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Poetry by A.A. Loria

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I do not Fear Aging, for I Know it is a Gift


I will grow old.

This is not spoken as an inevitable,

But offered as a promise;

That I will grow old,

And that I will love it.

I will grow old,

And I will have wrinkles,

And crow’s feet,

And frown lines and white hair,

And what a wonderful thing,

I’ll say;

What a wonderful thing it is,

To be old.

I will spend my summers under the hot sun,

And I will let it bake wrinkles into my skin,

Like crackling sourdough in my oven.

I will spend my falls walking among the leaves,

And I will listen for the crunch under my boots,

Long after I am hearing through hearing aids.

I will spend my winters with my favourite mug never far,

And I will bake the gingerbread recipe that I never measure,

Because I cherished the memory of the taste over precision.

I will spend my springs dancing in the rain,

And I will turn my face to the sky so that I never forget the clouds,

Even when my eyes have gone and glasses aren’t enough. 

I will grow old,

Because if I die young this poem will be a tragedy,

And I demand a happy ending.

I have lived my youth in agony,

I am older than I ever dreamt of reaching,

And I am only getting older.

What a wonderful thing that is,

I say;

I am only getting older.

Andrew Loria is an author who dabbles in many genres, but finds his preference in horror, sci-fi, romance, and the absurd and surreal. Born and raised in the colds of southern Manitoba, he keeps warm by fulfilling his days working in education, and hiding his nights away in a cozy blanket and spinning his stories. When he is not writing, he enjoys various types of art, particularly crochet and painting. 

Micro fiction by Colleen Addison 

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If We Were Reborn As Peregrine Falcons

Imagine soft down on our chests, plumage on our backs. Imagine our heads beaked, keratin claws crowning our feet. Imagine tail-feathers, our hips and bones fused gently so we can fly. Imagine the currents of air, ourselves newly aware of these, newly cognizant of the wind. Imagine us, lifted up, each layer of airstream bearing us towards the highest part of the convex sky. Imagine our wings flapping once, and then a soar. Imagine swoops and dives and the twirl-swirls of our bodies through the air. Imagine a quick low skirting through city park trees, around benches. Imagine dips and darts, a playfulness as we slip around skyscrapers. Imagine our falcony giggles, our birdlike fun. Imagine our aerie homes on the roofs of skyscrapers, atop the tallest arches of bridges. Imagine the two of us, our hearts expanding expanding expanding the way they are now but bigger. Imagine our wings spread wide, every feathery part reaching out as far as it can. Imagine the heavens around us, all that space, that wide spaciousness. Imagine how far our hearts have opened and still the tips of our sharp pointed wings are touching. Imagine our amazed astonished delight remade in bird form. Imagine wonder. Imagine joy. Imagine me and you in love, our arms wrapping around each other, both of us saying the words, both of us repeating them, I love you over and over, all of this as we take flight.

Colleen Addison completed an MA in English and Creative Writing, followed by a PhD in health information; she then promptly got sick herself. Her work, written for joy between surgeries, has been published in Painted Pebble Lit Mag, 50 Word Stories, and River Teeth. She is a winner of the George Dila Memorial Flash Fiction contest with Third Wednesday. 

Flash fiction by A.A. Loria

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A Snapping Turtle in the Road

The road is no place for a snapping turtle. This hard stretch of grey that thunders with the sound of shining creatures beyond her understanding is unnatural to her. But the road is an obstacle between her and where she needs to go to lay her eggs, so journey across it she must.

But she’s come to a stop.

She was almost halfway across, when suddenly, one of its flashing creatures roared past her. She could feel the heat of it sting against her nose, missing her by a step. She tucked her head back into the safety of her shell, trembling, as it roared away.

It’s here that she remains frozen, fearing the appearance of another. She can hear its oncoming roar, fast approaching. She braces for impact, even as she hopes it will see her as uninteresting and leave her unharmed.

The ground beneath her feet trembles. Closer and closer the roaring comes, until just as suddenly as it started, it stops. 

Then, a slam. 

Two legs step into her field of vision, and she recognizes the shape of these legs; long and bare-skinned, ending in two bulky feet. When the animal crouches down, showing her its odd, flat face, it confirms what she’s looking at.

A human. 

Her head surges forward suddenly. Sharp, powerful jaws open wide and snap shut hard enough to make a loud crack. She doesn’t succeed in biting the human, but it still tumbles backwards with a cry of alarm, falling on its hindquarters. Though she can’t reach it, she snaps at it again. A warning; keep away, or she’ll bite.

Undeterred, the human gets up again. A loud screeching suddenly assaults the snapping turtle’s senses, and she shrinks back into her shell once more, fearing another monster. A different sound joins the screeching, more loud calling, and this she recognizes as the cries of the human. It moves out of her field of vision, leaving her alone once again. 

