MICHELLE WILSON: Algorithm

Amusing, Submissions, , , , , ,

Lately, the internet’s always ten steps ahead, knowing before I do what I need to see: today’s impossibly high cost of living, eight easy side hustles, renting your spare bedroom, difficult housemates, conflict resolution, signs of mental collapse, the ten best meditation apps.

How to properly dispose of a body.

Michelle Wilson’s words have appeared in Potato Soup Journal’s Best of 2021 Anthology, Rejection Letters, Maudlin House, Litro Magazine, The Drabble, 50-Word Stories, Literally Stories, Flash Fiction Magazine, and Mr. Beller’s Neighborhood, among others. She lives in Miami Beach, Florida.

SAM HALL: The Man They Call Earthquake

Artistic, Submissions, , , ,

Buried in the dark beneath a mountain lies an ancient man. He is a colossus yet cannot shift the weight of stone that bears down on every piece of him. Sometimes he calls for help, but the little people in that land hear only a rumbling mountain and grow fearful.

Sam Hall is a young writer from England.

N WEST MOSS: Blue Bottles

Artistic, Submissions, Touching, , , , , ,

At eighty-eight, my mother says, “It’s time to stop driving.” She watches the birds from her window, hasn’t stepped outside all winter, says she’s happy. Me? The sun pours through the blue bottles on my windowsill, and I feel the wind stirring through the family grave in New Orleans, preparing.

N. West Moss’s memoir, Flesh and Blood: Reflections on Infertility, Family, and Creating a Bountiful Life (published by Algonquin 2021), can be found at workman.com/products/flesh-blood/hardback. Her middle grade novel is forthcoming from Little, Brown, and Company.

JENNIFER LAI: Pest Control

Amusing, Submissions, , ,

The sign on my door says No Soliciting but they knock anyway, two collared-shirt gentlemen advertising pest control. Thirty percent off if I sign up now. I interrupt with a definitive “no.” When they ask why, I explain I’ll always have pest problems. Because the annoying little things can’t read.

Jennifer Lai lives in Washington state where she enjoys eating ice cream on cold days and writing micro fiction. She has an upcoming drabble in Five Minute Lit.

MUSKAAN MALIK: Flying

Adventure, Amusing, Artistic, Submissions, , ,

It felt so good, gliding as if on the open air, not a single obstacle in sight, as if the worries of life were forgotten for those few moments, and she could fly.

She didn’t see what caused it. All she saw was the ground rushing up to meet her.

Muskaan Malik is ten years old and lives in Leicester. She enjoys making Lego (despite having hardly any time to play with it) and reading for pleasure. Her favourite flower is a crocus.

ARLENE CHAPLIN: Under the Radar

Artistic, Submissions, Touching, , , ,

She was a timid child, quieted amid the storm of her parents’ discord, hiding her talents so that she could stay under the radar.

Reading was her escape. She latched onto the fairy tales instead of the biographies and spent a lonely life waiting to be rescued.

No one came.

Arlene Chaplin is an artist and writer who is braving yet another New England winter.

YASH SEYEDBAGHERI: Scents

Artistic, Submissions, Top Stories, , ,

I find excuses to hit the store daily. Draw constant lists.

Michelina’s TV dinners. Lays chips. Lots of six-packs.

I meander from aisle to aisle, relishing the movement of bodies around me. Absorbing scents of cigarettes, fleeting perfume. Smiles.

It beats bare walls and boxes stacked like a cold fortress.

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.

KATHLEEN FLANAGAN: The Windowsill

Artistic, Submissions, Touching, , ,

The morning of 9/11.

My son was beginning month four on the Bone Marrow Transplant Unit at Tuft’s Medical. Leukemia.

On the windowsill in his isolation room I watched the Boston streets empty. A sense of fear and foreboding permeated the walls of my sadness and diminishing hope.

All unimaginable.

Kathleen Flanagan is a recently retired pediatric nursing instructor at UMass Dartmouth. Her son battled leukemia for three-and-a-half years and died on November 19 2001 in Boston. Tuft’s Medical was their home for his last six months, and the care he received was incredible.

AUGUST VAN STRALEN: After the Flood

Adventure, Artistic, Submissions, Top Stories, , , , ,

The rain came, then the floods. We did our steps and squats lugging water from the basement. Bicep curls pouring pots of boiled water into glass jars. Stores and shops closed, we ate beans and rice and drank tea in the afternoon. Watching the darkening skies, we waited for more.

August van Stralen lives in BC with her wife and cat Gordo, who’s favourite activity is to get out of bed early in the morning and howl for attention from the living room. When she’s not writing, August enjoys crochet, woodworking, and long walks with her wife.