Tag: micro monday

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micro monday micro nonfiction short creative nonfiction

Murmuration by Lisa Cooper Ellison

Murmuration | Lisa Cooper Ellison

The starlings explode from a nearby tree then dance overhead in a synchronized tangle of chatter and wings. Later that day, I tell my mentor and share a new word: murmuration. It’s his second week of chemo treatment for a second cancer. He’s paying attention to nature and its signs, which makes me pay attention too. We find hope in snapped twigs, grazing deer, and a sunrise refracting off a crystal vase. Past losses have taught us that life is like those birds pirouetting across the sky—art in motion that flies off too soon. 

About the Author:

Lisa Cooper Ellison is an author, speaker, and trauma-informed writing coach, as well as the host of the Writing Your Resilience podcast. She works and writes at the intersection of storytelling and healing. Her essays and stories have appeared on Risk! and in The New York Times, HuffPost, and Kenyon Review Online, among others. Lisa recently finished her memoir, Please Stage Dive Carefully, How I Survived My Brother’s Suicide and Forgave Myself.

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micro fiction micro monday short fiction

Letdown by Nicole Brogdon

Letdown | Nicole Brogdon

After Dan’s Atlanta conference, Judy upends his blue carry-on, dirty clothes tumbling onto the laundry floor—khakis, twin socks, damp boxers. One gossamer green thong springs up like a grasshopper. Judy sinks onto cold tile, pincer fingers lifting the undies—lace with black spiky straps, Small. She smells them. Judy never wore thongs. Since Baby’s birth, she wore cotton floral briefs, Large.

From the den, Dan hollers, “I’m flying back to Atlanta next weekend. Another meeting.”

Baby howls in the master bedroom.

Judy’s pendulous nursing breasts swell, tender and pained, that let-down. Her whole body, sticky, sad, and letdown.

About the Author:

Nicole Brogdon is an Austin TX trauma therapist interested in strugglers and stories, with fiction in Vestal Review, Cleaver, Flash Frontier, Bending Genres, Bright Flash, SoFloPoJo, Cafe Irreal, 101Words, Centifictionist, etc. Best Microfiction 2024, and Smokelong Microfiction Finalist.
Twitter: NBrogdonWrites.

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micro monday micro nonfiction short creative nonfiction

Dungeons and Dragons is by Ryan Stiehl

Dungeons and Dragons is | Ryan Stiehl

calling an upside-down Sonic cup the demon lord Zuggtmoy.

an act of quiet rebellion in the fantasy section of a North Texas Public Library.

a gateway into pulp fiction and bad acting and not caring about either.

a way to begin writing fiction in earnest in high school.

a way of saying hello.

collectively hallucinating that loose change and checker pieces were goblins and heroes around Eva’s dad’s game table when she used to live there.

not worth my family’s distrust, though they’ve gotten better now.

a sanctuary from the intense Texas summer heat outside.

my first experience using they/them to talk to my friend’s barbarian.

finding out my entire first party was gay and/or trans over the course of three years. Well, everyone but me.

where an evil wizard orchestrates his own demise in Castle Ravenloft.

the subject of fierce debate in the Southern Baptist community even today.

finding a clever answer to the 1,500 pound problem of an oncoming, raging stone giant against all odds.

eating Domino’s pepperoni pizza while Sam rolls damage for sneak attack. Needless to say, I have plenty of time to finish my pizza.

being called “culturally gay” for the first time. I still puzzle over what the hell that even means.

slowly realizing I’m the odd one out in my party.

long nights staring at a blank Google document that’s supposed to be ready for tomorrow night’s session.

making Saturday night a sort of holy day.

wishing I were writing for Dungeons and Dragons while I lose my faith in a First Baptist Church.

commemorating Grant’s fallen paladin with an ever-vigilant constellation.

helping a former friend escape their homophobic parents and helping them hide in Washington.

practice calling my friend of eighteen years Ophelia now.

creating the same stories that I’ll treasure dearly for years to come.

realizing that my friends would rather play Thirsty Sword Lesbians or Monster of the Week now.

a way of knowing the glory days are long past

a way of saying, “I’m still glad to have known you all back then.”

About the Author:

Ryan Stiehl is an aspiring creative writer currently living in North Texas. When he is not playing TTRPGs with friends, spending time with his wife and husky-malamute, or working a “real job,” he is fast asleep and would like to remain so, thank you very much.

Issue #22 ~ “Best” of Edition
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micro monday poetry

What I’ve Tried to Ignore by Jamie L. Smith

What I’ve Tried to Ignore | Jamie L. Smith

That our bodies are cities on the verge
of riot, that the blackout eclipsing

our overburdened power grid
approaches with each hum and click

we utter. Under the ash gray and black
lily tattoo, a constellation of red

beauty marks like taillights punctuates
my left side. I’ve tried to forget

that coffee grounds are placed
on hospital radiators

to mask the scent of bowl movement.
To forget that it doesn’t always

work. That I hid in the bathroom
until the nurses had changed

my father. As a child in Miami,
he was taught to hide

beneath his desk with a textbook
covering his head. His mother

fled Europe as the reich advanced.
Towards the end

my father’s tongue remembered
its German. Unsere Körper

revoltieren. Where is there to hide
when we can’t escape?