Suddenly, something grabs the back of her shell. Her head darts back out, and she whips her neck back to snap viciously at whatever has caught her, but she can’t reach. 

She sees it only briefly; the human is holding onto the back of her shell. She tries to gouge with her hind claws, but the human’s hands press on her limbs, keeping them immobile. She’s lifted off the road and into the air. She continues to thrash her neck about, hissing furiously. 

The human moves loudly, each footstep jostling her as it carries her across the road. She refuses to be pliant in these strange hands, she won’t let the human do what it will with her without a fight.

It could do anything. It could drop her from this great height. It could crush her beneath a heavy foot. It could kill her in so many ways, and make her into a meal, like she would with a slippery frog. She is powerless against the human, a feeling she is not used to. She keeps trying to bite, keeps trying to claw.

But the human doesn’t do any of those things. Instead, it carries her some distance away from the road. It stops its thunderous walking and lowers her, gently, to the ground.

The ground that meets her feet is soft. It’s soil, loose and sandy, that gives beneath her weight until she sinks into it. The cushioned hands release her. 

She hears the footsteps again, shaking the dirt around her, until they fade away. The human is gone as quickly as it arrived, retreating back to wherever it came from. 

She doesn’t move immediately. Perhaps out of caution, or perhaps out of contemplation. Here she sits in the dry dirt, perfect for egg-laying, and she understands that this happened because the human helped her.

The snapping turtle can’t understand the human’s actions. All she can understand is that a human did not harm her, nor did it try to eat her. It seemingly risked its own life against those road monsters, just so it could bring her to this place of safety, where she could lay her eggs.

She doesn’t understand why. She can’t understand why. 

The snapping turtle has no concept of kindness. She can’t comprehend the tenderness of the human’s act towards her. But as her claws dig into the soft earth, preparing it to receive her eggs, she continues to think about her encounter with the human. 

She’ll think about it for a long time. Her memory is long, it will carry on for many egg-laying seasons. And with every clutch she lays, she will remember the human that made them all possible. The human that braved monsters, and carried her away from them. 

What an incomprehensible animal a human is. To be so large, so powerful, so fierce as to shout at monsters, while at the same time having such gentle hands, to rescue a snapping turtle even though it had nothing to gain from doing so.

How delightfully strange.

Andrew Loria is an author who dabbles in many genres, but finds his preference in horror, sci-fi, romance, and the absurd and surreal. Born and raised in the colds of southern Manitoba, he keeps warm by fulfilling his days working in education, and hiding his nights away in a cozy blanket and spinning his stories. When he is not writing, he enjoys various types of art, particularly crochet and painting. 

Micro fiction by Kendra Cardin

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Disco Cinderella

For Mom

Laces tied tight, Ann laps the roller rink, arms outstretched like wings, the dragonfly tattoo on her right shoulder gliding along for the ride. It’s ’70s Night, and she could skate till dawn, boogying in her hand-knitted halter top, bell-bottoms and vibrant blue eyeshadow — a disco Cinderella. Except this time, the footwear stays on, sets the overtoiled woman soaring, wheels spinning, hips swaying.

Ann knows she can’t stay long. Tonight, a mirrorball moon glittering her skin, the tender voice of Thelma Houston imploring her not to leave this way. Tomorrow, a harsher slice of light beaming down, the clang and whir of an MRI machine.

Ann lifts her face up toward the rainbow hues of the rink’s spotlights, shimmies the tension from her shoulders, finds the beat again. One more time around, arms stretched wide as wings. Dazzling like a disco ball, like Cinderella at the ball. Like a dragonfly.

Kendra Cardin creates safe harbors with her poetry and storytelling. Her writings have found homes in a variety of publications including those of Neither Fish Nor Foul, Rough Diamond Poetry, Necessary Fiction, Five Minutes, and Cowboy Jamboree.

Poetry by Zoë Davis 

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A traveller’s litany

I believe we only age in silence, that grains of sand run smooth in darkened rooms. I believe covered heads lie on candy pillows grasped between a cage of teeth. I believe as another year passes, sweet bones slip between the ghost of a stair gate. I believe some eyes curse the moon and its daughters. I believe only strangers know me. I can only fall asleep to the ticking of a clock. I believe the beating of a heart.

Zoë Davis is a writer from Sheffield, England. She’s a stubborn FND sufferer and fights what her body says she can’t do by playing wheelchair rugby league. She writes poetry and prose, and especially enjoys exploring the interaction between the fantastical and the mundane, with a deeply personal edge to her work. You can find her words in publications such as: 
Ink Sweat & Tears, Strix, Roi Fainéant and Red Ogre Review. You can also follow her on X @MeanerHarker where she’s always happy to have a virtual coffee and a chat.
 

