Category: micro monday

Categories
micro monday poetry

Witch’s Butter by Clif Mason

Witch’s Butter | Clif Mason

Yellow brain fungus curls & coils
on wind-toppled, black-dappled,
decaying white birch boles. Look closer.
These luscious, translucent lemon
pudding folds do not feast on the tree itself,
but slowly consume the mycelium
of the rosy crust fungus
directly engorging the rotting birch.
Quiet fête: What eats is eaten in return.

Artistic watercolor illustration of a bee on a black circular background.
About the Author:
Portrait of a man with glasses and a beard, wearing a dark suit jacket over a black and white striped shirt, smiling against a light gray background.

Clif Mason is the author of two full-length poetry collections, AS JAGUARS DREAMED ON THE EARTH’S DARK FACE (a magical realist novel in verse, Cathexis Northwest Press) and KNOCKING THE STARS SENSELESS (Stephen F. Austin State University Press), as well as three chapbooks. His work has appeared in Rattle, Southern Poetry Review, The Classical Outlook, Poet Lore, and Orbis International Literary Journal (UK), among many others.

Categories
micro monday poetry

The Softness I Owe by Joemario Umana

The Softness I Owe | Joemario Umana

—after Michael Imossan

Because, Michael, when you said you must gift all your tenderness
to the women who planted flowers in your body, I understood.
Because I carry, too, the debt of tenderness to the women in my life.
Unlike you, every man I’ve known has lingered,
bone-deep in presence. They handed down what time had taught
them, and time, through them, keeps teaching.
But where they tried molding a wall, where they tried turning me
into the opposite of tender, the women made me
a garden. Where they taught me to shut the door, flowers
pressed through the hinges, bloomed and held it wide open.
Look, I know how to hold a butterfly and not tear its wings.
I know how to water a flower without drowning it. I know how
to cradle ache and not mistake it for the end. Once,
I almost lost it, my hands curled into the shape
of a tangerine, to summon red out of a man
who called me fruity and laughed. But softness arrived
on time and rescued me, my anger peeled back
into fingers. Not everything needs to be responded
with violence. This, I know, because now, my rage smells
like lavender when it comes. I owe this to the women,
to the supple beings of nature, this softness of mine.
Look at me, velvet as nature. Look at me, not hardened
but held.

Artistic watercolor illustration of a bee on a black circular background.
About the Author:
A young man with short hair, wearing a blue and white checkered shirt, poses against a backdrop of vertical wooden sticks.

Joemario Umana, Swan XVII, is a Nigerian creative writer and performance poet who considers himself a wildflower. A Fellow of the SprinNG Writing Fellowship (2023), he is the co-winner of the Folorunsho Editor Poetry Prize (2025) and the second-place winner of the Rhonda Gail Williford Poetry Prize (2025). He made it into the finalist pool of the Brooklyn Poets Fellowship (2026). He tweets @JoemarioU38615

Categories
micro monday poetry

Her Shanghaied Sailors   |    Tarn Wilson

A poetic description of a female captain leading her crew on a metaphorical journey, emphasizing her unique style, wisdom, and nurturing role.
Artistic watercolor illustration of a bee on a black circular background.
About the Author:
A woman with long blonde hair smiles while resting her chin on her hand, wearing a dark sweater and earrings, with a blurred outdoor background.

Tarn Wilson is the author of the books The Slow Farm, In Praise of Inadequate Gifts (Wandering Aengus Book Award), and 5-Minute Daily Writing Prompts. She is taking a break from prose and shamelessly flirting with poetry. She has recently been published in Only Poems, Pedestal, Potomac Review, Rattle, Sweet Lit, and more.

Categories
micro monday poetry

Valentine’s Night in County Clare by Dan Thompson

Valentine’s Night in County Clare
by Dan Thompson


Walking away from O’Connor’s pub
on a cold February night in Doolin,
each step further away from the music –
the same jigs and reels already here
two hundred years ago tonight
in this place of austere beauty,
the crashing Atlantic forever tackling
the rocks below the village –
it wasn’t the cold that froze me there
or anything else that might have prepared me
for what I saw when I looked up,
the crystals so thick against the black
I felt I could reach up and grab a handful
without any need for a getaway.

Transfixed,
I called out
Look up!
and just as I,
you stopped
in mid-stride.

