#flash nonfiction

[claybefree]

Tulip Poplar

Sorrow is my own yard

where the new grass

flames as it has flamed

often before but not

with the cold fire

that closes round me this year

William Carlos Williams- The Widow’s Lament in Springtime

Every spring I have to ask for the name again. Tulip poplar, Saucer Magnolia, something like that, you’d think I wouldn’t be surprised by her anymore. Whereas last week empty arms cast veins of silhouettes across a cold carpet of previous year's leaves, today I’m able to come home from a long day of work, and face her canopy of flowers, half open like teacups, and that is miraculous news. I take it as further evidence that after two years the sucking wound in my chest has finally closed.

Each March was a celebration, a maelstrom of pink hung beneath the blue, pinks so dark along thick shouldered leaves, almost purple, and then bleeding out rapidly to porcelain white, there was no ignoring it. I notched one end of an eight foot pallet we brought home into the main cluster of stems, six feet up and propped the other end with a door. Of course the kids never climbed into the blossoms, but we did.

Now everyone’s gone but me and the whole yard creeps more every year, abandoned gardens filled with weeds crawling out of their beds, privet’s relentless march choking everything in between. A cold wind brushes the tulip against the rafter tails outside my bedroom, waking me. Limbs resting on roof shingles, a stitch of yellow rope left from a swing I hung years ago cut deep into the bark like a tourniquet. Her blooms will turn brown and slimy and clog the already rusted gutters. Neither tree nor house belong to me but as far as I’m concerned, I’m the steward of both, for now.

So I spend sixty dollars that I do not have on a bright orange pole saw from Lowes which I run up into underbelly pierced with morning light, trying not to focus on saw teeth tearing past bark into white flesh, or sap raining onto my cheekbones. I’m grateful for the strength I have in my arms for this work today but I worry I got started too late in the season and the half dozen or more wounds I’ve left will become infected and kill her. Despite all this I work for the better part of a morning, and pile up branches tall as me in the burn pit in the middle of the yard. In the fall I’ll light it up and likely scare the new neighbors. The blossoms lining the crooked pile go for broke and open their white faces wide to the sun.

The days are consistently warm enough and the new tires on my motorcycle beg to be chewed up, but my heart’s not in it. Not yet. One morning soon I’ll blast out 64 sometime before eight thirty, get away from the Florida interlopers that keep trying to kill me and hit the Blue Ridge Parkway and adjacent counties on this side of the mountain- Nelson, Rockbridge and Amherst.

The best road out there is also the most dangerous, and yet with half a dozen ways up to the Parkway, I still find myself on route 56 more often than not. A million years ago I guess, before someone gave it a name, the Tye river cut a gorge out of the mountains, twisting impossibly through the rocks and at some point homesteaders ran a road alongside and named that 56. Highly technical, it’s not the curves that will dump me. Every rental cabin and vacation home has a driveway cut into the shale and sandstone hills which provide, after every good rain, an opportunity for gravel to spill out on the tarmac. If I’m not on top of my game that’s what will kill me.

But before all that, when it breaks off from the Rockfish Valley highway, 56 passes through a couple thousand acres of farmland on one side, and the Tye river on the other. For some reason I think a good bit about the people who work that land. Last year the fields appeared to be left fallow, two years previous, in the fall, thousands of pumpkins were left scattered and rotting on the vine, collapsing into orange pulp. All I could think was that the pumpkin patch contract fell through.

I want to find the old timers and see if anyone will talk to me about August 1969, when Hurricane Camille dumped two foot of water in three hours and drowned birds in trees. When the Tye jumped its banks, broke the back of every bridge that dared cross it and cut the census of Massies Mill nearly in half.

Sometimes I see the pictures they post and get jealous of my friends who travel abroad, but I’ve decided what I need is to ride a motorcycle entirely too fast through the middle of some fields in Nelson county every three months and do that in perpetuity. I’ve been in that valley headed home late in the day with the sun low under the clouds turning everything golden, worried that I’m too far out. I’ve encountered the Tye river in a spring flood, washing across 56 nearly to the point where I had to turn back and find another route. I’ve ridden it half frozen in a driving rain, tucked behind the fairing with a mother of three on the back seat holding onto me for warmth.