Flash fiction by Huina Zheng

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The pine tree

There is a park near my home, with a long, winding path running through it. When I was in elementary school, every afternoon at four o’clock, my grandfather arrived outside the iron gate of my school, riding his worn-out Forever bicycle to pick me up. He then took me to the park even when my mother objected, insisting that I should go straight home to do my homework, that textbooks were the only proper way to learn. My grandfather smiled and said, “Let Lan look at the trees first. The trees are teaching her too.”

In the park, my grandfather held my hand and guided me to look at different plants.

In spring, he pointed to the golden trumpet trees. At first, only a few scattered yellow blossoms appeared at the tips of the branches, but within a week, the entire tree was covered in brilliant gold.

In summer, we often sat on the grass beside the crape myrtle bushes. The flowers bloomed in small clusters. Pale pink. Light purple. Milky white. Like clouds of color diffused across the sky. My grandfather said, “A few bloom today, a few more tomorrow. That’s how the whole summer passes.” We waited there, watching to see which new blossoms had opened that day.

In autumn, the fragrance reached us the moment we entered the park. The scent of osmanthus came in waves, drifting in and out with the wind, lingering faintly around us. At those times, my grandfather spoke very little. We walked slowly and breathed deeply.

When winter arrived, the plum blossoms bloomed. The trees, once full of green leaves, shed them without notice, and then, on some cold morning, burst into pink and pale white blossoms all over their bare branches. When the breeze passed through, petals spun as they fell, scattering across the withered grass like a spill of soft-colored paint. I always wanted to pick them up, but my grandfather said, “Let them lie there. They’re a gift from the tree to the earth.”

I thought my grandfather loved flowers most, but that wasn’t true. Each time before we left, he led me past the flowers and brought me to a quiet corner of the park. There stood a single pine tree. Tall and upright. Dark green needles layered upon one another.

My grandfather patted the rough bark and said to me, “Look. Spring comes and autumn goes, flowers bloom and fall. All the liveliness belongs to them. But this pine tree stays the same. Green in summer, green in winter; the same in the rain, the same in the sunshine.”

“But Grandpa,” ten-year-old me asked, puzzled, “if it looks the same all the time, isn’t it boring?”
He touched my head, the wrinkles at the corners of his eyes deepening as he smiled. “You’ll understand one day,” he said. “The world rises and falls, but there are always things like this pine tree that remain steadfast.”

I couldn’t understand why not changing mattered. I loved novelty, change, and exploration.

Years later, I left the small town with the park behind and went to university in the unfamiliar city of Guangzhou, then lived and worked in Shanghai, Beijing, and Hangzhou. I broke up with a boyfriend I had loved for six years. My mother passed away suddenly from a bout of influenza. Three pregnancies ended in three miscarriages. Many of the things I once believed I could rely on disappeared, one by one. On countless sleepless nights, I thought of my grandfather, and of the pine tree in the corner of the park.

This Qingming Festival, after returning to the town to visit the graves of my grandfather and my mother, I walked into the park. I went straight to the deepest corner. The pine tree was still there. It seemed a little thicker, a little stronger. I placed my hand on its rough bark, my grandfather’s words echoing in my ears. And I realized that perhaps what he showed me back then was not “unchangingness,” but how, amid the inevitable turning of seasons, wind, frost, rain, and snow, one learns to root life deeply and retain the strength to keep standing.

Huina Zheng either writes as an admission coach at work or writes for fun after work. She lives in Guangzhou, China, with her family.

Are you ready for resurgence

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Poetry by Darren C. Demaree 

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5/28/25

In this case

alienation means there

is only one American

& he is a boy

in a failing man’s body

& that means

we are all vulnerable

when he focuses

his attention on us.

Darren C. Demaree’s poems have appeared, or are scheduled to appear in numerous magazines/journals, including Hotel Amerika, Diode, North American Review, New Letters, Diagram, and the Colorado Review. He is the author of twenty-three poetry collections, most recently ‘So Much More’ (November 2024, Harbor Editions). He is the Editor in Chief of the Best of the Net Anthology and Managing Editor of Ovenbird Poetry. He is currently living and writing in Columbus, Ohio with his wife and children.

Flash fiction by Joyce Bingham

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Eight Times Table

Milly is eight, x1=8, she grips my hand as she skips along, delighted I am taking her to school, a rare occasion for us both. One for her to celebrate and for me to pretend everything is normal. As they touch the ground, I hope my shoes produce roots snaking down into the cracks between the eight, x2=16 paving stones. I’m certain I will crack through into the earth below, to slow down the inevitable, but we walk unhindered, each step of my reluctant elephant-weight legs taking me nearer to school.

Mrs Wilson has requested to see me. It’ll be a rush to get to work, for me to start the day disgruntled after an audience with the Headmistress.

The bubble in my stomach grows; I swallow it down, push it from my thoughts. I made sure my bladder was empty before we set out and forsook my usual large cup of coffee, eight, x 3=24 fluid ounces for a slurp of water.