A “Wow!” of wonder escaped your lips –
As Above, So Below –
your breath repeating a foot in front
the milky midnight way above.

There we stood,
Herd Boy and Weaving Maiden …

gazing forever across the sky
at all that is and might have been.

Artistic watercolor illustration of a bee on a black circular background.
About the Author:
A man wearing sunglasses and a graphic t-shirt is taking a selfie outdoors, with a backdrop of mountains and trees.

Dan Thompson (PhD) is a U.S. Army veteran and former editor-in-chief whose creative and critical work has appeared in a wide range of literary and scholarly journals, including, within the past year, issues of Feral, Canary, Eclectica, The Raven Review, Black Coffee Review, and Jerry Jazz Musician, among others. In an earlier life, he worked as a music producer for educational videos and as a DJ at a country music radio station.

Categories
micro fiction micro monday short fiction

House Party by Dory Rousos Moore

House Party | Dory Rousos Moore

I start on my second coat of Red Hot, the boldest color of nail polish I could find, carefully painting each nail. Aviva and I sit on our apartment balcony, our shiny legs long on the railing, hot air balloons in primary colors floating above us as everyone starts to arrive. When her new boyfriend’s black Grand Am swerves into our complex, she jumps up, her drink spilling over the edge. The way she falls in love is with a whoosh, like she’s being sucked into a vacuum, and the way I fall in love is by pretending not to. 

Moments later, Raj crosses the parking lot from his apartment to ours with long strides, grinning up at the balloons and clouds drifting toward the horizon. With graduation next weekend, we soon won’t be living close to each other for the first time since college started, and we became friends, walking to classes together and talking the whole way, drinking Red Bulls while studying for our physics exams, our laptops set up on his beer pong table as the sun rose purple-orange outside his front window, a meeting of chemistry and wonder.

In the living room, the roar of the music, bass turned up, vibrates the walls. Conversations punctuate the air with exclamation points, and the strawberry Boones Farm fills my body with soft static. Aviva is making out with her boyfriend in the middle of the room with one hand in the air, like she’s on a rollercoaster or praising God. 

Refilling my solo cup, I look at Raj across the crowded room, watching everywhere his eyes land, his irises the whorls of a fingerprint that I want to press into me. I’ve kissed boys I don’t know at parties, but never the one that I love. When his gaze finds mine, instead of glancing away, I hold on, walking toward him.   

A watercolor illustration of a bee on a black circular background.
About the Author:
Close-up portrait of a smiling woman with long dark hair wearing a blue shirt, sitting inside a vehicle.

Dory Rousos Moore lives in Ohio with her husband, three rambunctious sons, and opinionated rescue dog. This is her first prose publication. Her poetry is forthcoming in Modern Haiku. A dedicated daydreamer, she loves reading for hours and letting her optimism lead the way. You can find her at dorywrites.bsky.social.


Categories
micro monday micro nonfiction

The Taste of Absence by Bethany Bruno

The Taste of Absence | Bethany Bruno


My father drank black Maxwell House from a repurposed Big Gulp cup, the kind with a faded NASCAR logo and a plastic straw he never used. Every morning, long before the world stirred, he filled it to the brim and cradled it between his knees as he drove to work. No cream. No sugar. Just heat, grit, and something close to devotion.

He called it fuel, though he never rushed through it. He sipped slowly at red lights, windows cracked even in July, letting the scent of burnt coffee mix with wet palm air and the steady hum of morning sprinklers. The South Florida sun always rose early, golden and mean, but he met it with caffeine and stubbornness.

On weekends, he used the “Grumpy” mug I bought him when I was twelve. We were at Disney World, sweating through a heat advisory, and I picked it out with the kind of glee only a child feels while gift shopping. Grumpy had always been his nickname. He was famously irritable before his first sip of coffee, muttering through breakfast like the day had personally offended him. 

The mug was heavy, white ceramic, with Grumpy’s furrowed brow and crossed arms printed on the side. I wrapped it in tissue paper and held it behind my back like I had smuggled treasure. He drank from it for years, even after the handle chipped and the cartoon face faded to a ghost of itself.

He died in 2016. Six months from diagnosis to gone. Cancer took his voice first, then his appetite, then the rest. His work boots stayed by the door. His Big Gulp cup stayed on the counter. Some mornings, he still made coffee, but by the end, it was mostly untouched, the steam rising while he slept through the daylight. The bitterness outlasted him.