Back in 2022, at my lowest, whenever I talked about tulip flowers or graveyard moss carried home from a chapel where it crosses over the mountain and heads down toward Vesuvius, my closest friends would encourage me to move out. They’d point to the marks on the door casing in the kitchen chronicling each child’s growth, five years worth, both hers and mine, and yeah, I got it. My argument was I’d have to find something else just like it- a shed for my tools, a garage for my bikes, somewhere to write. I dunno, man, I would say, it just feels like I belong here.

One of these days, instead of waving to them on their harvesters, I’m gonna pull over and talk to one of these guys. Yeah me, a wild eyed weirdo biker from the city rambling on about something I don’t know if I could even put into words. The idea of the two of us having a shared language with a place, a connection, whether it be on a tractor or a motorcycle, bound by both sorrow and joy. The connection running deeper because you’ve seen it flood, seen it bake, seen it come alive every year in a blaze of green.

Clay Blancett, 2024

[shannonpurdyjones]

Welcome to my official author blog! I am a queer writer and bookseller interested in the messiness of human history and the ways in which we can glimpse slivers of truth and beauty through the lens of even the darkest times. If you like sexy stories about women and queer people behaving badly and making terrible decisions in historical settings, this is the place for you.

My current project is Wyrd Weaving, an historical fantasy novel set in early 800s Scandinavia. I also attempt short fiction, poetry, and creative nonfiction as the mood strikes me.

Because the novel's plot and magic system is steeped heavily in spinning and weaving of early medieval Europe, I post about textile history and fiber arts too. I also co-own a really cool indy bookshop.

Published works to date:

A Wild Litany of Nightmare and Lament: a Substack Historical Fantasy Newsletter

The Honeysuckle Weave (horror/dark fantasy, weaving, Appalachian gothic short story featured in issue 20 of Grim and Gilded-also now on Substack)

Eggs (flash essay on motherhood, death, and moths, featured in Hippocampus Magazine July/August 2024)

[agirlnamedbone]

C.D. Wright (The Poet, the Lion, Talking Pictures, El Farolito, a Wedding in St. Roch, the Big Box Store, the Warp in the Mirror, Spring, Midnights, Fire & All, 2016)

[the-greatest-fool]

Hi valentine,

Thanks for the chocolates. Thanks for noticing I was missing last night. Thanks for the hugs. Thanks for letting me vent. Thanks for always looking out for me. Thanks for being a friend.

Thanks for all of this, even though we’re just two guys with gross roommates with girlfriends who annoy us. And I know you do all this just because we’re friends. I know that the idea of us is just a stupid fantasy on my part and impossible, maybe even wrong or weird, to you. But I love this stupid dream.

Because in my sleep, I find myself in red diner seats inexplicably placed in the middle of one of those old abandoned malls, and even more inexplicably staffed by a singular Japanese waitress who seems to exist only to test my memory of the language. In my heterotopic hallucination, who else holds me close, pushes me against the seat, and makes me remember what it’s like to be loved? Who else reteaches my lips to accept their fate, that they are best wedded to another pair? We let go, I can breathe, and your face is, as always, beautifully blushing, like a gala apple.

It’s you.

[devinsturk]

a 50-word micro essay on trans rage by Devin S. Turk

[stormcellarmag]

WINNERS! of the 2023 Force Majeure Flash Contest — full announcement: https://wp.me/p1tViT-19z

1st Prize "Pre-Elegy for My Sister" by Whitney Koo 

2nd Prize "A Brief World" by Uyen P. Dang  2nd Prize "Bones" by Nathan Long 

honorable mentions: "Garden Statues" by Kendall Morris, "Midnight Zone" by Caleb Tankersley, and "Taint" by Veeda Khan.

[vlad-theimplier]

I-93 @ I-95: A True Story

The minivan crawls, then swerves, jamming its fender into a putative gap in traffic. Horns greet the maneuver, but no one makes an editorial projectile of their Dunks. "Do You Follow Jesus This Close?" reads the bumper sticker next to the NH plate. Well, if He wedged his way into a mile-long line of cars six inches before the ramp splits off, I'd run Him off the goddamn road.