About the Author:

Jamie L. Smith

Jamie L. Smith is the author of “The Flightless Years”, forthcoming from Finishing Line Press (November 2024). Her chapbook “Mythology Lessons” was winner of Tusculum Review’s 2020 Nonfiction Prize and is listed as notable in Best American Essays 2021. Her poetry, nonfiction, and hybrid works appear in publications including Southern Humanities Review, Bellevue Literary Review, Red Noise Collective, and anthologies by Indi(e) Blue, Allegory Ridge, and Beyond Queer Words. Please visit jlsmithwriter.com for more information.

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micro monday micro nonfiction short creative nonfiction

Alary Things by Hilary Fair

Alary Things | Hilary Fair

Millie fills her chair. Fills the room with her voice. Arms crossed over plump chest over pink robe, she asks if I want to see something amazing.  

I do not.  

I want to continue staring into my iPhone at a cheeky-bottomed swimsuit I will not buy because I cannot afford it and because my ass is soft and pocky from sitting through too many COVID-years inside. 

It is Monday and my mood is drab as the gray-beige paint in here, the misting rain outside. I’m immune to the peppy, highlighter-pink of my gown. Unmoved by the stickers stuck to the mirrors promising: You are beautiful.  

Millie leans in anyway, holding out her own iPhone. Despite myself, I look. On it, a picture her daughter took of a lone cirrus cloud, its wispy, fleeting body immortalized against a blue Kitsilano sky. 

Here in Ontario, spring has been endlessly damp after the darkest winter recorded in seventy-three years. Here in this mammography lab, Millie and I sit in our robes, waiting for techs with gentle hands to lift and tuck and squeeze and photograph our tissues. 

“An angel wing,” I say, lingering on the image.  

Millie sits back, satisfied. 

An older woman once taught me to look for hearts. I find them easily now—in tree burls and beach stones and, once, a clump of cat litter.  

A tech appears, beckoning to me, and I leave Millie behind. She’s still in her chair, still has arms crossed over plump chest over pink robe.  

Neither of us knows, yet, what our scans will reveal. Or that the sun will peek through today. Or that in the coming weeks I will think of Millie when I notice the alary quality of other things: the arc of a rain-soaked cedar frond pasted to a shingled roof; the curve of a dried milkweed pod backlit by sun and lake and sky; a photograph from an animal sanctuary, showing a cluster of kittens, their tiny bodies feathering out from a shared food bowl, creating a patchy-but-perfect wing.

About the Author:


Hilary lives near the shores of Lake Huron (in Canada) with a high-energy husband and a high-energy dog who prevent bouts of quiet, writerly isolation from lasting too long. When she can focus, her essays sometimes win or get short-listed for awards and published in some of her favorite places—The New Quarterly, Event, and Prairie Fire, among them. 

Issue #22 ~ “Best” of Edition
Categories
micro monday poetry

Star*Flower by Murryn Payne

Star*Flower | Murryn Payne

Each spring they burst forth
    a supernova of pollen and perfume

The white dogwoods are starlight
    hydrangeas prickle in the twilight sky
changing color based on iron and copper in the ground

The pillars of creation are rhododendron
    Crepe myrtle waves like faint comet tails
Heavenly bodies here on earth

Black holes absorbing everything around them
    Galactic soil to compress,
and start anew.

Perhaps the BIG BANG was just the seed
    erupting forth, after all,
we are still covered in dirt and water

If I am a flower, let me be the moonflower
    out at night and soft,
    the morning glory half life,
bioluminescent in the water like seaweed

glow for the stars already in the soil I walk on
    And bloom for those to see

About the Author:

Murryn Payne

Murryn Payne is an amateur artist, enthusiastic thespian and part time scarecrow. Her work has previously been featured with Button Poetry’s Short Form contest, Headwaters, and 300 Days of Sun. She once heard the phrase ‘the work you do when you procrastinate is the work you should do for the rest of your life’ and has been writing ever since.

Categories
micro fiction micro monday short fiction

All The Kids Are In Therapy by Jen McConnell

All The Kids Are In Therapy | Jen McConnell

Life was just a series of soon-to-expire sticks of string cheese but my brother, a monster with no imagination, ate his by biting into it, like it was any ordinary food, whereas the rest of us – and, by us, I mean all of humanity – pulled the strings off one by one, dangling them, slurping them like spaghetti, whipping each other’s cheeks with them, like normal kids and it makes you wonder what happens when a monster grows up and gets a job, and that’s when the therapist asked if I had a happy childhood and I hesitated, wondering if she really wanted the truth or rather the abridged version I gave everyone else because, while people loved to hear a tragic story, they preferred it in the third-person and that’s when I realized I was reclining on a couch, like a patient of Freud, and the couch wasn’t for my comfort but for the therapist, so she didn’t have to look me in the eye when I opened my heart and let the truth rush out.

