Flour spilled in the kitchen
is swept outside to merge
with a tossed crust of bread
borne by two rows of ants
going down the hill toward
the underground grotto
where a rabbit holds
a perfect English muffin
between her paws─
her aspirational muffin.
She’d rather starve than eat it.
Cheryl Snell writes poetry and fiction.
Blue jeans, orange T, a sweater knitted in diamonds, and oh for earrings, not gold hoops, but pretty silver studs like Elsa’s, or crystal, like Lynn’s; and a mood ring. That would be her look today.
Lisa cast her eyes over the garments spread out on the bed. Nothing matched.
Farriz Mashudi is a former lawyer, journalist, and blogger, turned writer of fiction and CNF. Born in Malaysia, she’s lived all over the place and currently resides in the Middle East.
Jamie knew her match was out there, probably traveling first class. Eagerly, she flew Milwaukee to Chicago, but her seatmate was old and boring. She sat alone in first class Chicago to Orlando. At long last, Jamie met her Mr. Right, working at the ticket counter of her local airport.
Roberta Beach Jacobson is the author of Demitasse Fiction: One-Minute Reads for Busy People (Alien Buddha Press, 2023). She lives in Indianola, Iowa with her husband and three cats.
Teleportation was a technology only the rich could afford. Zapping themselves to Capri for breakfast, Aspen for lunch, Davos for supper, they flaunted their wealth. Until, that is, a hacker reset transmission co-ordinates into the planet’s molten core. Overnight, Earth’s billionaire problem was solved.
A socialist utopia was rapidly established.
Bill is from Aberdeen, Scotland, currently still part of the UK. He shares much in common with Wordsworth, Dickens, and Orwell, in that they also lived in the UK.
“Look what Santa gave me,” Travis says.
“Wow! An iPhone!” Arthur says. “I got an iPad.”
Neil has heard of these things, but he got a puzzle.
He kicks at the playground gravel, scattering it against a window. In the Time Out Chair, he wonders why Santa likes him less.
She sank back into her bleak reality, removed her sensory visor, and switched off the game.
How she wished she could be destitute and live by her wits, surviving unscrupulous landlords, pimps, and drug dealers in her real world.
“Alas,” she sighed when her chauffeur came to pick her up.
Connell wrote this after he stopped being inspired by others, but just how long this will last is anyone’s guess.
Two souls waited to be born.
I will be a beautiful girl, said the first, born into wealth.
I will be a lonely boy, said the second, abused and abandoned.
But why? asked first.
Because I’ll learn more in my few years of hardship than in your lifetime of privilege.
Daniel Wilson lives in the foothills of North Carolina with his wife and children.