I was eight, and Mrs Wilson, eight, x4 =32 then, when she made the bubble burst and the hot spurt ran down my goose-pimpled leg, the yellow stripe of shame on my knee-length white sock.

My mortification flickers, replaying unbidden in stress. It pounds its way into my elephant steps, when I should be enjoying taking Milly to school as she dances on gazelle legs and embracing her chatter about unicorns and Barbies.

Every day, the itch of disgrace squirms in my head. Dishonour waits for me at work and segues into reports; it hides under folders and pops up in coffee breaks.

Eight then, x5= forty now.

I leave Milly with her friends in the playground to await the bell and climb the eight, x6=48, steps up the visitor’s entrance to the head’s office. The weight of my elephant feet thunders down on the sandstone steps, hollowed by time and weeping. My heavy legs don’t stop me, no matter how much I will them to. I want there to be more steps, everlasting steps like the Stairmaster.

Mrs Wilson appears at the door. She welcomes me by name and I listen to her eight, x7=56 words, but they don’t sink in. The walls of my bladder ripple and nerves sing as I clench my pelvic floor.

She looks as old as she did then. She must be eight x8= sixty-four now. How can she be shorter than me when she was once a Siberian tiger towering over my humiliation?

Don’t ask me to recite it, don’t ask me, don’t ask me.

Yes, she says, a joy to teach, absorbing every number.

My voice shakes as I repeat her words, learning them by rote, eight, x9=72.

She looks at me with her feral cat-eyes, her carnivore breath releasing in puffs through her fangs.

Mrs Wilson knows I struggled; she knows it; she knows it.

Eight, x10=80. I consume her words, keeping them inside—pushing them up against my wall of hurt.

We have a special advanced class we want her to join. Milly, she will not have my fate.

Breathe in slowly for eight, x11=88 times table. She shakes my hand and I absorb the chalk dust deep inside her, powder-dry, stained with the smell of school dinners. The cabbage rotting below the surface, with an aftertaste of sweet custard.

Bells ring, the shriek of children crescendos, then the white noise of times tables chants in my ears. Plimsole rubber corridors surrounded by boxes of sound, humming and promising futures.

I am dismissed; I am dismissed; I am dismissed.

Outside her office, a line of unruly chairs waits, a faint touch of urine and vomit in the air. I pause to still my quivering hands and to keep my bladder under control.

Hold on, hold on, hold on.

Eight, x12=96, minutes to get to work. I use my gazelle legs to get away.

Joyce Bingham is a Scottish writer, living in the North-West of England, whose work has appeared in publications such as Flash Frog, WestWord, Molotov Cocktail, Bending Genres, and Ghost Parachute. When she’s not writing, she puts her green fingers to use as a plant whisperer and Venus fly trap wrangler.

Two micro fictions by Matthew Jakubowski

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This kind of freedom

On what epidemiologists would later mark as the single deadliest day of the early 21st Century in America, Sophie was drinking gin and tonics and dozing off by the pool at the place in the Poconos she was housesitting  for three nights for three hundred bucks. It had six bedrooms and three bathrooms. The couple who owned it had left Sophie a fully stocked bar and fridge. No pets to care for. A security system. All the entertainment subscriptions. A hundred-dollar Visa gift card to order takeout, plus a chest freezer in the garage with pizza, ice cream, mac ’n cheese, and dumplings. 

Two years later, alone in her small West Philly apartment with long Covid, which her health insurer wouldn’t acknowledge as a real thing, eating eighty-four cent ramen that used to cost thirty-two, hoping her shitty older brother who lived across the city in their dead parents’ house was, at the very least, worried about her sometimes, Sophie remembered what the tan handsome husband  had said years ago outside that huge empty house the day he and his wife got back from one of their many pandemic getaways: “We have a such a beautiful country! It’s important for us all to get out and see it, you know? I really hope you get to someday, when you’ve earned this kind of freedom for yourself.”


Alight, Astray

The six of us skipped school and found ourselves tip-toeing east on the sidewalk trash like each bit was a stepping stone. Downtown we observed Mr. Tuesday trying to witch someone’s finances with angry moths and diseased cats, saw him batting at smoke-and-mirror joy with tentacles and tongs, gnashing despair between his teeth. It was hard not to stare as he let the day flog him and his colleagues chained to the feet of another Tuesday, those who live to keep the wealth-floated buoyant, who walk backwards slowly each morning to the elevator the chair and desk to present face present teeth present the daily stagecraft of the unspoken echoing within. We stole a fancy lunch and saw the sky not wondering at all if a thing like Tuesday was happening, or if paths lead into parking garage shadows, the salvation of sleep, or the families in apartments all day together chewing one another’s loneliness. My skin sucked no emotion from what we saw, but as we escaped it, like tourists, I felt absolutely elated to know none of us would ever work downtown. The wind left more trash behind us. We collapsed on our front steps. Someone smashed the last bottle. Everyone cheered. I dropped a cigarette to burn the path we’d taken.