[localstinkbug07]

The Ache of October

I remember going to grandma’s house in the ache of October. Her house was the centerpiece between two other neighbors that lay about an acre to the right and left of her house. Down the road was the beating heart of her town, and directly across, straight from their driveway, was a subdivision. Nowadays, we sometimes pull into the subdivision, circle around, and stop at the stop sign to look at her house. We like to see what the new owners have done with it, like the fence they added, or the new coat of paint they applied. We often do this until a car pulls up behind us and we have to turn out.

I walked in, where my parents were dropping me off for the night. I was about 7 or 8. My parents usually stayed a few hours before they would hug me goodbye, and let me stay. They would talk to my grandparents, while Wheel of Fortune would play in the background. Sometimes, in a lull of conversation, we would all try to guess the words together. Most often though, my grandma would duck out of small talk to smoke.

She would smoke Basic brand cigarettes, specifically the blue pack, in a flip top box. I loved to follow her, and talk to her, while she sat in the stairwell of their back door entrance, which conjugated with their basement stairs. She would always tell me to stand at the bottom of the stairs, while she sat up on the top step of the three - stair - staircase, so that the smoke wouldn’t hurt my lungs as much.

However, that night, she decided that she wanted to smoke outside. I followed her, and sat with her in the plastic chairs that they had on their back porch. I sat down in my chair, and she immediately protested. She told me to scoot my chair over, so that the smoke wouldn’t reach me. I told her that it was hot inside. She said that’s why she came outside to smoke. I said how she should have a jacket on, because the weather is going to be colder now. She said she needed the cool, with all of us in the living room. She took a drag and I had watched her cigarette bleed smoke before it would flutter, and ash. She looked at the sky, and back at me, and asked what I was thinking about. I asked her if she would ever stop smoking. I didn’t know if I could ask this. She had been relatively quiet tonight. I wasn’t even sure if she wanted to talk, let alone feel cornered for this, and besides, it was a nice, night. I really shouldn’t pry on such a nice night. Considerately, though, she took the time to think about my question. Acting as if she had any other choice but to confess her “no” to me — like a sin.

She said she didn’t think she ever would. She said she had been smoking since she was 16. That’s just what she’s always known. She doesn’t look at me while she says any of this. So I looked away, back at the swallowing sky. The breeze turned, and I was now downwind of the smoke. She took my hand in hers to keep me balanced, as I moved my chair to sit on the opposite side of her. The conversation stopped after that, and she put out her cigarette

We melted back into the comfort of guessing Wheel of Fortune prompts. I went home on Sunday night. Once I got in the car, the first thing my mother said was that I reeked of cigarettes. She said that I always came back 'smelling like grandma's house' after a night spent there.

I knew in that moment that I loved her regardless.

Even now, when we sit in the subdivision across from her house, void of the smoke, and ash that took her lungs, and her — I still love her.

Cigarettes and all, I still love her.

[matildazq]

Write the Year 2024—Week 36: Night Popcorn

The Poets & Writers CNF prompt from this week yielded this. At least it’s not Vogon poetry again. Title: Night PopcornWC: 500 The stove was ten feet from my bedroom door. Less than that when I moved from the boys’ room near the front of the house to the one off the kitchen that I shared uneasily with a sister. It would start with the snick of the light above the stove. Black knob on a harvest…

[academyoftheheartandmind]

Too Sweet

By Meenakshi Bhatt A few years ago, I came across a YouTube channel that dealt with elegant dressing. I was trying to improve several aspects of my life and my dressing sense was one of those aspects. Though I watched several of the creator’s videos, I did not form a good impression of her. To me, her speech seemed too saccharine-sweet and her manner inauthentic. I followed her channel for a…

[howtopretendtobeawriter]

What Awaits on the Other Side

I stand now at a precipice, uneasy feet reluctant to peel away from that final inch of familiar ground as I stare over the edge. That last little bit of once-was, comfortable only in its familiarity. I had been standing here in one spot for so long that it almost began to feel safe, that this is where I was meant to be. But it was not the warmth of home that I felt, it was the pull of quicksand at my ankles, slowly dragging me down into the ease of stagnation. I know, as much as I am loathe to admit it, that things must change. That I cannot remain the way that I am forever, because I am so very tired of the way that I am.

