Editors' Choice:
Misa Levey, Steam Pipe
Runner-ups:
Crockett Doob, Laugh Like a Tremble
Ken Poyner, A Reformed Clown
Mark Antokas, A Cold Day at the Beach
Fiona H. Evans, How to Darn a Sock
George Evans, Commercial Break
Carrie Hinton, The Egret
Caren Messing, Stride
Jen Mierisch, Midway
Suki Shinn, Remember to Stay Quiet in the Forest
Lorna Wood, Dear Granddaughter
Christopher Woods, Children of the Sun
Micro-Prose artwork designed by Amanda Yskamp
A Cold Day at the Beach
Fiction • Mark Antokas
Of late, rising off the stones was tough on his old Greek bones.
“Excuse me,” he said to her as she basked naked on a beach. “Are you German Swiss? I mean, you look familiar.”
It was October. Most tourists were gone, only the hardy remained. And the lonely.
“Yes, I am German, born in Switzerland. Do I know you?”
The alternating clouds and sun, the fresh cold breeze, the crashing surf all gave notice of coming winter.
“Have you been coming here for a long time? I think we might have made love to each other one summer, oh, twenty years ago.” He smiled. “You had an English boyfriend at the time, a tour guide working on the other side of the island. I remember him having the most startling blue eyes.”
She looked at him, amused. Quite the pickup line, even if it was true. “Yes, we are married. For some time now. We have a daughter. She does not know her biological father. She has brown eyes, like yours.”
She was as bold as he remembered. He didn’t smile. “How old is she?”
“She’s twenty. Are you here for long? Should we all have dinner together tonight?”
Mark Antokas has two published novels on Amazon, The Odyssey According to Homer, 1967-69 and Another Noel, as well as two collections of short stories, You Said We’d Be Friends Forever and I believed You and The Nepenthe Collection. Among others, he has had short stories published in 5thWallPress (wall#9), ScryofLust, Fleas on the Dog (issue 7, #17), Transmundane Press (On Time) and The Chamber Magazine, and short fiction in The Wild Word, Culture Cult, Metastellar and Red Fez.
Laugh Like a Tremble
Nonfiction • Crockett Doob
Imagine you’re lost in a graveyard with your parents. One limps; the other smokes. One has cancer and the one who’s smoking may or may not have cancer, but she’s hiding that from dad, though she told you and told you not to tell him. She’s hiding behind tombstones now, even though we know she smokes. She darts from one to the next, following us, like she’s in a shootout.
You want to laugh. The suffocating kind of laugh you do when you’re annoyed. A laugh like a tremble. But you can’t do it now, not in the middle of a graveyard in the middle of the day, the three of you walking in what surely must be the wrong direction by now.
Crockett Doob’s work has been published in Vol. 1 Brooklyn, Fiction Attic Press (forthcoming), HOOT (forthcoming), Newtown Literary, Does It Have Pockets, Free Flash Fiction, and HiLoBrow. He lives in Rockaway Beach, NY, and does not surf.
How to Darn a Sock
Fiction • Fiona H. Evans
Take the sock from your child’s foot, tutting at the dirt. Hold it to your nose to breathe in his scent, marvelling that it hasn’t changed since he was a babe in your arms. Take the needle and thread a good quality nylon yarn through its eye. Stab it in, pass it under the hole then out the other side. Pull the yarn tight and stab again. Keep stabbing until the whole sock is full of holes. Throw it to the floor and lay your hand on your son’s ice-cold skin. Wish you could darn the hole in your heart.
Fiona H Evans is a mathematician and emerging writer who lives on Noongar Boodja in Perth, Western Australia. Her writing has appeared in Microfiction Monday, Five Minute Lit, Paragraph Planet, The Drabble, 50-Word Stories, Tinywords, Echidna Tracks and more. You can read more at fionahevans.com.
Commercial Break
Fiction • George Evans
When Abe jumps the shark he’s jacking his D to Bewitched reruns and whistling Andy Griffith.
Like whisky or building those little electric trains with the green cotton trees and bushes (8 or 9 dollars a pop at Hobby Lobby if you can believe it!) TV can be a kryptonite. Abe’s kryptonite will prove the death of him if he cannot change. Lidless eyes waving from episode to episode.
Salvation would come in small steps, little twitches. For him, salvation is the off button on that remote; or so said the man on the TV last night, anyway, late late late when Abe watched on for four hours after the ball dropped and he began to nod.
Tonight, he’s back.
“Do it.” says the man, his slick televangelist pompadour bobbing up and down each noggin nod, “DOOOOO IIIIIIIT.”
And still Abe watches on (transfixed by the pompadour if nothing else).
