Pupa
An uncommonly awkward young man wanted to change his awkward ways, so he wrapped himself in a blanket, mimicking the butterfly’s metamorphic process, and resolved to stay wrapped up until spring.
But temptation overcame him when friends invited him to the bar. “What’s the worst that could happen?” He didn’t realize that, before it transforms into a butterfly, a caterpillar turns into goo.
That’s the state he was in when he met his friends, who observed that he was more awkward than before.
Jack Rousseau has been published in Blueprint, Fuss Magazine, talking about strawberries all of the time, and Trinity Review. He lives and writes in Kitchener, Ontario (traditional territory of the Neutral, Anishnaabe and Haudenosaunee peoples).
Fortune #14
Your hot imported and horribly expensive sports car will start to belch black smoke from its exhaust on the way to work tomorrow and you will arrange to drop it at the dealership the day after. They will tell you that the parts have to be special ordered from Italy and that the supply chain delays may mean they’ll have it even longer, and you dread the next two weeks’ commute on the bus where you will sit in the back reading the news that you’ve already heard on cable each morning and doing the crossword and sudoku and still have enough time to worry that the little old lady sitting in front of you will have a seizure and that you might be called upon to try to render assistance and that in all the hubbub you will miss your stop and then have to walk ten blocks back toward mid-town and wind up being late for the early morning staff meetings you insisted on hosting in order to motivate the by-and-large faceless and nameless middle managers below you in the company hierarchy. By the time your car is repaired you will wonder why you ever applied for the position when your cushy sinecure with the fortune 500 company for which you were fairly comfortably recompensed seems now like a dream you would like to re-enter rather than get out of bed each morning.
Jamie Brown’s poetry has appeared in nearly three dozen different literary magazines, and his short stories and flash fiction in a dozen. He has won both a Best Book of Verse and a Best Chapbook of Verse from the Delaware Press Association. He manages The Broadkill River Press.
Gumball
You can’t stuff a gumball back into the machine. I’ve opened the machine’s mouth and tried to force the gumball back even if I lose a quarter. It’s no use.
My parents raised me to hold things in. Tightly. Keep all secrets. Tape your mouth shut if it helps. Any truth that you give away will be used against you. I got so stuffed with secrets I essentially went mute-- yes, no, uh-huh, maybe. People thought I was “quiet.” I was quiet, a volcano before it erupts.
Five years ago I erupted. The family was celebrating Easter. Ham. Pineapple. Mashed potatoes and gravy. Sheet cake. Are you OK, my grandmother asked. That’s all it took to incite the lava. I screamed NO I’M NOT OK. I got up from my chair and turned the table over. Relatives scattered and ran out into the yard. My dad grabbed me and started slapping me silly. It was silly. I laughed and laughed.
He demanded an apology, but no thanks. I left home that night.
I felt a little sad for my mother who watched me go and kept saying “What did we do? What did we do?”
Kenneth Pobo has a collection of micro-fiction called Tiny Torn Maps from Deadly Chaps. In 2022 he had a new collection of poetry published by BrickHouse Books called Lavender Fire, Lavender Rose.
In Her Own Words
Assignment: List 10 words that come to mind during English class, today. Beside each word write a sentence using that word and making its meaning clear. You may use a dictionary for help, but make sure the sentences are your own.
1. Harmless - Mr Mellon is usually harmless because he is not mean and he tries his best to help his students and he would never intentionally hurt them.
2. Exhausted - Mr Mellon is exhausted because his wife just had twins and also because he teaches English to a bunch of hick-town teens who, except for his best student Lilly, don’t read much.
3. Dreamy - Mr Mellon is not a dreamy looking guy, but he gets a dreamy look in his eyes when he talks about word origins, what he calls etymology, which is his favourite thing.
4. Cliché - Mr Mellon is the cliché of an absentminded teacher with his half-glasses, bushy moustache that catches crumbs when he eats, bowtie, and tweed jacket.
5. Unaware - Mr Mellon is unaware that things are getting a bit lively in the classroom while his eyes are closed and his chin is resting on his hand above his elbow, which is resting on the desk beside a pile of assignments he should be marking.
6. Rambunctious - A couple of guys are now arm wrestling and swearing and getting rather rambunctious while Mr Mellon is starting to snore.
7. Spittle - Mr Mellon is really conked out now and a string of spittle is running, like a spider’s silk thread, from the corner of his mouth down to the assignments on his desk, and I sure hope mine is not on the top of the pile.
8. Lethal - If Mr Mellon were awake, it’s not likely that an idiot teenage boy would fire a pointy lethal weapon like a compass across the classroom.
9. Embedded - Mr Mellon does not wake up, even after the compass thrown across the classroom misses its target and becomes embedded in an innocent person’s arm.
10. Kerfuffle - After the kerfuffle dies down, I get tissues and wipe off my friend’s bloody arm, then Mr Mellon’s chin slips off his hand, he opens his eyes and says, “Settle down class.”