Since then, I have tried every method of coffee making. French press. Pour-over. Chic glass carafes with wooden collars. None of them feels right. They are too clean, too careful. They don’t know what it means to keep going. The smell of Maxwell House from a plastic tub still carries more weight than any hand-picked Ethiopian blend ever could.

Each morning, I make coffee. I press the button and wait. I listen for the sputter, watch the steam curl into the quiet. I pour a cup and drink it black.

It is not good coffee.

But grief has a way of anchoring itself in the ordinary. It clings to routines, disguises itself as habit. Sometimes I open the cabinet just to look at the Grumpy mug, still tucked behind the others, its handle glued back together with a crooked seam. I never use it. I am afraid the crack will not hold. I am more afraid it will.

Love, when it lingers, finds its voice in the bitterness. It slips into the places we thought we had cleared out. I drink, and he is there.

Still warm. Still rising.

An artistic illustration of a bee in shades of amber and gold against a black background.
About the Author:
A woman with long, wavy hair smiles at the camera, wearing a colorful top and a black cardigan, set against a neutral background.


Bethany Bruno is a Floridian author and amateur historian. Born in Hollywood and raised in Port St. Lucie, she holds a BA in English from Flagler College and an MA from the University of North Florida. Her writing has appeared in more than seventy literary journals and magazines, including The Sun, The Huffington Post, The MacGuffin, McSweeney’s, and 3Elements Review. More at bethanybrunowriter.com.

Categories
micro monday micro nonfiction

Chia Shower Pet by Crockett Doob

Chia Shower Pet | Crockett Doob

No, it was just that Cora told me how you put chia seeds in water and drink it and it’s good for you and I was pliable enough at the time to try it but I’d stopped–it’d been years and I forgot all about chia seeds but when Ricki gave me Ray’s half gallon jug–“he says it makes smoothies taste too gummy”–I wanted to do it again and the muse struck and I thought this time I’d do it with herbal tea, but I forgot how I got the seeds in the bottle so I figured I better buy a funnel but when I cleaned it, I didn’t think to dry it so it was wet in the middle when I put the seeds in so they got stuck there in these clumps, and I didn’t have any chop sticks–I always forgot to ask–and what else besides chop sticks could get in the hole but then I thought, the shower head (the water gun setting) and I tried it and it worked, nailing the middle of the funnel, blasting the seeds out and I made my chia drink, finally, with herbal tea, and it looked beautiful and red and I made a video for Cora and so all was well; but then I was in the shower, a few days later, whatever it was, and I noticed a little plant coming out of the drain, and it was too much, like my apartment’s already on the edge, my Draino-addicted sinks, outside on the street, “our local puddle,” as I call it, which is like a car-sized puddle (two car-sized) that never goes away, all year long, this nasty green/brown puddle, and I live by the beach and sea levels are rising and I was like, and now I have plants sprouting out of my drain, but then I realized it was just a chia pet. 


An artistic illustration of a bee in shades of amber and gold against a black background.
About the Author:
A person in a colorful plaid shirt standing against a softly illuminated background with yellow tones.


Crockett Doob lives in Rockaway Beach, NY, and does not surf. He plays drums in a vacant courthouse, works with autistic teenagers, and edits a documentary about a cemetery. His work has been published in Cleaver Magazine, Vol. 1 Brooklyn, Fiction Attic Press, and Does It Have Pockets.

Categories
micro fiction micro monday short fiction

The Echo of Footsteps by Ibrahim Abdulhakeem

The Echo of Footsteps | Ibrahim Abdulhakeem

Ayo always knew when his father was coming home. Not by the rumble of the old Peugeot stalling outside, nor by the metallic creak of the front gate, but by the sound of his footsteps—slow, deliberate, measured.

Each step carried the weight of exhaustion, of dreams deferred and dignity swallowed in silence. Ayo would listen from his room, curled up with his homework, his hands clammy as he gripped his pen. Would today be different? Would the tension in the air dissipate, leaving room for laughter instead of raised voices?

He once asked his mother why she never argued back. She had smiled—a tired, knowing smile—and ruffled his hair. “Some echoes aren’t worth chasing, my son.”

