He purchases the tickets ahead online. We stuff my purse with store-bought Snickers and Skittles. He treats me to theater soda and popcorn once there, requests extra butter on my behalf.
For one hour and thirty-seven minutes, we forget that there was ever a time when we didn’t get along.
Christine Naprava is a writer from South Jersey. Her poems have appeared in Soundings East and Studio One.
The story of the week for May 31 to June 4 is…
Turning Around by Yash Seyedbagheri
He’d been taught that cracking an egg and finding a double yolk was a good omen. Today he discovered it isn’t always true. He opened one this morning, before anyone else was awake; before they found him in the kitchen; before they called the ambulance; before it drove away, slowly.
Ron. Lavalette lives on Vermont’s Canadian border. His poetry, flash fiction, and creative nonfiction has been very widely published in both print and pixel forms. His first chapbook, Fallen Away (Finishing Line Press), is now available at all standard outlets. A reasonable sample of his published works can be found at EGGS OVER TOKYO.
To my face you questioned, criticised, chipped away.
Behind my back you blamed, sidelined.
I saw you today for the first time since I left that job.
I kept walking, straight ahead. Kept my dignity.
The scars no one can see are still healing
But you have lost your sting.
Brian Maycock has stories due in June in BFS Horizons and Lost Horizons Horror. He lives in Scotland.
Dough. I needed dough that day.
Ray would loan it for a price.
Me? I took the loan. “Oy vey—”
father said, “such bad advice!”
Soul? I sold mine on that day,
lamenting the price I’d pay.
Teams of hitmen bat away
’til I pay them back their dough!
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.
Soon after the admission to full membership of a significant number of female applicants, the board of a previously all-male Bostonian club considered a motion for a new construction project designed specifically to expand the capacity of the powder rooms.
To no one’s great surprise, the voting followed potty lines.
John H. Dromey has had short fiction published in Mystery Weekly Magazine and 190 other venues.
“Let’s have some friends over,” she probes.
I nod, because I love her.
When they come, their lips call.
Their gestures implore.
Their eyes beseech.
My smile is a rigid rictus.
My words, a shield or a sword.
When they go home, I close the door and retreat into myself.
Seth Pilevsky lives in New York with his wife and five kids. His work has appeared in What Doesn’t Kill You, a YA anthology published by Indomita Press, Maelstrom, The Inner Circle Writers’ Group Literary Anthology 2019, Long Island Literary Journal, Literally Stories, Memoir Magazine and Stinkwaves Magazine. Sign up for updates at his website, spilevsky.com.
I double-fist Coors on the porch. Listen through the Ponderosas for a truck sputtering, a horn. Purple shadows fall. A truck rolls by. The driver might offer a greeting. An invitation. Small talk. But when you live at the end of a road, it always turns around. Never looks back.
Yash Seyedbagheri is a graduate of Colorado State University’s MFA fiction program. His stories, “Soon,” “How To Be A Good Episcopalian,” and “Tales From A Communion Line,” have been nominated for Pushcarts. Yash’s work has been published in The Journal of Compressed Creative Arts, Write City Magazine, and Ariel Chart, among others.
My prim neighborhood’s light green lawns and dark green shrubbery
are sorely lacking in exciting color.
I long to see the rainbow surprises of newborn flowers
as I walk down my street on a spring day.
So now, each and every predawn morning,
I stealthily sow future marigolds and zinnias.
Gene Newman wrote this story.
Some veterinarians keep no pets at home, bakers bake nothing in their home kitchens, plumbers let leaks drip. That’s how it was for 72-year-old Elliott, an architect.
After he died, his wife discovered a blueprint for a pottery studio in his desk drawer: Sophie’s Pot Den. Start Date: Current Year.
Kay Rae Chomic is a novelist (A Tight Grip) and writer of flash. She lives in Seattle dodging raindrops, and is a Motown fan forever.