It’s Fall (ish) And The Flash Fiction Results Are In! by Erika Raskin and Mary Esselman
The school bus is squeaking past again, there’s a pumpkin/watermelon cage match in the produce aisle and — most critically — the annual influx of dynamite entries in Streetlight’s flash fiction contest have been read! As before, the judges were gifted with glimpses of whole worlds built a mere five hundred words at a time. Some captured the quotidian, others, terror; some broke our hearts and a few, too, were laugh-out-loud funny. (You’ll see.) All of which means that picking winners was freaking hard. We are not talking about a bridge design competition which … Continue reading It’s Fall (ish) And The Flash Fiction Results Are In! by Erika Raskin and Mary Esselman
What Do Dogs Do All Day? by Erika Raskin
Trixie Dougan Bijou Bellman was my mom’s dachshound when she was a kid. Though extremely short, Trixie had a rich and independent life. She walked around their Minneapolis neighborhood, giving wide berth to the front yard of Mrs. Sinclair whose reputation as a witch had clearly been conveyed cross-species.The abbreviated pet traveled an impressive circuit that included a stop at my great aunt and uncle’s place for some type of biscuit. This was apparently surprising in that, according to my grandfather, my uncle was notoriously tight. (Grandpa swore his brother-in-law bought one top shelf … Continue reading What Do Dogs Do All Day? by Erika Raskin
Hope by Carlene M. Gadapee
Remember that time you spent five whole dollars on a ticket to win a calf at the fair? What you thought we’d do with a little cow, I have no idea. We lived in a two-room apartment. We wandered through the trade hall, looking at things to improve and repair a home we wouldn’t have for twenty-five years, considering where a hot tub might go, if we had a place, or what sort of siding would look best. We made an investment in ourselves, paid a small deposit with a promise that, after a year … Continue reading Hope by Carlene M. Gadapee
Let the Leaves Turn by Fred Wilbur
I possess a book on reading at the beach. How to Read a North Carolina Beach* is one of those few books you need a beach to enjoy fully, one that prompts you to verify its contents by actually walking on the beach! The notion of reading at the beach began in the latter nineteenth century with the rise of summer vacations (not necessarily all at the beach) and this leisure time to read was promoted by the publishing industry producing entertaining, light, or fun works of literature. Thus, “beach read” eventually rose as … Continue reading Let the Leaves Turn by Fred Wilbur
My Father the Mixologist by Mara Lee Grayson
If you’d met him on a Greyhound bus in 1962 he’d have asked you to look out for Kerouac on every corner or find Mickey Mouse beneath a palm tree sweeping streets with brooms that danced themselves to life at parties just for you If he was drunk he’d drizzle Steinback over Shakespeare, float O’Casey’s Irish brogue on top of Tennessee, and wait for Godot with you if you got lonely on the carpet in your underwear and cowboy hat. Later he’d pour method into Montague, muddle warnings up with wanderlust, be once again Big … Continue reading My Father the Mixologist by Mara Lee Grayson
Gradoo by Richard Key
Etymology uncertain. That is how the dictionary deals with the origins of the word gradoo, tip-toeing lightly around a word you wouldn’t want to step in. Pronounced graw-doo with the accent on doo, as in Scooby-Doo and Yabba Dabba Doo, a colloquialism from the South, the dictionary says. Ahh! No surprise there. It’s not Connecticut yankees throwing a word like that around if classier terms are available. Which brings up the question of what, exactly, is gradoo. Back to the dictionary again: crud, filth, garbage, gunk; burnt mess stuck to the bottom of a pot. … Continue reading Gradoo by Richard Key
Love Not Cheaply by Giancarlo Malchiodi
Nonna tends Dad and Auntie in three room railroad flat; Bathtub in kitchen, 3′ x 5′ plywood tabletop, fridge at foot of bed, toilet in outside hallway with overhead waterbox and cold, wet chain hanging for the flush that suburban cousin Gina never could figure out how to use. Nonna fork-kneads one-inch pillows of dough filled with cheese, parsley, and beef. Tasted wonderful, even if too-many eggs and over-cooking meant they fell apart in grease-speckled broth. “Al Dente” could have been an opera singer, for all Nonna knew. She could not cook Italian: The ravioli … Continue reading Love Not Cheaply by Giancarlo Malchiodi
We All Have Our Problems E. H. Jacobs
You and your wife are sitting in your therapist’s waiting room. You look at the door, paranoid that someone you know will come in and you’ll attempt to cover up your embarrassment with small talk—small talk in a small town—your voice quavering in that high-pitched lilt that broadcasts your self-consciousness, with your oblique attempts at humor that only you chuckle at. And not talk about why you’re here, though you’ll know that he’ll know why you’re each here, and you will both wonder what, precisely, is the other’s why. And then you will have … Continue reading We All Have Our Problems E. H. Jacobs
To Be a New Yorker by Elizabeth Meade Howard
The train whistle trumpets its warning. I watch the woods, meadows and marshland slowly morph into urban views and city skylines. Washington. Baltimore. Philadelphia. Newark. New York will be next. The best of memories surface as I approach Manhattan, the captivating city for which I feel a claim and abiding affection. What, I wonder, does it take to be considered a New Yorker. My first memories of the city date from the 1940s, a formative time and closeness to my parents. We lived on Seventeenth Street near Stuyvesant Park where my mother took me … Continue reading To Be a New Yorker by Elizabeth Meade Howard
We Need Appointments to See Friends by Gerald Yelle
Because we didn’t ask Abraham to do anything we wouldn’t do ourselves. We don’t owe him any explanation. Let him think it’s revenge in advance for when kids snitch on parents. We know it’s a kid who kicked off the Salem witch hunt. We knew Shylock’s daughter ran off with his ducats, that kids would accuse their mothers’ boyfriends of all kinds of crime to keep them apart, then set fire to City Hall: We already planned to replace it with cheap dwellings all the way from South Street to High. We knew revenge in … Continue reading We Need Appointments to See Friends by Gerald Yelle