One evening, the footsteps did not come. The gate did not creak. The old Peugeot never rumbled into the driveway. The silence stretched, wrapping around the house like an unwelcome guest. Hours passed. Then days. Then weeks.

Ayo stopped listening for the footsteps. But at night, when the wind whistled through the cracked windows, he swore he could still hear them.

A watercolor illustration of a bee on a black circular background.
About the Author:

Ibrahim Abdulhakeem is a Nigerian law student, writer, and creative with interests spanning literature, design, and education. He is passionate about storytelling, Islamic scholarship, and inspiring young people through his work. His writings often explore identity, resilience, and human connection.


Categories
micro monday micro nonfiction

Rocks by Mk Smith Despres

Rocks | Mk Smith Despres

I wake up from a dream in which my daughter faces a small social injustice, but she is in 7th grade, so all of it is huge, really. In the waking world, I have watched her step back from her eyes and hold disappointment on the tongue like a cold rock. Swallow it. I cannot go back to sleep without seeing the dream where she is alone on the bus, so I cannot go back to sleep. 

In the waking world, she asks for pajama pants for Christmas so she can wear them to school. So she can go cozy up the front walk, the one where she saw her friend last week, neck red and swollen with trying and trying and trying. So she told, right away she told. The friend went home. Went somewhere. And she went to class. Swallowed rocks. Took a math test. 

Instead of sleeping, I play a game on my phone. Pour colored sand onto colored sand like those bottles on the boardwalk, but no one can shake these ones up. They are fixed in blue light and glass, and there is even a go back button. That go back button is the best. Just an arrow that tells you exactly what it means and does exactly what it says. My daughter didn’t know what it meant when, three days later, a different friend texted I want to kms. So the friend told her. And she told me. Swallowed. dw said the friend. Translation: don’t worry. She does.

I write my own hurt across every one of hers, but try not to let her read it. I don’t tell her don’t worry but I also don’t hold my rocks as well as she does. I never could. We cannot go back to before she knew her friends wanted to die, and didn’t. But we can go back to the river. And when her little sister digs and asks if sand can become rocks again, she starts to say no, but then looks at me and asks, Can it? Can you believe that under so much pressure, something can become whole again? Yes.

An artistic illustration of a bee in shades of amber and gold against a black background.
About the Author:
A person in a patterned overall is sitting and petting a dog on their lap, looking contemplative in a cozy indoor setting.


Mk Smith Despres writes, teaches, and makes art in western Massachusetts. Their poems appear or are forthcoming in Frozen Sea, Hunger Mountain, Thimble, Radar, Salamander, and elsewhere. They also write books for kids. Their picture book, Night Song, was one of Bank Street’s Best Children’s Books of the Year.

Categories
micro monday poetry

wedged together we are flying by Reva Elise Johnson

wedged together we are flying | Reva Elise Johnson

There was someone on a plane when men
voted to let women vote. The spinning top
wants to twirl and fall, to lay its body down.
The spinning top is a tailbone
stuck upright, wrapped in broad swaths
of gluteus, squashed into the middle seat
of an airplane row that my favorite 9-year-old
would say smells exactly like a freezer full
of farts. We are wedged together; we are
flying. There was someone on a plane
when the divorce decree was stamped
and sealed. A muffled roaring, just a
white noise that swaddles me. The angles
of my joints are locking into place but
the neatest little protractors will measure
oscillation when I begin again to swing
through space. We are wedged together;
we are flying. There was someone on a plane
when the doctor pulled the twins
into this world. A metal seat frame shapes
my skeleton while the window shows me
glowing lights of unknown cities that perhaps
will be my home someday. We are wedged
together; we are flying. There was someone
on a plane when I realized I cannot reach
the beginning anymore, can no longer touch
my first impression, so wildly different
from how I see you now.



Artistic watercolor illustration of a bee on a black circular background.
About the Author:

Reva Elise Johnson lives in northwestern Indiana, where the edges of Chicago meet the steel mills, Lake Michigan, and the Indiana Dunes. She is a writer and an engineer, exploring the interfaces between humans, nature, and technology through both her poetry and her research on prosthetics and assistive technology. Reva’s work integrates storytelling with engineering, appearing in publications ranging from Frontiers in Neuroscience to Moss Puppy Magazine. She teaches at Valparaiso University and serves as editor for the Assistive Technology journal.