Can one trust one’s health to a doctor of death? he thinks.
Is a hypocrite, like a slow clock, always right about the wrong time? Or is quitting more grey than all that?
Abe does not know.
So he watches on.
He’ll break after the next commercial.
George Evans is a querulous nuisance from Birmingham, Alabama. When he isn't teaching English (and sometimes when he is) he writes for The Quarter(ly) and on his substack: Fourth Castle on the Left. He enjoys stirring compost, throwing children into the air, and maintaining a classroom of ascetic silence.
The Egret
Fiction • Carrie Hinton
A tinny dismissal bell sounds at Metomen Elementary, old brick and mortar tucked in a valley between rolling Wisconsin hills. Schoolchildren charge onto the playground like barely tamed horses released to pasture. Tired parents congregate in the parking lot, still and oblivious, as a silvery-white egret, rare in these parts, lands in a giant puddle in the same lot and delicately balances on spindly legs.
Lilith, a pale, tight-lipped blonde carrying a baby and the weight of motherhood draped over her like a wet wool coat, watches the egret spread its wings five feet from wingtip to wingtip. Without children, Lilith could fly, daring and unrestrained, wanton some said.
A burly second grader shouts, “Watch me peg the big white bird.”
Lilith yells, “No!” scaring the other parents—the boy surrenders.
The unflinching egret’s milky contour feathers tint lavender with the late afternoon sky, now swirling and darkening like cotton candy melting on the tongue. A nod to Lilith, sister, and the bird takes off.
Lilith loads her children into her minivan and turns right instead of left toward home. As she drives, one hand on the steering wheel, the other flapping out her window, she squints. Her fingers are feathers.
Carrie Hinton is a writer and twenty-year veteran of the Human Services Field. Her work has been published in You Might Need to Hear This, Bookends Review, Kaleidoscope Magazine, and Flash Fiction Magazine. She writes and lives in rural Wisconsin.
Steam Pipe
Fiction • Misa Levey
The steam pipe in the bathroom transmits facts: The woman upstairs is a spitfire work-from-home attorney. Her daughter just got a puppy and they splash in the bath. College students two flights up blast EDM and cut each other’s hair around the bathroom sink. A home health aide comes once a day to help the quiet woman next door get in and out of the bath.
The couple downstairs—I can barely hear. But every few days the man knocks on their bathroom door. He knocks again and calls out a name. The inflection makes me think “Sarah” or “Donna.” He starts banging and yelling. I think I hear him running—maybe he’s getting a key or something to unlock the door.
Sorry, that’s not a fact.
He opens the door, and I hear him crying. But more like tears of relief.
Misa Levey (pronounced like “Grease a Chevy”) is a New York City poet, parent, and PhD dropout. Her poetry has appeared in various anthologies, and her first chapbook, entitled I Don’t Want To, was published in 2022 by Iniquity Press/Vendetta Books.
Stride
Fiction • Caren Messing
A LOCKSMITH PARADE!?!? Amazing: jangling down Fifth Avenue—their smiles all carved to precision: serrated teeth resembling perfect access to anyone's home in this darn city.
Jagged edges and cool steel.
"One more time for the West Coast!" the leader exclaims. In methodical precision they do a 180 degree turn and march back up toward Museum Mile.
"Dag, they be the jolliest homeboyz ever!" Malcomb says, while tapping the front of his pants pocket to feel for his subway money.
We saunter down Fifth Avenue in silence.
We hear the cadence of the parade like interlocking patterns of percussion:
dead bolts, slide locks, cylindrical knobs, latch keys sounds
>Together-Right/Left/Right-Together-Right/Left/Right-Together<
and feel its pep in our step.
In lingering amazement that locksmiths can be so strident and strong—we anticipate not even needing keys to get home.
Caren Messing’s essay “A Modicum of Comfort” appeared in the anthology America, September 11th, the Courage to Give (Conari Press 2001). Her short story "In The Studio" appeared in Asylum Magazine on Comics and Mental Health (Autumn 2015). Her short story “Cornerstone” appeared in the New Plains Review (Fall 2020).
Midway
Fiction • Jen Mierisch
The carnival came every summer. It was Jay’s favorite weekend. He galloped between rides, giggling, holding Amina’s hand with fingers sticky from cotton candy. “Mom,” he told her, “next year I’ll be tall enough for the Ferris wheel!”
A year has passed. Amina stands behind the Ferris wheel alone. Her hand leaves her pocket. Ash sifts through her fingers.
Tomorrow the carnival will be gone, the site an empty expanse of grass. But tonight Amina can smell the popcorn and see the lights, and she can almost hear Jay laughing as the wheel lifts him up to the sky.
