I hate people who complain but last year my wife divorced me, her father fired me, my kids disowned me, our dog bit me and my best friend stabbed me in the back. At least his wife remained my lover. Good to know who you can trust during tough times.
Don Nigroni is a retired labor economist.
The dinosaurs stomp across the terrain foraging and eating fish, plants, other dinosaurs. Whatever is in their path and delicious. Communal feasting on a vast array of abundance. That is until asteroids smash into the earth. No more foraging; dinner is done.
Now, eons later, I’m setting my table for one.
Originally from Atlanta, Georgia, Susan R. Barclay makes persistent attempts at witticism and stories; sometimes she is successful. Her works have appeared or are forthcoming, in the The Blue Nib, Vine Street Press, Defuncted Journal, Write Time, Paragraph Planet, Witcraft, Workers Write, 50-Word Stories, and the 42 Stories Anthology.
If days in the previous year seem somber, maybe dismal, cut them up into interlocking parts and box them like a 365-piece puzzle. At start of the New Year, resolve to put them together, studying one bygone segment with each new day. You just might find delight in the details.
Judith wrote this. She resolves to smooth out the jagged parts of life’s puzzlements.
An oil executive lectured at a geology seminar and gifted each student a novelty cup. His speech proclaimed that hydrocarbons were a more valuable resource than water, and that those who object could find a free drinking fountain right outside. Before he finished, the entire audience had turned to plastic.
Dan lives with his wife in the New Jersey Pine Barrens. He finds fulfillment in writing stories both short and long.
The sun shines down on trail-walking tree-hugging leaf-swishing green and wave-wading sand-sinking shell-seeking blue while memory-lost family-forgotten depression-ridden gray looks through cloudy eyes and clouded windows at rain-cloud skies. Wake up! Be the blue-gray mist on a morning meadow; be the green-gray sage of eucalyptus. Embrace gray to the end.
Lori O’Brien, an English and Creative Writing student at SNHU, gets her inspiration walking along the ocean in coastal New Hampshire and hanging out with her senior miniature poodle, Artie. Her work has been published in Snoozine Magazine.
My notepad is full of poems about love, back from a time I didn’t know much about it (though I thought I did), but love must be learned by living through its highs and lows, my notepad growing as I grew to find myself this grown man writing about love.
Ran Walker is the author of over 40 books, most of them microfiction. He teaches creative writing and lives in Virginia with his wife and daughter.
It was always our thing — searching for familiar shapes in the inky black. Even in Dad’s hospital room, his tired eyes watching and monitors softly beeping, I found Polaris through the telescope. Something to guide me.
Now, in the silence, all I can see is the dark between the stars.
Stephanie Hurley is a writer and English teacher based in Manawatū, New Zealand. She is passionate about all things creative; in particular, using writing to examine the world around her. Her work has been published in Tarot and Mote.
Walking down the narrow hall, I saw moving boxes stacked outside another tenant’s open door.
“Need some help?” I asked, picking one up.
“Oh, thanks,” a woman said.
I nodded toward the half-empty apartment, then the stairs. “Are you coming or going?”
She hesitated. Massaged her hands. “I’m not sure.”
Alex R. Roman’s writing has also appeared in Flash Fiction Magazine. He doesn’t use social media.
If I could do it again, I’d worry less about the package and more about the contents; less about the calories, and more about nutrition; less about the cost, and more about the value; less about being liked, and more about being likeable; less about wanting, and more about thanking.
A prolific writer, Carol Reeves is loving the fun, freedom and challenge of Flash Fiction. Her stories frequently reflect on the blessings and vicissitudes of aging—and can be found in Flash Fiction Magazine and 50 Word Stories. Carol’s memoir, “All the Little Miracles,” was published in 2022.
You helped me shake poppy seeds out of their brittle pods. You rode the pumpkin. You kept your arms outstretched long after the hula hoop settled to the ground. You looked up at the stars, in your ultrasound, and saw all of the things in the universe that needed rearranging.
JK Miller is a poet and storyteller living on the edge of cornfields.