by Bart Edelman

Hadn’t walked the plank
In a number of years.
Never planned on it again.
But when you showed up,
I dispensed with my shoes,
Feeling the smooth wood,
Cold beneath my feet,
Familiar step by step.
I was halfway across,
Before you called out--
Told me to abandon fate.
And I wavered, of course.
Didn’t know how to retreat.
Couldn’t envision the course.
Unsteady each moment.
Then I paced my way back,
Where you stood, open-handed,
Offering what still remained--
One pirate heart to another.

* * *

BART EDELMAN’s poetry collections include Crossing the Hackensack, The Alphabet of Love, The Gentle Man, The Last Mojito, The Geographer’s Wife, Whistling to Trick the Wind, and This Body Is Never at Rest: New and Selected Poems 1993 – 2023. 

Anne Marie Lyall

Seth placed his mother by the hearth. It had been her favourite spot. Until that night. When she’d stormed out. Swore never to set foot in his house again.

He supposed she’d kept her word.

Banjo whimpered as he sniffed the opaque jar. He had always been fond of mother. 

* * *

ANNE MARIE LYALL is from Scotland. She can almost see Loch Lomond on a clear day. She is published in the Oxford Flash Fiction Prize Anthology, 101 Words, Cafe Lit and long listed in the Myslexia Flash Fiction Competition.  

by Lori Cramer

Dressed in a neon-pink sweatshirt, leopard-print leggings, and Reebok high-tops, Barbara pushes a grocery cart from one aisle to the next. Nearly every song on the supermarket’s retro playlist sparks a fond memory of her youth. Dances. Frat parties. Games in the quad. As she’s selecting a Lean Cuisine entrée for tonight’s dinner, a ballad comes on, stirring tender recollections of her first love, Barry. Over by the frozen pizzas, a man in khakis and a blue oxford like Barry used to wear catches her eye. He smiles. And, for just a moment, Barbara could swear that it’s 1987 again.

* * *

LORI CRAMER’s short prose has appeared in Fictive Dream, Flash Boulevard, Scaffold, Splonk, Switch, and elsewhere. Her work has been longlisted for the Wigleaf Top 50 and nominated for Best Microfiction. Links to her writing: https://loricramerfiction.wordpress.com.
Bluesky: @loricramerwriter.bsky.social.

by Colleen M. Farrelly

He says do you have a lighter and I say no and he says can I borrow twenty bucks and I say no and he says I love you and I say okay and give him twenty bucks. He goes wherever he goes, and I promise I’ll say no tomorrow.

* * *

COLLEEN M. FARELLY is a mathematician and haibun poet from Miami, FL. She's trying dribbles and drabbles, which seem to fit well with haibun.

by Adele Gallogly

Why does Faye keep giving the same line to library staff asking, “How are you?” When they emphasize are, she pictures a single, careening letter R. 

“Oh I’m good, besides missing the old lump in my bed!” she says. Exactly. Breathlessly. Unfailingly. To the retiring director. To the teenage volunteer. To the brusque clerk returning one-word titles Ron was too confused to begin: Endurance, Unbroken, Atonement.
​
Near the exit, Faye starts to answer the janitor tipping a black wastebasket, but stops after “Oh.” She hears herself tucking her beloved husband into a soft mound of grief in her throat. 

Oh.

* * *

ADELE GALLOGLY is a writer and editor in Ontario, Canada. Her very short stories have been published in FlashFlood, Writers' Hour, Six-Sentences, and Paragraph Planet. You can follow her on BlueSky.

by Sarp Sozdinler

So we up and swapped lives for a day: she would have two healthy breasts, and I would still have a mother.

* * *

​SARP SOZDINLER has been published in Electric Literature, Kenyon Review, Masters Review, Vestal Review, Fractured Lit, JMWW, and Trampset, among other journals. Their stories have been selected for anthologies including the Pushcart Prize, Best Small Fictions, and Wigleaf Top 50.

by Steven Lemprière

Fearful of the dark, Jake cried while observing his first solar eclipse. Four-years-old, teetering on five, his elder brother told him the moon was hungry and  it would eat the sun. Something Jake accepted as gospel when it took a small, tentative nibble from the sun’s perimeter and then gorged on what remained. He’d felt his heart race as an eerie silence replaced the farmyard’s ever-present birdsong, before noticing the comforting weight of his grandfather’s hand resting on his shoulder. A reassuring touch, both warm and firm, that turned the tide of his crippling anxiety. Crouching down beside Jake, his grandfather had looked him dead in the eyes. “The moon doesn’t like hot food,” he said. His usual gravelly voice, now a hushed whisper, “Just wait, and see,” and sure enough, the sun reappeared, like the vegetables Jake sheepishly chewed, and the birds rediscovered their voices.

Age and experience had widened Jake’s eyes to the wonders of the cosmos, captivating his imagination. Now a tenured astrophysicist at an Ivy League college, he travelled extensively, visiting observatories scattered around the globe, many set in remote and majestic landscapes. However, his current assignment, as the chief scientific officer aboard the International Space Station, would see him launched on an exciting new trajectory.

