flash fiction

Review of “Ken & Sirina” by K.A. Polzin, published in The Forge Literary Magazine

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A flash piece whose tone and use of time and repetition allows readers to feel a genuine connection between and with the couple in question.

The story addresses the simple yet profound acknowledgment of growing older as a couple. Interspersed with humor and intimacy, the duration of the piece is over the course of an evening and a morning. It takes place on an Arctic cruise, during which the couple in question—Ken and Sirina—contemplate the decisions of a couple on vacation: Should we have one more glass of wine? What time should we go to bed? Will we make it to breakfast on time tomorrow morning? But when they share breakfast with a British couple, who go on about their children, Ken and Sirina leave the meal and discuss their own future as a childless couple (“They’d decided not to have kids, some twenty years before…”). Ken’s a “…don’t-think-about-it-unless-you-have-to kind of person.” But Sirina is not. So the two of them, Ken and Sirina—who now adorn their statements with “meine Damen und Herren”—are forced to confront their childlessness. They reach some conclusions (“…the healthy one can read to the dying one.”), they sip more wine (yes, wine immediately after breakfast), and they tease each other gently, while offering assurances to one another that are incomplete, perhaps unnecessary, but wholly comforting.

A charming flash piece marked by moments of intimacy and humor. Read it here.

K. A. Polzin’s stories have appeared or are forthcoming in Subtropics, Gulf Coast, Wigleaf, and elsewhere, and have been anthologized in Best Small Fictions 2023 and the Fractured Lit Anthology 3. Polzin’s short humor has appeared in McSweeney’s Internet Tendency.

Keith Pilapil Lesmeister is the author of the fiction chapbook Mississippi River Museum and the story collection We Could’ve Been Happy Here.

Review of “The Smell of Muskoka Pomade” by Jacob Anthony Moniz, published in Southeast Review

/ Keith Pilapil Lesmeister / 1 Comment

Here’s a flash fiction piece set in the tucked away corners of a bar. While there are multiple people stuffed into a booth, the points of interest in the story revolve around the narrator and his friend/former lover Adrián who, as the narrator observes, “does his best to hide his disappointment,” but the narrator “take[s] notice of the way his face drops.” Something, in other words, is going on with Adrián and the narrator—the two aren’t aligned with one another, something is off, and now they are speaking or not speaking around each other in ways that feel unfortunate in the way that most simple miscommunications feel unfortunate, especially in retrospect when one might realize the importance of a direct statement or question. Instead, the narrator shares with us readers: “I turn to Adrián for some sign that this isn’t where our night is headed…” but it is in fact where their night is headed as “…each take a pill and raise it in what I suppose is a bold, subversive take on a toast.”

What’s brilliant about this flash piece is that these few hundred words open us up to an entire relationship. We feel the torrent of emotion around these two, their past, their present, their potential future. We also feel what it’s like to satisfy a primal need to alleviate any emotional hurt we might be feeling at the moment—to reach for some physical antidote from whatever or whoever might be within our immediate proximity.

A melancholic piece made more so by the characters’ inability to communicate, and their turning to drugs and others to alleviate their emotional wounds.

Read the story here.

Jacob Anthony Moniz (he/him) is a writer and visual artist from California. He holds degrees from UC Santa Cruz, NYU, and the University of Notre Dame. His writing has appeared in Catamaran Literary Reader, Penumbra, Chicago Quarterly Review, The Ocotillo Review, The Whisky Blot, and Southeast Review, among other journals and publications.

Keith Pilapil Lesmeister is the author of the fiction chapbook Mississippi River Museum and the story collection We Could’ve Been Happy Here. His most recent work is published or forthcoming in Bennington Review, december magazine, and Terrain.

Flash Friday Review: “DreamHouse” by Christine Naprava, published in Flash Frog

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Flash Fridays are back! We’re kicking it off with “DreamHouse,” a new piece by Christine Naprava published at Flash Frog. Christine has been publishing some great pieces this year and her latest is no exception. Also a talented poet, a distinction which really shines in the language of this piece. 

There are a few reasons I chose this flash to highlight this week, the most obvious being that it’s told in second-person. Big fan. I know it can be polarizing, but I love it, especially when done well, as it is in this story. I love the immediacy of second-person, and Christine has pulled it off wonderfully here. She begins the story by bringing the reader into a perfect slice of Americana—a roller skating rink—and introducing us to a man that could be “your father.” 

