. Carol’s memoir, “All the Little Miracles,” was published in 2022.
Hello, moon.
Don’t be sad, okay.
I just am going to the village shop with my father.
We won’t be late.
We’ll come, just now.
We are here.
Okay, if you want to.
You can walk with us around the village.
The war has ended.
Atiq Balai Wazir is a poet hailing from Waziristan, yes, the one famous for terrorism. He is doing his Masters in Anthropology from Quaid e Azam University, Islamabad, and is father to Hudail Sasha.
They took Hannah and returned a few weeks later for Julian. The hens stopped laying.
When Blue puts his paws on the window sill and complains mournfully to the empty backyard, dread slides like ice down my throat and shivers past my heart until I’ve lost my last safe place.
Miriam N. Kotzin writes fiction and poetry. She is the author of five collections of poetry, two collections of short fiction, and two novels—most recently the novel Right This Way (Spuyten Duyvil). Her 50-word stories have been published in 50-Word Stories, 50 Give or Take, and Blink Ink. She teaches literature and creative writing at Drexel University.