Jen Mierisch's dream job is to write Twilight Zone episodes. Until then, she wrangles websites by day and writes odd stories by night. Jen's work can be found in the Arcanist, NoSleep Podcast, Scare Street, and numerous anthologies. Jen can be found haunting her local library near Chicago, USA.
A Reformed Clown
Fiction • Ken Poyner
Not a long story. He was seduced by the spectacle before the age of knowing better, began to act out. He worked his way through clown academy, secured a promising apprenticeship. It seemed normal. He suffered the indignity of clown-o-grams and children’s parties until he was connected with a small troupe playing state fairs. He was happy, as he knew happy then. He became shackled to a pleasant-enough lady-clown, and they produced two gangling clown offspring, both now anonymous in the circus-grooming underground. I bought some of his unused make-up, told him he would do better at another corner.
Ken Poyner’s nine books of poetry, flash, and micro-fiction are available at a few bookstores, and on-line at Amazon, B&N, and elsewhere. Retired from 33 years as a computer specialist, he now cheers for his world-class powerlifting wife of 47+ years at her various contests.
Remember to Stay Quiet in the Forest
Fiction • Suki Shinn
You're drunkenly jumping across tree fingers that are reaching across the pavement, all lit-up by street-light haloes. And even though there are no angels in this jungle, there is no fear either. Never is. Alcohol imbues you with the desire to walk through shadows at 2 am — alone and giggling. A solitary silent hyena-frog.
Well, you certainly ribbited out enough boozy nonsense tonight, didn't you? You could have caught it in your tongue and flicked it into the upper canopy like elderly, lecherous, but kindly, uncles sometimes did — wheezing their darkest thoughts into your hair when no-one else could hear.
No-one ever listened, anyway.
Still, everyone smoked and drank in those days, didn't they, while the kids were busy building their resilience? Funny how the others swung so easily from their emotional vines, though — touching skin that never turned magenta — that never needed such a great divide.
You used to watch them from your dank forest ledge, always hovering somewhere between resentment and longing.
Remember?
Sukie writes and performs, spoken word, poetry and stories in and around London. Her work has appeared in Memento Mori, Paragraph Planet, Vine Leaves Press, and Synkroniciti, which has also nominated her for the 2025 Pushcart prize.
Dear Granddaughter
Prose poem • Lorna Wood
Dear unborn granddaughter, already you are my joy, my life, my worry, my redemption, and, of course, none of those things. As a grandparent, I will not have the time or energy to bring my ocean of regrets and anxieties to bear on you as I did (never meaning to) with your mom. Instead, I will be staging a parade to the flagship donut shop and the planetarium and showing you every reason I can find for hope in Chicago and everywhere else we go, physically or imaginatively, so you will grow up strong and good and ready to fight, in whatever form that takes for you. I will show you the sunrise over Lake Michigan, and the rainbows the sun makes glancing off the mirror in our apartment, and when it rains, we will sit in a cloud, coloring and reading, and talking about your school and your friends, and how much we all love each other until the sun comes out, and we take sandwiches and water to the beggars on Michigan Avenue. Then we will go home, soberly, because some fights we will never win in our lifetimes, but that’s no reason not to try.
Lorna Wood is a teacher, musician, and writer in Auburn, Alabama. A featured writer in the erbacce-prize contest, she is internationally published. Her debut poetry collection, The Great Garbage Patch: Reflections on Fascism, is out on Alien Buddha Press. Find out more at amazon.com/author/lornawood
Children of the Sun
Fiction • Christopher Woods
They came as a surprise, a new breed among us. So very young, still infants, they crawled from their cribs, went outside to see the sun, staring at it for hours, went blind before we knew what had happened. And then we understood that, for that point forward, they were useless to us in our village, in the fields we'd worked for generations.
So, they became our toys. Nights, we let them wander to drown in the river, or to run over the nearby cliffs. We, in our ignorance, never realized that, after they were no more, we would be doomed. Almost too late, we decided to let the last few ones live.
But they would have no part of us, ever. Never looked us in the eye. They cowered in bushes, grew older, made babies of their own.
The sun, always patient, waited for the newest ones to look.
Christopher Woods is a writer and photographer who lives in Texas. He has published a novel, The Dream Patch, a prose collection, Under a Riverbed Sky. His novella, Hearts in the Dark, was published in an anthology by Running Wild Press in Los Angeles. His monologue show, Twelve from Texas, was performed recently in NYC by Equity Library Theatre. He has received residencies from The Ucross Foundation and the Edward Albee Foundation, and a grant from the Mary Roberts Rinehart Foundation. Gallery: christopherwoods.zenfolio.com/f861509283