Welcome to this issue of The Hoolet’s Nook. Each piece gathered here reflects the spirit of what we hope the journal continues to be—a space for stories and poems that sparkle, resonate, and linger.

I'd like to officially welcome our newest contributing editor, Jessica Borgeaud, who has been helping behind the scenes for some time. Her thoughtful eye and love of literature make her a wonderful addition to the team, and we’re thrilled to have her aboard! Check out our Editorial Page to discover the perspective Jessica brings to THN.

To all our readers and contributors, thank you for being part of our little nook family. Your kindness, support, and love of stories help make this space meaningful.​

Namaste,
G.R. LeBlanc
Managing Editor

Ready to share your words? Next submission round opens October 1st. Our guidelines can be viewed here. 

The Hoolet’s Nook is free to enjoy, with no submission fees. If our stories and poems bring a little joy to your day, we’d be so grateful if you consider supporting us on Ko-fi. Every bit helps keep this nook alive—and yes, the occasional chai latte is always appreciated! 💗🙏🏼🦉

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 Ariel M. Goldenthal

You told me that the ocean held your family’s secrets for centuries and that the rope tethering us ashore could fray without warning. We danced along the edge of the icy water, your hand in mine, smooth rocks coarse against fresh cuts on the soles of my feet.

You said the stairs were too steep; the electrical, too old for me to be alone by the sea. You didn’t tell me you’d be the nightmare worse than the wind-scraping of oak tree branches against shutters.

Now the house keeps all my secrets and more than the remnants of your pain.   

* * *

ARIEL M. GOLDENTHAL is an associate professor of English at George Mason University. Her work has appeared in The Citron Review, Fractured Lit, Exposition Review, and others. Read more at www.arielmgoldenthal.com. 

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 Shanti Chandrasekhar

Mother remained stoic when my father, her husband of fifty-five years, died. With her firstborn on his deathbed now, she howls, gibbers. Hysterical.

My sister, who shuttles between the hospital and Mother’s home, yells from somewhere in the room, “Ma? Stop!” Her shrill command betrays her threatened mettle.

“How?” Mother asks me, the word trembling between her sobs.

My back slides down the wall. I sit on the floor, holding the phone. Far away from my mother, from my sister, from my dying brother.

Mother’s wail echoes across the Atlantic. It devastates, it haunts, it bridges. It glues us together. It does what her pretend stoicism couldn’t.

* * *

​SHANTI CHANDRASEKHAR’s words have appeared in Persimmon Tree, Bright Flash Literary Review, 50-Word Stories, Flash Fiction Magazine, The Journal of Compressed Creative Arts, and elsewhere. She writes and lives in Maryland.

by Lois Anne DeLong

She always loved sunsets, he recalled. If her schedule permitted, she stopped everything when the first red streaks appeared in the sky.  If they were together, he would wrap his arms around her, and they would stand in silence until the last drop of color drained from the sky.

They met in Key West, a place where the sunset is celebrated every night. He was seeking temporary escape from a staggering series of failures. Her history had been equally difficult, yet somehow she had retained a deep well of inner joy that was triggered every time the day made its fiery surrender.

When she passed away—ironically just as streaks of red and orange made their first appearance within a crystal blue Montauk sky—he could no longer continue these end of day celebrations. Every night, as the sun made its descent, he would close the curtains, turn on the TV, or retreat to a dark and noisy bar.

But, today, a sunset caught him by surprise. He went to draw the curtains, but the reflection of the fading rays off the snow stopped him in his tracks. He stared deeply at that shimmering mirror of ice and snow and caught the reflection of a man buried in darkness. Not his beloved’s darkness, which she likened to a warm, encompassing blanket. No, this was a darkness filled with monsters, most of them of his own making.

As he slowly lifted his eyes to the skies, he decided the curtains would remain open tonight. He poured a glass of wine and moved closer to the glass.  Pulling the warm blanket of her darkness around him, he toasted the night as it slowly rolled in.

* * *

LOIS ANNE DELONG is a freelance writer from Queens, New York, and is active in the Woodside Writers literary forum. Her work has appeared in Dear Booze, Short Beasts, Bright Flash Literary Review, DarkWinter Literary Journal, and The Bluebird Word. 

by Colleen Addison

In those days his madness struck me as magic. He made drinking cups from foxglove flowers, replaced buttons with the heads of dandelions. Stories fell out of him about the fairies living in mushroom rings. As I grew older, I saw how the cups leaked; how the blossoms withered and grew grey. I saw how neighbours shifted away from him, fearful of any perceived association. I was angry but stopped short of wearing a hat like his, a long-abandoned coalhood he said kept off the rain better than any poncho. I felt trapped, jealous of his playful nature and reluctant to condone it, furious at the condemnation he endured while secretly harbouring a similar discomfort. One day when I trotted up the multicoloured cobblestones of his garden path, I saw emptiness in his house windows. Where had he gone? My eyes fell, surprised and envious, on a ring of mushrooms. 

* * *

COLLEEN ADDISON completed a PhD in health information; she then promptly got sick herself. Her work has been published in Halfway Down the Stairs, River Teeth, and Little Free Lit Mag. 

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 Jennifer Griffin Gaul

The blue dots scatter across my chest like a constellation. These stars have lit my life before. They burned on my husband before they burned on me. In less than four months his were gone, their promise unfulfilled. Mine have remained. So like a ship from days of old I will use them to navigate my way.

* * *

JENNIFER GRIFFIN GAUL is a pianist and music educator who writes in the moments of silence when not making music. 

by Israel Allen

Wind whistles Scottish hymns,
air forced through small gaps,
fragments of autumn
littering Carolina.
 
Trees scratch a serenade,
friction-shaped notes,
bark on bark, bending
branches too bare to rustle.
 
Leaves brave blacktop,
crackling like a gray choir,
odes of October
breaking in their throats.
 
My stride falls in rhythm,
sole-stepping the tune.
Arrogant, I imagine
the song is for me.

* * *

ISRAEL ALLEN writes and teaches fiction and drama. His work includes the plays Ask Me Anything and The Emerald Heist and the novels Ian Baker’s .45 and Bibles and Ball Bats (writing as Chris Allen).