Matthew Jakubowski is a multi-genre writer based in West Philadelphia. His work is forthcoming from Doric Literary and his flash fiction appears in Gone Lawn, Scaffold Lit, JAKE, Variant Lit, and the Best Microfiction anthology. He’s online at www.mattjakubowski.com/about. 

Creative nonfiction by Karen Baumgart

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And Now, for the Final Act, Watch Him Choose the Circus

Sometimes, Trista likes to say last year, when I was seven, my father ran away with the circus. She enjoys the bald harshness of this statement, the discomfort it causes, the clumsy grasping for a suitable response. Of course, she knows it sounds like he’s a performer, not just the person who travels ahead of the circus, putting up posters in shop windows; his days of daring bicycle stunts under the big top are long past. The sting of his leaving has almost scabbed over now, crusted layers of hurt sloughing from shiny pink skin underneath.

* * * * *

Two weeks after her fifth birthday, Trista brings home her kindergarten class photo, rows of gappy smiles beaming at an unseen photographer. She remembers how they’d been told to yell out stinky feet, giggling and pulling faces until their teacher said that’s enough now, this isn’t a zoo! In the picture, her own feet are clad in cheap brown sneakers, nestled amongst the other girls’ candy-pink ones, unmistakeably wrong, as though someone has placed a puzzle piece upside down between the right-side-up ones. Even at five, Trista forgives her father, understanding he simply chose shoes that wouldn’t show the dirt.

* * * * *

Hospital tags swinging around bird-bone wrists, Trista curls inward as her father boasts about her exam results. She wishes he wouldn’t; Year 9 doesn’t even matter, does it? Nothing does, not when she’s wearing this new body she doesn’t recognise: torso puffy, limbs dangling like toothpicks, an ugly doll whose stuffing has been forced back into all the wrong places. Trista will return to the hospital tomorrow; this is just weekend leave to visit her father. A test, the psychiatrist had said, to see if you can eat in a stressful environment. As she watches her father spin the tags on her wrists so only the band is visible, shame wraps iron fingers around her ribs. 

* * * * *

It’s Christmas season, and that means pfeffernüsse and chocolate-covered marzipan and plump cherries from roadside fruit-sellers. Trista’s tiny, dimpled fists swing at her sides as she toddles after her father and his treats; she imagines herself following breadcrumb trails in a gingerbread forest, like in the stories he reads to her. (In fairy tales, Christmas is always in the wintertime, so different to their Australian Christmases). A plate of festive snacks between them, Trista’s father speaks about his boyhood in a faraway land with topsy-turvy seasons, how he’d begun to learn circus tricks, balancing chairs and tables, and—eventually—riding a bicycle around the inner surface of a giant wooden sphere.    

* * * * *

Trista is twenty-five when her father falls ill, his body finally failing him at a time when she is reluctantly beginning to take care of her own. Every few weeks, she brings her little girl on the four-hour bus ride to his home, where she speaks gently with his new wife, feeds him small bites of soft-boiled egg. The storm-grey of his eyes has leached away, irises filling with liquid from the sea’s edges, barely a colour at all. Later, they bathe his limbs, terry‑towelling strokes as careful as a whispered conversation. Oddly, his fading is a damp stone in her lungs; surely, she should feel relieved to know he is leaving her for the last time? He dozes fitfully while his granddaughter skips around a living-room she won’t remember.

* * * * *

Next to Trista’s bed, there is always a lopsided tower of books. She wanders through many stories at once, narratives weaving and twirling, yet magically distinct in her six-year-old mind. Sometimes, upon waking, she finds her father unexpectedly home, after months of travelling with the circus. Trista shows him her bedside stack, and he laughs, so proud because he, too, is a voracious reader. Despite their firm corners, her beloved books wrap her in the tender embrace of well-worn pages (even later, when he chooses the circus after all).

Karen Baumgart lives in Australia and adores beautiful quotes, pink things, cats, and chai lattes. She loves working in human services policy, especially when it enables marginalised people to have a voice. Karen used to be an English teacher and is quite certain that writing is, indeed, the best therapy.

Instagram: @miss.cake.girl

Bluesky: @cake-girl.bsky.social

Twitter / X: @cake_girl__

Resurgence (2)

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Micro fiction by Betty Stanton

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Sixth Street

The houses on Sixth Street are identical, white teeth in a jaw that never closes. Their lawns are shaved to the same length, sprinklers hissing like snakes. Windows stay shut, blinds tilted just enough to catch light, never enough to reveal who is watching.

