Tag Archives: escape

DG BRACEY: Atlantic

Artistic, Submissions, , , ,

“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.

BOB THURBER: Dog Days

Artistic, Submissions, , ,

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.

MARIE ANNE ARREOLA: Blockbuster

Artistic, Submissions, , , , ,

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.

KATIE ARMSTRONG: Unknown Certainty

Adventure, Submissions, , , ,

A glow in the distance catches her attention. Wooden skis glide effortlessly between trees as she draws closer. She squints at the undeniable illusion. She closes her eyes. Glowing particles swarm on the backs of her eyelids, and her skis slip forward. She is entangled—gone and not gone, simultaneously.

Katie is a consultant by day and a writer by night. Her day job requires very rigid and logical thinking, so she uses writing as a creative outlet. She lives in Bozeman, MT.

SARP SOZDINLER: Imposters

Adventure, Odd, Submissions, , ,

You are born with a second shadow. It lags behind, darker than yours. Your mother says it might be your grandfather’s ghost. Some friends suggest light therapy; others, exorcism. More you try outrunning it, longer it grows. By thirteen, it starts to whisper your name. By eighteen, it borrows it.

Sarp Sozdinler has been published in Electric Literature, Kenyon Review, Shenandoah, Masters Review, Pithead Chapel, and 100 Word Story, among other journals. His stories have been selected or nominated for such anthologies as the Pushcart Prize, Best Small Fictions, and Wigleaf Top 50. See more at sarpsozdinler.com.

MARC SIMON: Lost and Found

Artistic, Submissions, , , ,

I lost my way in Freedom Park, amid Cedars, Palmetto, Cabbage Palms, and pink water lilies floating on black water. The buzz of data in my head was gone, replaced by the hum of a dragonfly’s crystalline wings. I lost my way in Freedom Park and found a morning’s peace.

Marc Simon’s short fiction has appeared in over fifteen literary magazines. Five of his one-act plays have been winners in new works contests. His debut novel, The Leap Year Boy, was published in December 2012. His novella, According to Isaac, is now published on Amazon.com. See more at https://marcsimonwriter.com

MICHELLE WILSON: Technically Incompatible

Artistic, Submissions, , , , ,

I ignore your endless texts; prioritize friends, hiking, the gym.

You’re needy and overbearing; a people pleaser with no life of your own.

“I can be whatever you want me to be!” you wail.

“That’s the problem,” I sigh.

And putting you back in the box, I wait for UPS.

Michelle Wilson graduated from Bennington College with a degree in literature and creative writing. Her words have appeared or are forthcoming in Wigleaf, Gooseberry Pie Lit, The Daily Drunk, Bending Genres, A Thin Slice of Anxiety, Rejection Letters, Maudlin House, Litro Magazine, 50-Word Stories, Flash Fiction Magazine, Potato Soup Journal’s Best of 2021 Anthology, Mr. Beller’s Neighborhood, and elsewhere. Her story ‘Fish Brain’ was nominated for Best of the Net 2022. She lives with her partner in Washington, DC.

JR WALSH: The chickens will save us

Amusing, Odd, Submissions, , , , ,

8,110,424,013 people woke up having dreamed the same dream. Visions of socks, a snowstorm, and chicken manure. Finally, our climate crisis had a solution.

All but one person forgot.

Saving the world was within reach, yet the dreamer crossed that snowy rural highway. The whole world felt those headlights burn.

JR Walsh is the Online Editor at The Citron Review. He teaches creative writing at SUNY Oswego. Find his writing on itsjrwalsh.com.

DAVE BRADLEY: Always

Artistic, Submissions, , ,

If I am to die, let it be in Paris. Surround me with smoke and noise. Hide me in the flickering light from cheap picture houses. Let lovers on their Haussmann balconies glance away and smile over Beaujolais as I sag into the street, folding on myself like a crêpe.

Dave Bradley’s words have appeared in publications such as Best Of British Science Fiction 2018 and Dorling Kindersley’s The Screen Traveller’s Guide, as well as various pop culture magazines and websites.

NINA FEINBERG: Grandma in Italy

Artistic, Submissions, , , ,

In the nursing home, she describes what she’s been up to: floating along the canals of Venice, wandering through the streets of Rome. “I know I’m not, but I think I am,” she tells my mother.

We know she’s there, but we think she’s here, in Maryland with us.

Nina Feinberg is a writer, photographer and distance runner. She lives in Brooklyn, NY and works in user experience design.