I had been rotting for the better part of a decade now, quietly allowing the image of the man I had hoped to become wash away, picture perfect reduced into a murky, poorly defined mess. Entire days were eroding before me as I lay helplessly in my bed. Covers pulled up nearly to my ears, not because I was cold, but because they felt too heavy to peel away. This was not living, if anything it was the opposite. It was a slow way to die, sure, but it was a death all the same.

I knew that things needed to change, I wanted them to change more than I possibly put into words. But then, why was this so hard? Why did I feel that all too familiar swell of anxiety in the pit of my stomach? I was in no danger, still the urge to turn tail and run was almost overwhelming.

 It was just a door. It was just a handle, like so many others. Burnished steel covered with the fingerprints of all those people who had been far braver than I. Small reminders of their accomplishment, the very same one I had yet to make. I put my hand to it countless times, sucking in that same deep anticipatory breath, only to pull away in defeat. I’d be doing this ridiculous little song and dance for nearly fifteen minutes now, somehow managing to conjure up a new reason not to step past this seemingly insurmountable threshold.

Why bother? You know it won’t help.

It isn’t worth it.

YOU aren’t worth it.

But I was. I knew I was. I wouldn’t be here if I wasn’t, I wouldn’t be so afraid. They always say nothing worth doing is easy, which I had always believed to be a trite little platitude to pat yourself on the back with when you needed a little pick me up. But I had come to know that it was true.

“This is getting absurd, just open the goddamn door.” I whispered to myself, hushed under my breath, too worried about what some imagined reflection of myself on the other side of the door might think about me. There was no turning back now, I was tired of coming up with excuses for myself.

 One last moment of hesitation. Once more steeling my resolve, preparing myself for whatever manifestation of hell might await me. I grab the handle, and twist, fighting to keep my eyes from screwing shut. Whatever it may be, it surely can’t be any worse than what awaits me back in my bedroom.

Much to my shock, it was just a waiting room, like any other. Slightly-too-bright fluorescent bulbs bathing the sparsely decorated space in anti-septic lighting, a row of hard plastic chairs lining three of the four walls, faded carpeting, and a middle-aged woman with a kind face seated behind a chest high desk, idly tapping a pen against her chin in contemplation. She turned her head from the computer screen as I step in, offering me a smile. “Hello, how can I help you today?” Some nondescript pop song played on a radio I couldn’t see, just barely loud enough to drown out the electric hum of the building.

Maybe it was the timbre of her voice, soothing and kind, or maybe it was just the sudden realization that all my obsessive worrying had been, in fact, totally for nothing. I felt a great sense of relief wash over me. A weight lifted from my shoulders, allowing my posture to relax, my lungs finally able fully draw in air. “Y-Yes.” I said meekly, hands clumsily fumbling through my front pockets. “I have an appointment, with uh—” I stopped, casting my gaze downwards as I was able to extricate a folded piece of paper.

The woman didn’t say anything, made no room to interrupt or finish my sentence. I can only imagine she’d seen this, and so much worse, a million times before. She simply smiled, waiting patiently.

“I uh, I have an appointment with… Greg? Greg, I think.” I tried to smooth out the surface of the paper, edges frayed and torn, before placing it in front of her on the desk. My own lips curling into an awkward facsimile of a smile. I was trying to fake it and failing miserably.

This too, did not seem to phase the woman. With practiced ease she pulls the paper toward herself, quickly scanning it over the rim of her glasses. “Of course, Mr…?”

“Kouzoukas, Steven is fine though.”

“Steven, okay. Greg will be ready in just a few minutes. Why don’t you take a seat?”

“Sure, thank you.” I felt a shift of perspective as she said this, a profound change occurring within my own psyche in real time. A lifting of the veil, a liberation from that all-consuming fear that had tried so hard to convince me to leave.

This was not the personal apocalypse I had been so sure it would be. This was not an end of days or some terrifying beast to overcome. This was just my first time going to therapy.

I’d be fine.

