“Heart murmur. It could be indicative of first-stage heart failure.”
“Doctor, I’m about to run my first marathon!”
“I strongly advise against it.”
Tomorrow is the race and I am running it. It’s win-win: If I die, he is a good doctor. If I make it, I’ll find somebody better.
Johannes Springenseiss is a world-citizen raconteur. He mostly writes speculative fiction and creative essays.
And a terribly self-conscious mid-teen tries to writhe stylishly to the music whilst smiling as if she’s having a good time, when a man walks by and says, “Toilets are that way!” and his witty criticism stings so much that years later she writes about the experience in fifty words.
Joanne Bowers lives in England and enjoys reading and writing microfiction.
“You came to the world without a shirt on your back, and you’re going to depart this life the same way,” he’d tell anybody willing to listen. “If you have clothes and food, be content.”
A truly spiritual man. (He also owned a supermarket, two restaurants and a department store.)
J.S. O’Keefe is a scientist, trilingual translator and writer whose short stories and prosimetra have been published in several print and online magazines.
Sweating palms cling gecko-like to isolating glass between your three-years polio-ridden self and me. Glassy eyes seek sister’s comfort from your lonely bed. You raise my teddy to contaminated air, a toast to futures yet shared. The parents enter, masked and gowned, restrained. Loving, helpless hope wills their child well.
Jackie Hales is a retired English teacher, an avid reader and writer of fiction and poetry, whose lifetime ambition was fulfilled with the publication of her début novel, “Shadows of Time”, by Willow River Press in 2022, with a second recently accepted for publication. She was co-author, with her sister Bonnie Meekums, of “Remnants of War”, a creative memoir of post-war childhood, and has had various pieces of flash or micro fiction published online, for example with Dear Damsels, Paragraph Planet and Roi Faineant. Over many years, she had individual poems published in anthologies, most notably in the Poetry Society’s “Symphonies of the Soul”. Hailing from south-east London, she lived for many years in Yorkshire but is now settled in Somerset, where she continues to draw inspiration while walking in the countryside or on the coast. She belongs to the Society of Authors and two writing groups and was delighted to be invited to support the Clevedon Literary Festival.
I looked forward to being Uncle Joe. I would buy my nephew a dog and teach him how to bluff at poker. I’d read “The Lorax” to my niece and introduce her to jazz. Then my big brother became a priest. To devote himself to God? Or to deprive me?
Ann S. Epstein writes novels, stories, memoir, poems, and essays. Her novels are On the Shore, Tazia and Gemma, A Brain. A Heart. The Nerve., The Great Stork Derby, One Person’s Loss, and The Sister Knot (in press). Her other work appears in North American Review, Sewanee Review, PRISM International, Ascent, The Long Story, and elsewhere. She also has a PhD in developmental psychology, MFA in fiber art, and certification as an end-of-life doula. Her website is asewovenwords.com.
We’d skip French, sit on your bed listening to Beatles’ albums, the soft hair of your forearm brushing mine, the cadences of your voice rocking me. That was before those tall, strawberry blonde twins showed up at our middle school. Before Sadie gave you her original vinyl copy of Help!
Kathryn Silver-Hajo is a Pushcart Prize, Best Microfiction, Best Small Fictions, and Best American Food Writing nominee. Her flash collection Wolfsong and YA novel Roots of the Banyan Tree were both published in 2023. More at kathrynsilverhajo.com.
I survey my browser, opened to half a dozen bills. Deadlines glare in blood red.
I need a walk.
Evening falls, pink and purple mingling with naked tree branches. A light breeze pushes me forward. Streetlamps come on, breaking shadows with butter-colored warmth.
I smile. The night is still young.
Yash Seyedbagheri is a graduate of Colorado State University’s MFA fiction program. His stories, “Soon,” “How To Be A Good Episcopalian,” “Tales From A Communion Line,” and “Community Time,” have been nominated for Pushcarts. Yash’s work has been published in SmokeLong Quarterly, The Journal of Compressed Creative Arts, Write City Magazine, and Ariel Chart, among others.
The story of the week for January 1 to 5 is…
Toys by Tim Boiteau
In the Village Discount basement, torn shoes line the walls with junk toys wrapped in plastic, old ceramic mugs, broken electronics, and typewriters without ribbons, and in between the frames and magazines is a used painting of a breast cancer ribbon for someone’s mother. It’s worth $1.59, says the tag.
This story was written by Adam J. Galanski-De León.
My nephew takes me on a walk around the property that holds his condominium. Across the street chainsaws hum as palm trees fall to make room for a new high rise. But in this tiny little nook, between a cement staircase and a parking garage, we spot Eurekas dripping lemon.
Sue Ann Gleason is a writer, educator, and nourishment guide who loves freshly sharpened pencils and pages that turn. See more at wellnourishedwoman.com and sueanngleason.substack.com and on Instagram.