Mean as cancer when no one is looking
Smile, smile, smile otherwise
He walks the dog to feel anything
His unkindness pounds in her head as people look
Neighborhood trash receptors are emptied for the week
The dog poops twice on the walk
He carries both home; people are looking
TPA is currently living her literary dream of creating flash fiction from home in Atlanta, Georgia, where she studied writing at Oglethorpe University.
Every summer we haul grandpa’s ashes down to the beach and listen to the crashing surf.
The roar reminds us of grandpa’s grumbling groans after a long day’s work.
When the tide recedes, the shoreline resembles a long stretch of freshly poured cement, waiting to be troweled, skimmed perfectly smooth.
Bob Thurber is the author of “Paperboy: A Dysfunctional Novel” and two collections of stories. A celebrated master of Flash and Micro Fiction, his work has appeared in 60 anthologies, received dozens of awards, and been used in schools and colleges throughout the world. He resides in Massachusetts where, though legally blind, he continues to write every day. Visit his website at BobThurber.net.
Life is great. Health, mobility, liberty.
Then, an inadvertent moment. A slip and twisting tumble. The crash is sharp; the crack loud. Such a quick and simple thing.
But the scorching pain: deep, crippling, and endless.
Operations and rehab do little. Each move brings agony and depression.
Life is hell.
Bill Diamond writes in the Colorado Mountains. See more at bdiamondwriting.com
I tell her amidst our constitutional in Plastic Garden.
She lowers herself onto the grass, studying its frozen, wind-blown artifice, then plants her hand into a spongy anthill.
As the mechanical carbuncles stream up her pale skin, bites evoking winces, she whispers to them, “Like me, like me, like me.”
Tim Boiteau lives and writes near Detroit with wife and son. Find him at @timboiteau.
The story of the week for November 26 to 30 is…
Bad Like That by Kiah Mott
The press pool asks Senator Minotaur why he won’t campaign outside of Florida anymore.
His campaign manager remembers the reporter in Montana who wandered off of a cliff, the reporter in Iowa whose stolen car doubled as his coffin, the reporter in Texas with a smile no stomach should make.
Jesse Bradley wrote this story.
She was crazy, but not like others
She had the madness of a woman who lives as if every day were Friday
She was the one who thought that betting on her was better than going to a casino
She was the one who had never regretted anything
She was.
Candela Martinez wrote this story.
Picking huckleberries, with no sense of time. Sunset. Dark shape breaks into three.
Your eyes focus on a bear and two cubs. They sniff the air.
Cubs climb a tree. Mama sits underneath.
Moving forward, you say, “It’s okay,” more for your benefit than hers. You are the trespasser here.
Roni Slye spends much of her time in the woods, trying to have as little interaction with wildlife as possible. You can find her on Twitter.
The silent man stepped into the train, dragging his heavy suitcase.
First station. A blurry graffiti on the ruined wall drew his attention: “One life and one love are enough.”
Everything passed so fast through the window.
Second station. “Excuse me, sir… How can I cross to the other side?”
José Jaime Pérez is a person who loves making up stories based on what he comes across ordinarily.
A house now unencumbered by timepieces, but still, their chimes remain, haunting its hollow margins. My father, the timekeeper, has departed for somewhere where the past, present and future are as one.
Choices are now mine, so with mornings free from alarm, I roll over and go back to sleep.
Steven Lemprière, having once been punched by a time clock, would not be horology’s greatest fan and feels too many of his waking hours are spent in the fruitless pursuit of trying to find the time. Having gone cuckoo, he has decided to clock off and focus on a blank sheet of A4 where time is at his beck and call.