Tag: micro monday

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micro fiction micro monday

You Ask Your Husband if He’d Do it All Over Again by Victoria Melekian

You Ask Your Husband if He’d Do it All Over Again | Victoria Melekian

You know, marry you, and you see the small O of air he swallows before he says sure, but he doesn’t look at you.

You tell your sister you feel like you’re just hanging around, waiting for the next thing to happen. She pours two shots of tequila and says to stay in the now: six empty beer bottles, salt shaker, vase of white daisies. She lines up three bottle caps on the kitchen table and says, “Here’s your options: do nothing, follow him, leave.” You like doing nothing, staying in the moment: two shot glasses, crumpled napkin, blue tablecloth. 

You slosh home with a head full of tequila. Your husband’s asleep on the couch, his arm around the dog. The eleven o’clock news fills the living room: drought, drive-by shooting, sports scores. You turn off the TV and whisper, “I’m leaving” into his ear. 

Next morning is hot and smells like damp soil. You ask him to stay home from work. “Let’s make umbrella drinks and run through sprinklers.” He shakes his head and walks out the door. Coffee cup, spoon, flowered bowl. 

You spend the day making lists—reasons to stay, reasons to go. You try to keep them even, but staying is losing and that’s when you know. The man’s been leaving for months and you—too slow to see. You’ve got the dog, an orange cat in a sunny windowsill, and three miscarriages. 

On Saturday you follow him, option number two. You don’t know why you’re so surprised to see him with her, the woman, because of course there’s a woman, there’s always a woman no matter what they say. She’s pretty and looks like a woman who has babies. You imagine calling her phone and listening to her ask who’s there, who’s there. How many times before she’d hang up?

You think about option three, leaving. You remember new shoes in September, fresh notebooks, sharp pencils. You think about looking for a small apartment with French doors and a patio for plants. 

He calls at dinnertime to say he’s working late, “really late, babe.” Whisk. Timer. Twine. You turn off the oven, dump the roasted chicken and potatoes, put away plates and silverware and fold the tablecloth. You pull down the window shades and sit in the dark. You listen to your neighbor lugging his garbage cans to the curb. 

A watercolor illustration of a bee on a black circular background.
About the Author:
Smiling older woman with curly gray hair wearing glasses and a black shirt against a light background.

Victoria Melekian grew up in Los Angeles and now lives with her husband in Carlsbad, California. Her poetry collection “The Accidental Courage of Our Lives” is available from Sheila-Na-Gig Editions. “Unhoused,” Victoria’s novella-in-flash, won first place in the 2026 Bath Flash Fiction Novella-in-Flash Awards. For more, see her website: victoriamelekian.com



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micro monday poetry

Letter I Wish My Mother Wrote from Virginia by Daniel Lurie


Letter I Wish My Mother Wrote from Virginia | Daniel Lurie

Son, I watched dusk spring a leak into dawn. I only knew it was morning when the cats woke up your sisters. The chemo has been rough, but I thank Hashem they caught it before it was too late. You have to advocate for yourself at the hospitals. Especially with the doctors. You know the mold that you scraped out of the windowpanes with steel wool? It’s started to grow back like frost. I can’t lift my head to see, so Ivy painted birds onto the glass in acrylics. She made it look like the scene from our backyard in Montana, down to the green paint flaking from the old feeder. It has the bluebird duo, the towhee with its demon eyes, the rafter of turkeys, the tanager looking comically out of place… She must’ve used glow-in-the-dark, because I woke in the night and saw a million beating heartbeats. Unsettling, yet comforting, the way they’re there to hold me. The moving company broke all the dishes, so Dana replaced them with plastic ones from Dollar Tree. She gathered the shards and cemented a mosaic pathway leading to the garden, which I have to believe I’ll walk one day. The kitchen is full of such life when your sisters sing off-key and the walls sweat with whatever’s in the oven. They made friends with a kind gentlemen from next door who still has all his hair. I think he’s sweet on me. I never dreamed someone would be interested after your father died, but he rubs my feet while we watch American Pickers, and we don’t say a word, other than that one time he said he’d need to take me dancing.


Artistic watercolor illustration of a bee on a black circular background.
About the Author:
Close-up portrait of a man with long hair and glasses, wearing a checkered shirt, sitting by a window

Daniel Lurie is a Jewish, rural writer, from eastern Montana. He holds an MFA in Poetry from the University of Idaho and is co-editor of Outskirts Literary Journal. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in Pleiades, Gulf Coast, The Iowa Review, Poetry Northwest, and other publications. Daniel won the 2026 Mississippi Review Prize and phoebe’s 2026 Greg Grummer Poetry Contest, selected by Diane Seuss. He served as the 2025-2026 Ronald Wallace Poetry Fellow at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and is a 2026-2028 Wallace Stegner Fellow. Find him at danielluriepoetry.com

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micro fiction micro monday

The Mother Tree by Georgene Smith Goodin

The Mother Tree | Georgene Smith Goodin

On heat-burdened afternoons, Mama spread a woven blanket under the cottonwood suckling the breast of Lanker’s Hill, the spongy wood of its boughs drooping towards the creek. I napped there, the gurgling water and rustling curtain of leaves more somniferous than any lullaby. After Joseph was born, he napped there, too, until Mama’s strength waned too much to climb that gentle slope.

Daddy planted four suckers from that cottonwood in our yard to capture the roof run-off – how those thirsty trees could drink – but they were really for Mama, an arboreal family echoing ours. They grew ten feet a year, and I balanced across my favorite’s fragile limbs, spreading my weight so as not to split them.