The cars feed first. Four-wheeled monsters, they roar down the pavement, chewing asphalt, spilling their drivers into the waiting mouths of houses. Doors slam, lights extinguish, and the street swallows them whole. By morning, only silence remains.

The world shifts outside, but Sixth Street does not. It runs in circles, refusing to escape. Neighbors pass one another with blurred faces, as if erased by the same hand that drew the cul-de-sac. Sometimes a door shrieks. Sometimes a window cracks. But most days the silence grows fat and heavy, pressing against every ribcage.

Inside, the storm builds. It pounds to get out, but rebellion here is devoured as quickly as it appears. A glass shattered on the driveway is gone by morning, ground into gravel by the street’s slow tongue. A porchlight left burning too late is swallowed by dawn. Slammed doors are absorbed into the endless hum of siding and shingles.

Only human connections resist for a moment. A hand brushing a cheek in the dark. A smile across a crowded room. A knee pressed against another knee beneath the table. These small gestures glow like embers. 

Every touch is rebellion. 

Betty Stanton (she/her) is a Pushcart nominated writer who lives and works in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in various journals and collections and has been included in various anthologies. She is currently on the editorial board of Ivo Review. @fadingbetty.bsky.social

Creative nonfiction by Sumitra Singam

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Driving To the Next Thing While Neurodiverse

Is actually getting to the car, because even though the car is right there, that’s not the way we usually walk to the car, so we’ve got to go back to where we would have normally started from. And then we’ve got to count the steps. And we’ve also got to count the number of carriages on the train going past, and then we’ve got to decide whether the weed growing from the crack between the footpath and the building is a dandelion flower or not, and is that your favourite yellow, Amma, or is it a different yellow?

And saying we’ll be late for the next thing is not an answer to the yellow question, so we might have to look up shades of yellow on the phone just to check.

And we might have to just walk back a bit, not the whole way, because Amma you know you aren’t supposed to touch the car first, so we have to walk back just a bit.

And we might have to get the snack and drink bottle from the boot of the car, but that’s okay Amma, I can just reach into the boot over the back seat and grab it, but you’ve got to stop moving the car because that would be dangerous.

And we might have to stop at the shop because we bought the wrong brand of crackers, and these ones taste all wrong, the barbecue flavour is a bit too spicy on these ones and that makes them gross, Amma.

And saying we’ll be late to the next thing is not an answer to the cracker question, so we might have to stop at the shops just to sort that one out.

And while we’re at the shops, we could also get a large bag of food colouring, sugar and E numbers for an alternative snack because actually I don’t feel like crackers anymore.

And well, if we’re not getting lollies then you’re not getting any TV tonight, Amma, because that’s what happens when you say no to something I want you to do.

And you can’t just walk off and leave me in the shop, Amma, because that’s abandoning your child.

And saying we’ll be late to the next thing is not an answer to the lolly question, and anyway, I don’t care about the next thing even though I begged you to book me in for a whole week.

And the floor of the supermarket is actually quite cool, and the noises aren’t as loud, and the lights are not as bright, so maybe we can hang here for a bit looking at the muesli bars.

And yes, Amma, I am a bit nervous about the next thing because it is new and I don’t like new things.

And yes, Amma, I guess we could get a muesli bar for a snack and we could drive there now, and it might be okay if you come in with me.

And the car is cool, and quiet, and we pick “Sounds of Nature” and listen to the wind and the rain, and breathe in and breathe out. And we drive to the next thing.

Sumitra Singam is a queer, neurodiverse Malaysian-Indian-Australian coconut who writes in Naarm/Melbourne. Her work has been published widely, nominated for a number of Best Of anthologies, and was selected for BSF 2025. She works as a psychiatrist and trauma therapist and runs workshops on how to write trauma safely, and the Yeah Nah reading series. She’ll be the one in the kitchen making chai (where’s your cardamom?). You can find her and her other publication credits on Bluesky: @pleomorphic2 & sumitrasingam.squarespace.com

Poetry by Kevin A. Risner

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Kevin A. Risner is a product of Ohio. He is the author of Do Us a Favor (Variant Literature, 2021). He has two collections forthcoming: It’s Easy To Lose Your Breath (Match Factory Editions, 2026) and There’s No Future Where We Don’t Have Fire (Unsolicited Press, 2027). His work has been published by multiple journals, online and in print.

Flash fiction by Madeleine Armstrong

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Monday Morning, 9:05am Outside Reproductive Choices, South London

Edith unfolded her garden chair and settled in. She had her Thermos, raincoat and book – it might be a long day.

            The first woman hurried inside alone, head down, heels rat-a-tatting. Edith’s fingers twitched on the paperback, but she stilled, knowing she wasn’t needed yet.

            A few minutes later another woman appeared, tear creased, leaning on a man. Edith waited.

            The door was swinging shut when they turned up, with their filthy placards and Virgin Mary, like she wasn’t a sexual assault victim.  

