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Micro, Lance Mazmanian

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Scottish Book Trust

After jumping off the ship in the Atlantic, it was quickly discovered that the sunset we saw from the deck, reflected in the ocean water, was no more than a giant blanket woven from fine cotton and tin. With occasional plastic bananas. How did we sail from Port Aberdeen, then?

Word/visual author Lance Mazmanian: once Random House distributed with Harlan Ellison, got a coffee as payment. Mazmanian published 2025 in London Writers’ Salon, Fiction On the Web UK, WILDsound Festival (TIFF), more. Leonard Cohen (RIP) wanted himself and Mazmanian to create a poetry chapbook together. Til the Scrapbook File imploded. 

Micro, Colin James

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Pork butt salad

Thought about stealing Amazon packages off doorsteps  to generate some extra income, but all of my generous neighborshave cameras with speakers, sometimes having long conversations with me from across the street. A bit nerve wracking what with all the questions they ask. Amazing what one normalizes. I haven’t reconsidered attending the Abominable Absurdism Reunion, still pretty firm on that. Then there are the watchdog animals behind electric fences that run at me aggressively and suddenly stop. Pretty sure their vocal chords have been removed cause when I stop for a little chat they just groan. The stabled horses are doing much better. The arses that sit atop them call to me imaginatively in various degrees of missionary undress. I have a beat-up but clean van that might pass for an emergency vehicle, inclusive or exclusive at a moments notice. Uniforms I don’t aspire to but then again, if they could help get me in why not? I’m game.

Colin James has a couple of chapbooks of poetry published. Dreams Of The Really Annoying from Writing Knights Press and A Thoroughness Not Deprived of Absurdity from Piski’s Porch Press and a book of poems, Resisting Probability, from Sagging Meniscus Press. He lives in Massachusetts.

Flash fiction, Denise Bayes

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Goddess

Before she came, there was only darkness. Unremitting night surrounded, moonless. Their limbs shrank, conserving energy within their bodies like bulbs sheltering in winter soil.

And then she dropped into their midst. One of them caught sight of her in the woods, a bright sphere of light, illuminating the world. They stared at her from the grey shadows. They watched the warmth of her smile that radiated light into dank corners of the forest. Her fingers stretched wide, leaking flashes of brightness into their world. 
They turned to each other, shaking their heads in puzzlement.

Could they trust her lightness?
A few of the braver ones began to move towards her. As they tiptoed closer, their bodies shivered as brightness began to pulse through their limbs. An unfamiliar energy photosynthesised their veins. As their pinprick pupils began to adjust to the glare, they shrugged off the frowns of the dark years. Etiolated limbs began to stretch and lengthen in her powerful rays.
Then she began to speak and her maple-syrup sweet voice reached them. She spoke of love and happiness, filling the woods with the beauty of words. Soon the reluctant ones drew closer, taking slow steps towards the new world, she had revealed. There was joy in their faces. They formed songs with their new vocabulary and smiled in her presence, shrugged off the old world.
One morning, she was gone.

The people halted, fearful of the past returning as they gazed into the void she had left. They waited in silence for the darkness to return.
But as they turned towards each other, they saw light throbbing through each of them.

Denise Bayes has been published in NZ Micro Madness, Free Flash Fiction, Oxford Flash,100 Word Story, Ellipsis Zine, Firewords ,Roi Fainéant press and the recent NFFD Anthology. Originally from Sunderland, Denise lives in Barcelona, Spain where she lives with her husband and a lively cavalier puppy called Rory. Bluesky @deniseb.bsky.social