About the Author:

Jen McConnell has published prose and poetry in more than forty literary magazines and two of her short stories have been nominated for a Pushcart. She received her MFA from Goddard College. Recent work can be found in Does it Have Pockets?, Bridge Eight and the tiny journal. Her first story collection, “Welcome, Anybody,” was published by Press 53. See more at jenmcconnell.com.

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micro fiction micro monday short fiction

Love Letters by Karan Kapoor

Love Letters | Karan Kapoor

Dear Blue, You are an island far away. Extraterrestrial like oyster shells, I want to carry in my palms the stones beneath your feet. I rub moss all over my body as a way to be near you. An island is the raised thumb of an ocean. It means ocean is having a really good day. Or perhaps ocean is hailing a cab. I am working on convincing ocean to take a walk, so I can walk to where you are. For now, I let the sky open and cry in my arms. Rain is the way clouds look after us — the true teachers of returning. I trace my origin to the sun. To South Africa over three hundred thousand years ago. I am the color of fire, yolk, urine, lemons, daffodils, bananas, longing, summer honey. That I might be made up of cow urine might make you laugh. But I am made from the earth and you are sky. I want to rise above and fly through this smog and reach your doorstep. When we touch, we will be the color of a healed world. Eternally yours, Yellow.

Dearest Yellow, Your words are the cause of light. You are the subject of sun’s envy. Though you remind sunflowers to turn, they wither in my presence. I raise my hand but nobody asks why. When I was born, my mother’s milk came out blue. I did not know you then, but sometimes when I feel alone (which is a regular occurrence in this country where rivers stretch like veins over the broken skin of the earth) I imagine I have known you my whole life. Silver-gray clouds, like thieves, hop the fence of horizon. All beaches I touch hold a signpost warning against tsunamis. How does one outrun a tsunami? I did not mean for this letter to loom with death but these days even the palm trees along the stripmalls do not cheer me up. I am a world without footprints. I am the broom that scatters the dust of joy, shatters the vase of mercy. I am bruise, I am ice, I am Shiva’s throat, I am death. My prayer is not more than gossip. Why do you lose yourself in the atlas of earth and water? This fugue of distance. Do all colors not turn black if mixed together over and over? Yours in the pandemonium, yours in the quiet, Blue. 

About the Author:

Karan Kapoor is an MFA candidate at Virginia Tech. Their poems have appeared in AGNI, Shenandoah, Colorado Review, Cincinnati Review, North American Review, and elsewhere, fiction in JOYLAND and the other side of hope, and translations in The Offing and The Los Angeles Review. They’re the Editor-in-Chief of ONLY POEMS.

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micro monday micro nonfiction short creative nonfiction

Oceans by M.R. Lehman Wiens

Oceans | M.R. Lehman Wiens

The child is crying, his wails cascade down the stairs and flood our home with grief. It’s the sixth time this evening, and our Netflix queue is stuck on a frozen screen. Are you still watching?

She does not look at me, focused on her laptop, as she should be, the physician caring for her patients. She has birthed, nursed, worked her body and mind down to the bare fibers of her existence. She is done.

She coughs once, a soft, delicate sound that tells me what I already know. It’s my turn, has been my turn, and there will be no discussion of the issue. I shouldn’t have to be reminded. I go upstairs and pick our son out of the crib. I sing to him, rock him, and he quiets but does not sleep. Large blue eyes fill the nursery, her eyes, reminding me that love is an ocean, one with tides that ebb and flow, but that never completely disappear.

He and I lie down together, me curled around him inside the crib, as much of a womb as I can be. 

He and I sleep.

When she comes upstairs, I hear the creaking of the old floorboards before I feel the touch of her hand on my shoulder. Carefully, slowly, I climb from around our son and follow her back to our bed.

There, we hold each other, our breaths matching, caught in the ebb and flow together. 

About the Author:

M.R. Lehman Wiens is a Pushcart-nominated writer and stay-at-home dad living in Kansas. His work has previously appeared, or is upcoming, in Consequence, Flash Fiction Magazine, The Metaworker, The First Line, and others. He can be found on Threads as @lehmanwienswrites.

Categories
micro monday poetry

Death of the Moth by Annalee Fairley

Death of the Moth | Annalee Fairley

When I turn on the faucet, he cannot escape
this torrent, his wings vibrate, an eyelid dreaming
flight which can lift him only in the direction of
the water’s exit. How quiet is the panic of
this moth. He begs nothing from me, no mercy
even as the liquid pools around him, which shows
him the life of a dead leaf in autumn. 
A brown thing all wet and weighed down.

I want to be more than this bed I made.

About the Author:

Annalee Fairley

Annalee is a queer poet that currently lives in Roanoke, VA. Over her writing career, her poetry has been published in Ink & Nebula, Apricity Magazine, The Black Fork Review, Hellbender Mag, and Chapter House Journal. She has been awarded the Gager Fellowship, Neill James Creative Writing Scholarship, and the Betty Killebrew Literary Award for her poetry and fiction. She currently works as a librarian.

Issue #18 ~ “Best Of” Edition