            Behind them lurked a lone girl, slowing, glancing from the protestors to the clinic door, her face frozen. She couldn’t be more than twenty. Edith stood, the chair creaking as loud as her knees.

            “Murderer,” one protestor shouted at the girl.

            “Mummy,” another called, high pitched.

            The girl looked like she might turn and run.

            Edith hurried over, as fast as she could with her arthritic hip. The girl flinched, but Edith made a shooing motion at the protestors. The two women fell into step together. Edith tried to stay calm, despite the hitch of the girl’s sobs and the insults flung as casually as firecrackers.

            When it was too hard Edith thought of her son, Callum, forced into her then snatched away, red faced and squalling, without her having any say.

            Who knew what had happened to him.

            And this poor girl. Who knew what had happened to her.

A Pushcart Prize-nominated author, Madeleine has won the Hammond House short story prize, and been published in mags including Bunker Squirrel, Hooghly Review, Literary Garage, Micromance, Punk Noir, Trash Cat, Underbelly, Waffle Fried and WestWord. She’s a journalist and runner, and lives in London. Twitter/X @Madeleine_write; Bluesky @madeleinewrite.bsky.social

Flash fiction by Mario Senzale

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The bay

The whole town was at the tracks. Men, women, children, dogs. The rules were simple. The more you bet, the better the horse. A thousand dollars bought you a thoroughbred. A hundred dollars bought you a nag. Ten dollars bought you the bay. Legs bent. Coat dull. Every wrinkle counted years of slog. The man on him, thin, sun-darkened, old.

The rich came in bright cars. They bet thousands on stallions. The poor came on foot. They pooled their coins. Ten bucks. 

The mayor spoke. Said every man risked what he could afford. Fair. Maybe this would be the day. The people clapped. The gun went off.

The fine horses broke like arrows. Rising dust. The bay dragged slowly. Broken trot. Children laughed. A man shouted to pull him off. The jockey hit him. Once. Then another. Then three more. The whip cracked across his face. It caught one eye. Blood.

The bay screamed. He reared. Struck the man on his back. Tried to throw him off. Tried to throw the world off. Blood ran from his eye in thick lines. He ran. Full-speed gallop. Every step a hammer. Every breath fire. The crowd went mute. The bay passed one horse. Then another. Then three more. The rich stood pale. The jockey crouched.  

The favorite stayed ahead, foaming. The bay surged. Fury given legs. His neck stretched long. His hooves barely touched ground. 

The referee raised his pistol for the finish. The shot cracked.

The mayor spoke about justice. About fairness. The jockey stayed beside the bay, watching the blood soak into the earth. The bay kept moving. Running on his side in the dirt. Hooves churning dust, neck stretched forward, one good eye fixed ahead. Another shot. 

Mario Senzale is a South American writer and researcher currently living in Indianapolis, Indiana, USA. His latest pieces have been accepted for publication in Expat Press, Lovecraftiana, Cryptic Frog Magazine, and The Journal of Experimental Fiction.

Flash fiction by Alison Wassell 

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A Safe Space

Sometimes life gets too much for Michael Marsden, so when he points at the space under the classroom sink and asks if he can get into it, Miss Cathcart sees no reason to say no. It seems a reasonable request, something her chronically anxious cat might do to avoid an unexpected visitor, or the vacuum cleaner, or the application of his flea treatment. 

“If that’s where you feel you need to be, it’s fine by me,” she says, so he squeezes in. Michael’s a big boy for his age, and only just fits, but he seems happy enough, curled up in the foetal position, so she leaves him to it while she talks about floating and sinking. 

She has taught this lesson so many times she could do it in her sleep. The children gather around her. A selection of objects surrounds a half-full fish tank of water on the table. Which objects will plummet to the bottom of the tank? Which ones will stay on the surface? Why do some things float while others sink? Is it to do with what they’re made of, how big they are, or how heavy?

The children love it, mainly because there’s a strong possibility that someone will get wet. Miss Cathcart draws out all the correct language from them; prediction, hypothesis, volume, density, particles. These words aren’t in the infant curriculum, but she knows the children enjoy bamboozling their parents with them. Michael remains tucked in his hideaway, but she can tell he’s listening. From time to time he sticks out his head, craning his neck to see, but she’s careful not to catch his eye, confident that he will emerge when he’s ready.

As Lucas Watson is predicting that a pebble will float, and the rest of the class is telling him he’s wrong in no uncertain terms, The Head walks in unannounced, as has become her habit. Miss Cathcart feels her heart sinking like a stone, but she forces her face into its brightest smile and, in her best teacher voice, reminds the children to put their hands up when they want to speak. 

