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Cheryl Snell
Thoughts in the Time of Collision
I am all hair, glittering with diamond-glass. A forehead streaked with blood, rubies and roses crisscrossing the tangerine flaps of a ripped collar. Ripped skin. The air is blue and then bluer and then green and then black. Black is absence of color, white the sum. When I come to, a mangled fender dangles halfway through the windshield, inches from my face. When he sees it, my brother bursts into big pearly tears. Why is his arm on wrong? He is all geometry. Triangles and spinning circles. Mouth an oblong of cries. He was never the brave type and I don’t know where to look except into my own reflection, bleeding in the overhead mirror. I lift the visor high and watch the patterns of trickle. They fascinate me more than the fantasy of rescue. It’s in the way the tributaries join together at my chin. The way they drip off it like a cliff. How they spill drop by drop into the valley between my breasts.
Cheryl Snell’s books include several poetry collections and novels. Her most recent writing has or will appear in On the Seawall, Midway, Rogue Agent, Blue Unicorn, 100 Word Story, and the Best Microfiction 2025 anthology.
Jude Mason
I have compiled an incomplete list of the small and many forms of sadness that can be experienced by humans. The sadness of cracking the spine of a new book. The sadness of odd socks. The sadness of attempting to pet a cat, but the cat does not wish to be petted.
Fokkina McDonnell
I begged my boss to let me do the interview with the fire historian. I have form, I told him.
Maria Sanger
She stared at the many photographs of blackthorns. A cluster of people wandered past and gathered at the next easel, but her feet refused to budge from ‘Number 13’
Simon Ravenscroft
Blessed are the weak of mind for they shall have the appearance of answers and be troubled only when they encounter people with contrary answers and yet . . .
Tom Cardew
I pat its head until its face starts to flatten. Its body meets the floor, legs buckle under the weight of my enthusiasm . . .
Scott C. Holstad
Fifteen hours of processing time later, I was in my cell block and already two confrontations with Six Shooter, a massive Crip from the Compton/North Long Beach area, with a ‘tude. Early on he and his set surrounded me, two of them 187s like him. They made sure I knew if I stepped out of line, I wouldn’t be leaving while breathing. That didn’t go down with me very well. Some have said I have an attitude problem.
Rebecca Klassen
1) Liana vines are rooted in the earth and use trees to climb towards the canopy.
Mum sews in her armchair, the embroidery hoop in one hand like a tambourine as she plays it with cotton, the needle’s tempo remaining steady when Dad gets home from the pub again. I notice the root sprouting next to me from the carpet, curling around Mum’s ankles.
Luke Reilly on National Flash Fiction Day
The man is a master. Through livestreams and televisions and retinas, through a giant screen in the city centre, sixty million people have been watching his furrowed brows. Waiting for his fingernails to pick up a piece of clamshell or slate and place it on a gridded board.
Kayleigh Cassidy
Before I knew it, I was crying in front of my entire dance class. Thirty women and two men in neon active wear, staring at me as I tried to explain why I was late.