We were drinking coffee like we wanted it to become blood in our body. I wouldn’t have minded. I was looking for a way out. Of what, she’d ask, straw on lip. I’d shrug. Leave it open-ended. Casual. In my dreams, I see only her skeleton, and she already knows.
Jordyn Damato is a writer but more importantly a lover.
The steak crackles in the pan, then comes out. In goes the butter, then the mushrooms, psilocybe cubensis. They brown. The steak reenters. Since his wife’s death, John’s appetite has been temperamental. His belly full, he stumbles to bed, blinks… she appears as a whisper… then melts… dripping into eternity.
G. O. Elliott is an emerging writer based in Santa Barbara, CA, where he is the father to two boys and the spouse to a smarter and kinder soul than he. He is a graduate of Columbia University and Syracuse University. When not writing, he enjoys volunteering, going to the beach with his family, and eating tacos.
Mother spray-painted the car; “voices” told her to hide.
Psych meds scattered everywhere, memories of lullabies linger, Mama’s gonna buy you a mockingbird, before grabbing you from bed, at six, screaming, “Lord, take us!”
Now, if sleep comes, you snatch that swift, dark bird from clouds, to hear it sing.
Angela Carlton’s fiction has been published in Every Writer, Everyday Fiction, 6S, 50 Word Stories, Spillwords Press, and Paragraph Planet. In 2018, her story “The Roommates,” was made into a short film. In 2023, her story “Swallowed,” was nominated for the Pushcart Prize. See more at Angela Carlton Stories & Art on Facebook.
She moved methodically, cautiously, taking slow steps as if giving him time to react. She came straight to where he stood, and when he didn’t turn away, she opened her arms and pulled him into a soft embrace. “I missed you,” she said and squeezed, her breath in his ear.
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.
Author’s Note: So, I ask, which character is the muse?
Early in life I found a climbing tree.
I was entranced. I was enhanced.
I climbed from branch to branch.
I always brought a book with me.
I spent hours in that tree
Living in my fantasy
Until my mother called to me,
Forcing me to reality
And my responsibility.
Between one adventure and another,
Morocco, Tahiti, and Brazil
Zip-lining on St. Maartins.
The quiet is a space to fill.
And memories
Will fill the bill.
Eighty-two years old
And past her prime,
She writes poetry
To fill the time.
His ghost looms over my shoulder as a sailor pockets my wedding ring and promises me passage.
The sailor’s cigarette glows orange, embers eating tobacco down to the filter.
A push, and the lake eats him, too.
If I sail far enough, my husband whispers, I will find him waiting.
Jessica Zmuda is an anthropology graduate, museum enthusiast, and aspiring author living in St. Louis. She shares these on Instagram at @jess.reads.too.much.
They asked me if I’d go to Mars for science. I said I’d go just out of spite. The engineer said that was the best reason he’d heard in all the years he worked here. He handed me a helmet. It didn’t fit, but neither did my life on Earth.
Sarp Sozdinler has been published in Electric Literature, Kenyon Review, Shenandoah, Masters Review, Pithead Chapel, and 100 Word Story, among other journals. Besides writing, he edits the literary journal The Bulb Region: sarpsozdinler.com.
“Don’t fight it; dive through the wave,” Pop says. “Let the tide take you past the breakers.”
The ocean builds, bubbles, rises like green champagne. We lay back and float with arms splayed out—two messiahs, under cloudy skies, wasting hours in the wave’s trough and crest.
DG Bracey is a teacher and a freelance writer from the Carolina coast. He’s picked up degrees from the University of South Carolina, Coastal Carolina University, and the University of North Carolina – Wilmington. He’s published short stories in various journals and been a feature writer for several newspapers.
During the miserably hot sultry nights those of us renting rooms on the third-floor climbed through a window onto the porch roof. We set up lawn chairs, sipped beers and smoked cigarettes. We talked about things we’d lost, about breakups and custody battles, and we tried to catch our breath.
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.
Fog held the trees as my father’s hand slipped from mine, a soft rite of passage. Blockbuster glowed like a borrowed cosmos, aisles humming with other lives. At home, the screen loosened the world’s weight for a while. We watched together, knowing wonder, like time, arrives briefly, then asks to be returned.
Marie Anne Arreola is a bilingual poet and editor whose work lives at the intersection of speculative lyric, digital culture, and diaspora memory. She is a 2025 Pushcart Prize Nominee, author of Sparks of the Liberating Spirit Who Trapped Us (Foreshore Publishing, UK), winner of the Plumas en Ciernes Short Story Prize, and founding editor of VOCES, a bilingual platform for global artists and writers. Her work appears in over 40 literary journals across the U.S., Europe, and Latin America. She is a two-time finalist for the Francisco Ruiz Udiel Latin American Poetry Prize (V and VI editions) from Valparaíso Ediciones, and a recipient of the 2024 Young Poets Scholarship awarded by the Gutiérrez Lozano Foundation.