But The Head has no interest in the lesson. Not now she’s noticed Michael Marsden. The Head has no truck with children being where they need to be. As far as she is concerned, Michael Marsden needs to be cross-legged on the carpet with his classmates, and anything else is downright disobedience.  Like an unsympathetic midwife she yanks him from his safe space. He cowers on the carpet, his hands over his ears, and rocks backwards and forwards. The Head draws Miss Cathcart aside. 

“We’ll discuss this later,” she says, before clip-clopping away on her too-high heels.

“Are you in trouble, Miss?” someone asks.

“I always seem to be in trouble, lately,” Miss Cathcart says. 

Maybe it’s to do with what she’s made of. Maybe someone stronger would float above it all with a featherlight heart. But these days Miss Cathcart feels kitten weak. At the end of the school day, when the children have been waved off, she opens her cupboard door and crawls into the space at the bottom where she’s recently installed a comfortable cushion. Pulling the door closed, she curls up and cries for herself, for Michael Marsden, and for all the other children she hasn’t been able to save.

Alison Wassell is a writer of flash and micro fiction from Merseyside, UK. Her work has been published by Fictive Dream, Does It Have Pockets, South Florida Poetry Journal, The Bridport Prize and elsewhere.

Micro fiction by Pam Avoledo

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The World’s Largest Rubber Band Ball

Laura fishes rubber bands out of  drawers and steals them from counters of the stores. She likes the faded ones best, likes how they stretch. She wraps them  for hours and hours in her backyard. The rubber band ball grows past the fence.  She pushes and pulls the rubber band against her skin, waiting for the snap and adds another strand. 

The rubber band ball is at least a ton, she estimates. She rolls it on her trailer into town at the mayor’s request. The mayor promises she can visit it whenever she wants. She smiles with the mayor  in a photo for the newspaper and stands with it at the city fair, helping children choose their favorite color and reach as high as they can. She pushes and pulls the rubber band against her skin, waiting for the snap and adds another strand. 

The giant rubber band ball, with its rainbow stripes, sits on its metal pedestal right off the highway. There’s a parade every year on the last weekend of July. People dress as jars, spoon holders and tripods. A plaque boasts the world record. The high school band marches on the main street, playing a song dedicated to it as Laura stands by her creation, opening the festival. She pushes and pulls the rubber band against her skin, waiting for the snap and adds another strand. 

Pam Avoledo’s work can be found at pamavoledo.com. 

Flash fiction by Oliver Reimers

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The Inevitable Truth of the California Dream

You’re seven years old at a campsite when you try to pick the golden poppy.

“Don’t do that,” your mother says before your fingers close around the stem. “You can’t do that in California.”

For the past week, all you’ve been able to do is watch a video of a piano teacher play “Joshua Fought the Battle of Jericho” from Piano Adventures 3A. She messes up at the thirty second mark but does not edit it out. She does not do a retake. It is a fifty-three second piece. Her right hand falters after the error. How humiliating to make a mistake on a song from Piano Adventures 3A.

Even though you can’t bring yourself to clip your nails or wash your face, you are in the car with Saraya, hurdling seventy miles per hour up I-80 towards Reno. She is made up pretty with black eyeliner that looks like kohl, and you think you would like to have your brain stirred up and removed through your nose. “There’s a comedian tonight,” Saraya says. “He finally broke out of New York.”

Between California and Reno, there is nothing but hills and the dimmest evergreens you’ve ever seen. A pulped skunk sticks to the side of the road. A woman parks her car to scrape it off.

“I’ve always wanted to be a comedian,” Saraya says, “but I’m not funny.” Even her attempts at self-deprecation are pathetic.

This trip was supposed to cheer you up, but it is taking everything not to throw yourself out of the car and join the skunk.

It would have taken less than a minute to rerecord the video.

The car stutters. A rock skitters behind it onto the empty road. “That wasn’t an animal, was it?” Saraya says. A quarter mile ahead, a lone sign welcomes you to Nevada. The car jumps. There’s a hiss. Saraya jerks the wheel. You hope she will swerve left and leave the two of you steaming in a ditch, but she swerves right, and you skid across the dirt and weeds until the brakes kick in and you bang into the dashboard.

You get out of the car.

Neither of you are hurt. Saraya kneels by the popped tire and prods it for a nail.

Maybe it was the seventh time she’d restarted the video. Maybe it had taken hours. Maybe she’d watched her finger move astray, knowing it was fate, and accepted that no matter what she did, her pinky was always destined to strike that B.

On each side of the border sign, there is a golden poppy. Saraya curses behind you. You walk to the first poppy reach down, then remember. You step past the sign. Welcome to Nevada.

Beneath your fingers, the stem snaps so easily.

Oliver Reimers (he/him) is a writer from Sacramento, California. His work has been featured in Prime Number Magazine, One Teen Story, Gold Man Review, and Main Squeeze Literary Magazine. His portfolio of short stories received a national honorable mention from the 2024 Scholastic Arts and Writing Awards.