Louella Lester is a Winnipeg (Canada) writer/photographer. Her work has appeared in Blink-Ink, New Flash Fiction, MacQueen’s Quinterly, Potato Soup, Cleaver, Litro, Five Minutes, SoFloPoJo, Dribble Drabble, Ink Sweat & Tears, Cult Magazine, Reflex Fiction, The Odd Magazine
Some of My Bloody Pinocchio Moments
It doesn’t take much:
a fib,
a whopper of a story,
a lame excuse,
thinking of making up a story even if I don’t say it out loud,
hiding my green vegetables when my mom gets up from the table and putting them in my pocket until I can go outside and really hide them,
blaming my brother for starting an argument,
swearing that I don’t know why my nose was bleeding and no, I wasn’t picking it,
swearing,
telling my mother that my hands were cold and that’s why they were under the covers,
swearing on grandma that I wasn’t peeking into our next-door neighbor Linda’s bedroom after I promised I wouldn’t do it again,
Mom asked if I liked my school lunch and I didn’t tell her that I traded my tuna on rye lunch with Marty for a pack of Sno-Balls, and one from his pack of Ho-s Ho-s oHoszminus a small bite,
hiding my transistor radio under my blanket so I could listen to the Yankee game coming from the Stadium,o-hHos.
Swearing to Mom that I had no idea where the Playboy Magazine came from—I just saw it sticking out from under my bed,
Telling Mom I had no idea why my socks were sticky,
Swearing to Mom that I didn’t sneak the Guildon’s yellow mustard out of the house and smear it inside Linda’s underwear after her mother finished the wash and hung the clothes on the line to dry.
Paul Beckman’s latest flash collection, Kiss Kiss (Truth Serum Press) was a finalist for the 2019 Indie Book Awards. Some of his stories have appeared in Fiction, Litro, Pank, Playboy, WINK, Jellyfish Review, The Wax Paper, Monkey, and The Lost Balloon. He had a story selected for the 2020 National Flash Fiction Day Anthology Lineup and was shortlisted in the Strands International Flash Fiction Competition. He was nominated for 2021 Best of the Web and was a winner in the 2022 Best Micro Fiction Anthology.
India (from Colonial Mud)
The Viceroy's elephant has been walking on water again. It studied White Tantra and is now, apparently, a bit of an adept. I take a few photographs and write an article for The Times, but the issue is full of butterflies singing God Save the Queen in Urdu. The Viceroy photographs himself naked and takes to eating bananas on the ghats with a pack of unruly monkeys. British rule is momentarily threatened by this, but Gandhi is 50 years away, so we can all just relax. I find myself in the forest drinking Darjeeling with the elephant. He tells of the Viceroy's countless peccadilloes, how he once introduced cancel culture to the hill station and predicted England's World Cup winning side of 1966. In my mind, he looks like Bobby Charlton. My editor thinks I should rewrite my article using cow dung, but this would surely incite rebellion, and then we might not even need Gandhi, or Bobby Charlton. The elephant wants to teach me Tantra instead. I'm not keen. Too many unholy rituals, and besides, I could earn a living forcing the Viceroy to dance for tourists if his monkey brethren comply. I have a nut farm in Goa that'll drive them wild.
*
The elephant is surfing the river. He's drawn quite a crowd, mostly Memsahibs escaping the heat. A foamy spray soaks their skirts, stirring all sorts of illicit passions, which thankfully dry up before the plains are awash with fornication. No one has seen an elephant carrying a surf board before, and if we're not careful, we could be led into the sort of weird cult you only find in the ruined temples of a Rajasthani theme park. The Viceroy attempts to revitalize Anglicanism, but in truth, he's lost the Memsahibs to the elephant. His stuffy cream tea parties are no match for their coconut diet and a burgeoning desire to evangelize the foothills with the surf music of the 1960s.
*
It's time to circumcise the Viceroy. I send a wire calling for assistance, but the elephant assures me it's all in hand. He dresses in full imperial regalia to impress the Memsahibs, then marches out of the palace carrying the Viceroy's foreskin on a velvet cushion. The monkeys are incensed; they demand a state funeral for the foreskin, but soon realise even colonialism has its limitations. The elephant plants the foreskin in the Viceroy's garden, and it grows into a magnificent banyan tree, whose roots form a subterranean plumbing network for the whole of West Bengal. Nothing pleases a Memsahib more than clean running water from a disgraced dignitary's foreskin, observes the elephant. He wonders if this has been the Viceroy's intention all along,
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Stephen Nelson is a Scottish writer and visual poet. He has exhibited visual poetry and published prose and poetry internationally for a number of years. His forthcoming book of visual poetry is called Toys for Telepaths (Red Fox Press - C'est Mon Dada series). See his asemic writing on Instagram @afterlights70.