[praktice]

My father tells me of another cluster of "his" mushrooms (wild enoki, Flammulina velutipes) growing in a grove near the house. He is surprised to have found them there and plans on bringing them home, to fry with onion and egg - something he eventually does at night when mom's already in bed and I am taking a shower. A whiff of onion in the air, and a nutty, fishy smell from the mushrooms will linger in the rooms of the house all throughout the night, a backdrop for our dreams.

So my dad tells me about the mushrooms he saw and I smile. I don't understand why he is so excited about them. He might have entered into some devilish contract with the mushrooms, he won't let any cluster of them grow by uncut. That's an interesting way to go. Sometimes I have so little will to lead my life that I think it would be nice to let some mushroom guide me and use my life. Really it's a desire for a god.

My brother doesn't understand dad's enthusiasm either. A certain nihilism has slid into our still young minds. Because what is there to do? Why anything? Caught up in the hopelessness of this transience that is the everyday, caught up in some despair.

The mushrooms are "my dad's" because he is probably the only person around who forages these. People usually go mushroom hunting in the summer and fall when the more noble specimens pop out of the ground. The mushrooms my dad collects are largely unrecognized and niche. I've never had them myself. Maybe it's the fishy smell that draws me away, maybe it's that I don't really care so a chemical imbalance. It's nice to see a cluster of orange mushrooms growing on a stump in a dark February forest but I am not very hungry for life anymore. Maybe next time I find them, I should ritualistically bring them home and prepare them the way my dad does. Maybe that's in 20 years and it will mean something to me then.

Now it's just something to write home about, home being "neither here nor there".

[shannonpurdyjones]

Flash Essay featured in Hippocampus Magazine!

I'm so excited about this piece finally finding its home! I was more nervous than usual about sending this one out, not least because it's more personal than my fiction, but for better or worse it's out in the wild! You can read "Eggs" in the July/August issue of Hippocampus Magazine.

[tribalephemeral]

The Set of Modernistic Identities

The Set of Modernistic Identities — Flash creative nonfiction and/or prose poem We get up and have coffee. We shower or not. Have that run or not. Turn on the TV or radio or other background noise. We drive to work or school or the grocery. We say ‘hi how are you’ and ‘im good’ and ‘thatll be seven fifty-one’ and ‘how was your weekend’. Occasionally we say ‘terrible’ instead of fine, but mostly…

[vampvice]

Car Sick

Years ago, I sat in the passenger seat across from my dad going back home from school. We stopped at a red light and I looked to my left and in the lane right next to us further there was something on the floor. We live in Florida so I think its fallen palm tree leaves, but no. It's an animal. A bloody animal. Its head is fully detached from its dark brown furry body. Its torso was completely open; you could see its organs. The color of its organs was burnt red. It could have been a dog, a cat or a fox but it was too far away and past the point of being recognizable. That lane was a green light and from my peripheral vision I saw a car steadily approaching. The car drove directly on top of the animal. The decapitated head was squashed even further. The car bounced a little like the animal's body was a speed bump. Its organs dispersed farther into the lane. Some of it got stuck to the car's rubber wheels. Blood splattered on the hot asphalt. I was eating a breakfast burrito at the time and just seeing the red peppers in it made my stomach curl. This image of the animal has always stuck with me. The deceased animal will never be buried or laid on the grass to become fertilizer for the flowers. Instead it will be run over again and again having to live the moment where it met its end even in death. Having its fur, blood and bones become debris for the road.  

written by Pierre Lopez

[babygalentine]

"rest"

(written for creative nonfiction workshop, january 29, 2023)

exercise: write a flash nonfiction piece, 500-1000 words

Boxes littered the dorm. I was packing things away, shoving them into odd positions to fit them into limited spaces. I had a separate tote, labeled “Plato’s Closet,” where I’d junked some items I’d forgotten about—old t-shirts, leggings with holes, some ugly headbands. I was in desperate need of money and tired of these forgotten things living with me. After organizing, I knew it was time to interrupt my packing to go make a buck out of my hoarding. 