During the years-long drought, Mama saved those trees even though watering was forbidden. At dusk, she dragged out the bright green hose, set it to slowly drip all night. She insisted on doing it herself and I followed her, carrying her IV bag because its pole couldn’t glide across the mat of dead grass our backyard had become. That watering was the closest she got to prayer.

Thunder announced the drought’s end while I stirred the thin soup that was all Mama could stomach. My father raced outside when we heard the crack, mud sucking at his bare feet. I went to tell Mama our trees hadn’t taken the hit but her dry, papery skin was cool, her warmth having slipped away while I stood sentry at the stove.

I went to Lanker’s Hill at dawn, walked along the now thrumming creek. The cottonwood’s crown was in disarray, branches downed and scattered by wind. The bark on the trunk curled back in a diamond-shaped gash but the soft, virgin wood beneath was undamaged. I laid my hand there and swore I felt a pulse. 

A watercolor illustration of a bee on a black circular background.
About the Author:
A woman with glasses smiling by a river, wearing a light-colored patterned coat.

Georgene Smith Goodin’s work has appeared in numerous publications and has won the “Mash Stories” flash fiction competition. She lives in Los Angeles with her husband, the cartoonist Robert Goodin, and their four children. Follow her on Bluesky, @gsmithgoodin.bsky.social.


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micro monday poetry

Rain in October by Barbara Schmitz


Rain in October | Barbara Schmitz

In the holy holy holy
            hush now time
autumn sky lets herself
                                   cry
for all that was
for all that was taken
and all that will not come again


Artistic watercolor illustration of a bee on a black circular background.
About the Author:
An elderly woman with short white hair, wearing a silver blouse and a long necklace, stands smiling in a home setting surrounded by indoor plants and a vase of colorful flowers.

Barbara Schmitz taught writing and literature at Northeast College for thirty years, initiating the Visiting Writer Series. She has six books of poetry (two that won the Nebraska Center for the Book Award) and a spiritual memoir. She is a recipient of an Individual Writer Award from the Nebraska Arts Council. Husband Bob and she live on Highway 81.

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micro monday poetry

Homestead by Brad Anderson

Christian & Dorthea Marie Rasmussen Front: Theodore(Ted) August Rasmussen, Christian Rasmussen, Carl Alfred Rasmussen, Dorthea Marie Rasmussen(Christainsen), Marie Rasmussen(Ibsen), Second: Nels Peter Rasmussen, Harry Rasmussen, Helena Berthina Rasmussen(Helser), Anne Marie Rasmussen(Stienike), Clara Christine Rasmussen(Jensen), Back: Andrew Rasmus Rasmussen, Christian Oswald Rasmussen


Homestead | Brad Anderson

My great-grandfather was a homesteader.
President Chester Arthur signed his deed
in eighteen eighty-three.
By that time he had lived there five years,
carved a small farm out of open prairie
and started a young family.
I am proud of how he moved from Denmark
to the Great Plains of the United States.
How with hard work and sweat
he made something out of nothing.

But it wasn’t nothing.
It was land taken from the Pawnee
either by war or broken treaty or outright lying.
A fact we conveniently misremember
or forget entirely.
Colonize is another name for conquest,
for taking something that was not given.
What makes us think we can colonize the stars?
Don’t we think the current residents might object?
Are we the invasive species that will destroy their ecosystem?

I have happy memories of my grandfather’s farm
not far from the original homestead.
Memories not complicated by the absence
of the Pawnee or the buffalo they hunted.
Memories of family gatherings,
of aunts, and uncles, cousins and food.
Grateful for our bounty, for our good fortune.
Unaware of the ghosts on the land around us,
what was lost for our gain,
what was forgotten…
for our happiness.

Artistic watercolor illustration of a bee on a black circular background.
About the Author:
A smiling man wearing glasses and a plaid shirt, sitting outdoors with greenery in the background.

Brad Anderson started writing poetry as a means of survival during his late wife, LuAnne’s, journey through Alzheimer’s. Poetry helped him deal with her loss. Brad’s poetry has been published in Voices From The Plains, The Gilded Weathervane, and The Sugar House Review. His forthcoming chapbook, Water, Flour, Salt, and Time, from FarmGirl Press, will be released in July. Brad lives in Lincoln, Nebraska, and enjoys volunteering at Larksong Writers Place.

Historical land grant certificate from the United States, detailing the allocation of land in Nebraska, signed by officials and featuring official seals.
Categories
micro monday poetry

Love Fish to Wander by Jack Phillips


Love Fish to Wander (footnoted one-line haiku)  | Jack Phillips


Pisces1 loves the night to wander2 and my soul3 the whole fish.4

A poetic text exploring themes of Pisces symbolism, celestial connections, and the essence of love through astrological imagery.
Artistic watercolor illustration of a bee on a black circular background.
About the Author:
Side profile of a man with curly hair and a beard, wearing a blue headband and jacket, surrounded by a natural landscape with fallen leaves.

Jack Phillips is a naturalist, poet, nature writer, and founder of The Naturalist School, a nonprofit organization devoted to wild creativity and poetics of place. He is a Pushcart nominee, a poetry editor for Magpie Zine, and his poetry has appeared in The Dewdrop, Amethyst Review, Wild Roof Journal, Canary, EcoTheo Review, and others. He lives in the Missouri-Kicakatuus watershed and teaches ecopsychology at Creighton University School of Medicine. 

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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.

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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.