Twenty-seven years.
You lean into your pencil. Learn shape, shadow, perspective.
Graphite grey, iron ore, steel shackles shatter in negative space.
Routine-etched canyons crease your skin.
Portraits come to life. Denzel, Biggie, Beyonce. Your cellie’s mother from an old, worn photograph. Your daughter from a news clipping. Celebrating. Without you.
Paul D’Arcy tells stories. All real. Most brief. You can read more at pauldrc.com.
The warden thought his track meet event
would be a morale booster,
But a guard reported on Event Day
that the pole vault team had escaped.
The good news was the 100-yard dash team
was overtaken 200 yards from the gate
and the sumo wrestlers were wedged in their tunnel.
Gene Newman was a USAF cryptologist during the Korean War and is a retired engineer and journalist, including stringing for the N.Y. Times and being a crossword puzzle creator for the New York Times and USA Today.
He had time to write and he had a plot. His favoured genre was crime, schemes to outwit the establishment. This book would be an autobiography.
He wasn’t yet sure of the ending but there was time for that, a lot of time. The judge had given him ten years.
Chris is a Health Service Research Manager from Wales, UK. He lives with his wife Hayley and Boarder Collie Toby in Pembrokeshire. He enjoys fishing, kayaking and cycling around the west coast of Wales and is a self-confessed flash fiction addict with some publication and competition success. See more at fusilliwriting.com.
It’s easier to love from afar… he types.
Two thousand one hundred and ninety days ahead. Fingers strike dirt covered keys. X’s marked across calendar squares. He sits facing the wall. A photograph of a woman hangs loose. A guard rattles a baton across steel bars.
…when all is lost.
Milton Swami Parraga is a writer and a visual artist from Mexico City. His work has been featured in Microfiction Monday Magazine and Defunkt Magazine. He currently resides in Houston, Texas.
A sliver of sky, beacon of hope, connection to the wider world embraced by towers of urban life.
I watch morning’s rebirth, bright orange bursts slowly fading into daylight blues, then twist into my pillow of despair until midnight moon penetrates, connecting me again to the world outside my cell.
Eileen writes poetry and flash fiction and letters to her grandkids. She has used the pandemic as an excuse to spend more time writing.
Hands, rough from years of hard labour; hands, morphed to the shapes of their tools; hands, discarded, unwanted, idle; hands, now tornadoes of boredom and rage and frustration; hands, locked together with bracelets of steel; hands that would’ve toiled until the life drained out of them, if they’d been allowed.
Laura Besley writes short fiction in the precious moments that her children are asleep. Her fiction has appeared online, as well as in print and in various anthologies. Her flash fiction collection, The Almost Mothers, was published in March 2020. She tweets @laurabesley.
Day dawns like a drill sergeant barking orders. The tarnished door flap swings open, announcing breakfast: rubbery eggs on a tin plate and a heel of stale bread. The door clangs shut like a license plate dragging on pavement.
He crawls out of his cot. Another day at the monastery.
Debbie L. Miller is a Brooklyn, New York writer. She writes plays, monologues, short stories, micro fiction, and memoir.
“Can’t a girl get a proper cup of tea around here?” asked Katherine.
“Sorry Miss, we only have black coffee.”
“It’s just flavored hot water, no need to act like it’s highfalutin. But I do have very refined tastes when it comes to my beverages.”
“Look, lady, this is jail.”
Carolyn Smuts taught history before fleeing academic life to write. Her work has appeared in SELF, Glamour, Creative Living, Ultimate Motorcycling, and Business Week. Her recent fiction works were published by Akashic Books, Jitter Press, Wordland, and Omnific. She lives in Southern California.
The guard we call “Snake” saunters over to my cell door, opens the bean slot, and snarls, “Due to unforeseeable circumstances, Sweetheart, your execution will be held on your birthday,” then slams the metal door shut, like it was a guillotine.
I can almost taste my favorite flavor cake frosting.
Brad Rose was raised in southern California, and lives in Boston. Links to his poetry and fiction, which appear in print and on-line, can be found at bradrosepoetry.blogspot.com.
“The world’s your oyster!” they said.
I want to say they lied, pin the blame on anyone but myself, but I can’t.
I could’ve made something of my life. Instead I chose the unthinkable.
He’s been in prison for nine years because of what I did. Six more to go.
Gabrielle Soong is a 17-year-old high schooler and aspiring writer. Besides writing, her favorite things are music, reading, and soccer. She has big plans to travel the world and write novels.