Out to the car we went. The tote was heavy—I carried it pressed against my stomach for extra support. I regretted slinging my lanyard around my neck, keys and mace container biting into my diaphragm as the awkward tote rubbed against it. It was a relief when I got to the car, popped the trunk, and loaded it up. I took a deep breath before noticing my hands were wet—from brown fluid, nonetheless. I gave them a sniff. No smell. It was all over my sweater and wallet, too. I considered putting the sweater in the wash before deciding it could wait. I was in a hurry—I needed to run that other shit over to Plato’s Closet before seven, and it was four. 

On the drive over is when it began: the Burning Sensation, flaring across the riff of my stomach where my sweater was wet. It chafed against me, teasing, angry. I gave a yelp in realization of what that wetness had been immediately—the mace on the lanyard. The tote must have pressed the button. And now I was in the middle of traffic, weeping, hands beginning to shrivel up and smolder, the cracks of winter whitening around my knuckles per the peppery invasion. 

Pulling into the parking lot of Plato’s Closet, I tried to put on a brave face. But it’s hard to do that when the mace on your stomach starts to rub off onto your bra and transfer to your nipples. I felt like some sexual deviant, hobbling into Plato’s Closet, wincing at the way the heat caressed my poor areolas. The check-in process could not have been longer, when all I wanted was to be back in my car. 

But the car was not any better, as the more I moved, the more the spray ruffled into the air, burning my nose, causing me to sneeze and sneeze and sneeze. Throw some gagging in there too, for good measure. All I wanted to do was take a shower, but I had no time—I wanted to get my stuff over to the apartment as soon as possible. 

I’d to go to the urgent care for an ongoing ear infection anyway, so I figured I might as well go after getting my cash back. So, while waiting, I continued to load the rest of my boxes. My body was a Redhot. I wanted to change sweaters, but decided against it, fearing transferring this poison to other things I owned. 

I was soon summoned back to Plato’s Closet for fifty dollars and some change. The cashier droned about how they loved the denim I brought in, while I squirmed and wished to be dead. Thanks, I told her hastily, and dashed out. My car loaded up, I leapt in and darted to Target for a bed-set that was out of my budget, then whisked off to urgent care, hoping the nurse would give me a cherry Dum-Dum for all my troubles.  

There was four minutes until they stopped admitting people. I told the receptionist I’d been here a week and a half before, to please let Joy see me. For pity points, I told her about my day: I was going through the pains of moving, and pepper-sprayed myself.  

The receptionist glanced at the soap opera playing from her phone before conceding. The nurse I’d had a week and a half before came out for me. Last time in, I was seen for my ears, and a delightful yeast infection. She’d joked about hoping it wasn’t cancer.  

But tonight, we bonded over our equally crazy days. Yeah, I’d said, I’m moving and maced myself—I don’t want to be here as much as you, too. 

“Girl,” she sighed. “Are you okay?” 

I laughed. “No!” 

Doctor Joy was quick to come back and see me. She thought it was funny I maced myself—my nurse had snitched on me—and said so before checking my ears. “Your canals still look disgusting. I’m referring you out to an ENT—you probably need tubes. Also, I’ll be ordering some Omnicef for you. Until then, would you like a shot for the pain?” 

“A shot?” 

“Yes, we have medicine that will ease pain for twelve hours. We can give you sixty milliliters.” 

“Sure.” 

“Okay, great. I’ll send Megan back here to administer.” 

I guessed that was the nurse’s name. “Thank you.” 

“Of course.” She opened the door to leave. “And Taylor?” 

“Yeah?” 

“Get some fucking rest.” 

We both smiled at that, her out of kindness, me out of pain.  

One jab in my ass later—that I cried about, mind you—I was sliding into my car and hauling my sorry butt to the apartment. I began my painstaking journey of lugging everything up the slick metal stairs, beginning to whimper—the burning kept increasing. By the time I got everything put away and organized, sweat had turned my stomach, hands, tits, and thighs into smoking welts. I was desperate for a cold shower, and finally let myself take one. Tears streamed down my face as icy water pummeled me. I used Dawn dish soap—internet recommended—and scrubbed, multiple times over, the affected areas before stepping out, trembling. 

The pain made a comeback for a bit now, several times worse as my body recovered from the conflicting red-hot and shocking cold. I was gagging and crying. Crawling my sore body into the expensive bedsheets from Target, I finally let myself do it: 

Rest.