The piece weaves through the speaker’s date at the roller-skating rink, and some of the circumstances that moved them from North Carolina to California. Naprava’s poetic skills shine in the nuanced descriptions of the piece, like the man’s toothpick (“Back in North Carolina, the toothpick left scratches on your cheek”), or her date’s vehicle (“Your date drives a Mustang, and you’re a living tragedy”). 

The use of second-person really drives home the universality of the piece. Thematically, the narrator is running from her past: from North Carolina to California, from her father to her date with the Mustang. Yet even when she makes it out, her past still haunts her. The man behind the counter, the other blondes at the rink—how do we make it out of our pasts unscathed and forge ahead to our futures? Can we ever truly make it out? A difficult question to answer, but a question that arises in great fiction. To do it masterfully is impressive, even more so in the confines of flash fiction. 

Maybe we are just outrunning our ghosts to what Naprava describes as “some far-off decade” where “you suffer alone though the world is telling you that you no longer have to.” 

I sure hope so. 

Read the piece here.

Christine Naprava is a writer from South Jersey. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Contrary Magazine, trampset, Kissing Dynamite, Spry Literary Journal, Overheard Lit, The Friday Poem, and Thin Air Online, among others. You can find her on Twitter @CNaprava and Instagram @cnaprava.

Christian Gilman Whitney is a writer from Western Massachusetts, and earned his MFA in Creative Writing from Bennington College. Find him on Twitter @c_g_whitney.

Review of “Chicago” by Kathy Fish, published in Wigleaf

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Chicago is a flash piece narrated from the perspective of a sixteen-year-old whose observations circle around the creepy acknowledgment in the first line: “He kissed his daughter like a lover in the dark hallway at her bedroom door.”

And then the situation: the narrator is visiting her boyfriend’s house. The couple is lying on the couch, covered by an afghan, while the narrator’s boyfriend’s fingers “were inside [her] jeans.” The mother, father, and sister are in the living room next to the couple, and they’re all watching Happy Days, though the irony of that television title is lost on them, or at least the narrator, whose family is falling apart.

But you haven’t forgotten the first line, have you? I haven’t either, and the narrator hasn’t because she returns to this detail again and again. The sheer tragedy of it; of the narrator’s boyfriend’s sister (who is fifteen) instructed to go to bed at 8:15, halfway through Happy Days, and the father kissing her in the hallway. How many fifteen-year-olds are instructed to go to bed at 8:15? Of course that’s the least of the sister’s worries. Our worries.

Still, there are other things happening: discussions about travel, backstory which features a funeral and a fist through a window. And objects (spoons) that represent an important role in this brief, powerful story.

On a personal note, I’ve never read a story that refers to the Amana Colonies, but I’ve been there, and I’ve eaten that family style dining to which the narrator refers, where they bring you massive plates of potatoes and meat, and whatever else northern Europeans chow on. But in my family, there were always too many people at the table, and even the large platters never felt like enough to satisfy our cravings.

Fortunately that’s not the case with Fish’s story. There’s plenty here, and she does us the courtesy of trusting us with just the right information. We’re in the hands of a master storyteller, and she doles out just enough detail. Not too much. Just enough.

Check it out here. And more about Kathy Fish here.

Review of “Good Teeth” by Leslie Walker Trahan, published in New Delta Revew

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“Good Teeth” was the 2020 winner of the Ryan R. Gibbs Award for Flash Fiction. After reading the piece, you’ll understand why. My brief review here:

This story is tied together by braided storylines with a compelling sense of time and excellent use of white space. The braids include: A creepy dentist/landlord. The narrator’s obsession with a stranger – a man – who may or may not exist. And the narrator’s deceased father. The two men — the stranger and the father — look alike and share a love of the violin. We see wonderful images and details that lend credibility to this: callouses on fingers, the “sleek neck of the violin case.” Meanwhile, the dentist gives a “months free rent” to the narrator if she goes out on a date with him. He also gives her free exams—sticks his fingers in her mouth and talks while the narrator “…[doesn’t] say a word.”

Throughout this very peculiar piece, the observations coupled with the braided storylines are enough to signal the alarm, but then we find out more of the narrator’s frame of mind through conversations between the narrator and her sister who asks: “Have you been taking your meds?” We hear that question a couple times, once near the beginning, and once at the end, and by the second time, we too wonder how much help this narrator might need. We readers aren’t exactly sure. But we do know one thing: we won’t call the dentist to come help.

Read and listen to the perfectly crafted and detailed story here.

Leslie Walker Trahan’s stories have been featured in The Forge and SmokeLong Quarterly, among other publications. She lives in Austin, Texas. You can find her on Twitter @lesliewtrahan.