My friend, Bob, has posted a fifty-word marvel.
With a deft flick of his crisp wit, he has lassoed a universe.
I cherish the accolades he garners as if they were my own.
After all, did I not urge him to submit?
Bloody Bob. I curse the day we met.
Joanna Norland is grateful to Clive James for his deliciously unapologetic poem, “The Book of My Enemy Has Been Remaindered.” It gave her the courage to acknowledge the absurdity of her own paradoxical predicament.
When you made us recite Ozymandias in class, I grumped. When you made us study the difference between a Petrarchan and a Shakespearean sonnet, I groaned. Now that I’m old I realize I never got to thank you for everything, every word, sentence, and syllable. Your epitaph is so beautiful.
Ed Ridgley hiked to Everest Base Camp in Nepal in 2018, at age 57, also asthmatic, thus completing the number one item on his bucket list since age 10. At 17,500 feet, he wondered if any of those “you can accomplish anything” self-help gurus had ever done anything like this. But base camp was as far as he wanted to go, that was enough. Then again, who knows what enough really means?
She flicks the hot cocoa bag with her finger, priming it the way the nurse used to prime her hospital IV bag, wondering, had she never come home again, how her children would’ve warmed themselves after an hour in the snow, or if anyone would’ve taken them sledding at all.
Francesca Leader wrote this story.
Website featuring miniature stories currently seeking apathetic readers. No skills required. No pay, no benefits, no rewards. Lack of enjoyment contingent on how distracted and unmindful you might be. Readers who take their time and pay considerable attention need not apply. Same with those who may wish to contemplate allegory.
Bob Thurber is the author of six books. Regarded as a master of Flash and Micro Fiction, his work has appeared in Esquire and other magazines, been anthologized 60 times, received a long list of awards, and been utilized in schools and colleges throughout the world. He resides in Massachusetts. Visit his website at BobThurber.net.
I found a jellyfish washed up on the beach yesterday. It looked like an alien; a strange creature in a strange land. I got a shovel and helped it back into the water. It floated there before waving a tentacle and swam away. How strange to see one on Mars.
Jocelyne Gregory is an MFA creative writing student at the University of British Columbia. She is a graduate of Simon Fraser University’s The Writer’s Studio. She also reviews children’s books and graphic novels. She lives on the Sunshine Coast of British Columbia, Canada.
I see my life.
I see my laughter, my tears. I see passion, hope.
Sadly next I see doubt, anxiety, so much worry, too little joy in the beauty of simply being alive!
Looking back, through dead eyes, too late I see a glorious gift unappreciated.
I see my life.
Lisa Lysen is having fun exploring her passion for words, hoping an adventure in writing may be somewhere in her future.