Amazingly, Jake’s tour coincided with an eclipse. Pure chance, but one of deep personal significance. Viewed from the earth’s thermosphere, he again felt his heart race as four-hundred kilometres below their orbit, its shadow traversed a vast tract of land which he knew encompassed his home state. The gravity of the event hadn’t escaped him. A breathtaking sight, that seen from a viewpoint that few would ever witness, prompted joyous, but also wistful, tears as he recalled his grandfather’s soothing words.

* * *

STEVEN LEMPRIÈRE’s flash has appeared or is forthcoming in Flash Fiction Magazine, The Drabble, Friday Flash Fiction, 50-Word Stories, 50 Give or Take and Punk Noir Magazine. He spends his time between the West Coast of Ireland and South-West France.

by Tejaswinee Roychowdhury

A faint mix of cologne and sandalwood agarbatti hangs in the air, where “relax” is a whisper behind my head.

The city jangles outside the plebeian studio. Relax. Oiled fingers sneak into my scalp. Relax. Their moves seem unpredictable, but I catch a rhythm. Relax. My eyelids flutter like paper blinds caught in a Nor’wester. Relax. Baby blue walls repainted in patches. Relax. A disarray of old photographs—gods and men hanging off bent-up nails. Relax. Chipped wooden chairs offering faux leather seats, beaten down by shifting buttocks. Relax. Barbering tools neatly lined up on a dirty blue laminate, struggling to remain glued to drawer tops. Relax. Plastic-cased mirrors with random spots and old stickers curling up at the corners. Relax. Tires screech, a truck blares out a sharp set of horns, and muffled men voice strong opinions. Relax. A thumb and an index finger create patterns on the skin over my sternocleidomastoids. Relax. Things begin to fade—the everyday Indian doesn’t care for the ambience, just the service. Relax.

* * *

TEJASWINEE ROYCHOWDHURY likes to write, mostly fiction and poetry, has publications worldwide, and edits The Hooghly Review. She is pursuing a Ph.D. in Law from the University of Calcutta and can be found on X @TejaswineeRC and IG @tejaswineeroychowdhury.

by Katja Fox

​
first day at school— 
left at the gate
a teddy bear


flirtation— 
the snap dance
of a butterfly


end of summer— 
a single flip flop left
in the bicycle basket


knowing
where the blueberries grow— 
homecoming


new tattoo— 
​she’s got you
under her skin

* * *

KATJA FOX is a British artist and poet. She loves writing short-form poetry, many of which have appeared in leading journals and anthologies across the world and also in her two poetry books “out of nowhere“ and “there was a moment.”​

by Angela Zimmerling

that was us

          spiked hair and black eye-liner
          plaid and chains
          our faces
          made pale with talc 

          no nukes
                     in acid rain                 
                     we raised the black flag 

         no future
         in the shadow
         of the bomb

         david bowie was our god

         we posed like dolls
         on street corners and on benches 

         searched
         for holes in the layers 
         of our sky
         while the rain-forests burned 

         wore our rage
         like broken hearts
         and cut ourselves
         on the shards
         of the earth
                             
​                      we lived
                      for the drums’ beat
                      a moment’s breath in the light
                     
         we lived to dance

* * *

ANGELA ZIMMERLING is a former journalist who works in poetry, fiction and illustration as well as in non-fiction.  She lives on a small subsistence farm with her husband and their beloved animals.

by Mary Kipps

This is how it will always be:
that last light of a saffron sun
slipping down the medina wall;
the muezzin’s prayer running the maze
of cobblestone alleyways;
our blue-eyed cat stolidly watching
the rush of doves taking wing.
There’s a lot to be said
for leaving while still in love.

* * *

MARY KIPPS enjoys composing in traditional forms as well as in free verse. A former Pushcart Prize nominee, her poems have appeared regularly in journals and anthologies across the U.S. and abroad since 2005. 

             # # #
​

by Tim Love

He tried to catch her eye across the room. Maybe he imagined that she smiled back, but it was enough for him to start talking to her.

"Can you still hear me?" he asks forty years later, sitting by the bed. "Smile for me, that's all I need. One smile."

* * *

TIM LOVE’s publications are a poetry pamphlet “Moving Parts” (HappenStance) and a story collection "By all means" (Nine Arches Press). He lives in Cambridge, UK. His prose has appeared in The Forge, Stand, JMWW, Under the Radar, etc. He blogs at http://litrefs.blogspot.com/

by Scott Ortolano

I remember
the first time we slept together,
slumbering in a room covered with poetry and song.
 
We held one another desperately
in a world that refused to stand still.

* * *

SCOTT ORTOLANO is an English Professor at Florida SouthWestern State College. You can usually find him reading, running, hiking, or frantically grading. More of his work is available at www.SOrtolano.com