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by Sarp Sozdinler

One could say they were colleagues. At first glance, they might indeed look like colleagues, even sound like it too, but ask them anytime what they were doing at work, slaving away the best years of their lives like that, they’d blurt a laugh and exchange a glance that might indicate that they shared more than a desk. And when she was diagnosed only two weeks after her thirtieth birthday, he was the first to go visit her in the hospital, not forgetting to bring her sunflowers and a pack of Haagen Dazs caramel ice cream, her winter favorite, without considering how to refrigerate it in a six-by-eight hospital room the size of a coffin. For weeks to come, he was the one who ferried spoons of ice cream into her mouth in the comfort of the latter’s one-bedroom Astoria apartment, and only within two months of their faux-roommateship they built a rapport akin to that of old friends. They rode to the doctor’s appointments together and climbed to the rooftop whenever she was in need of fresh air. They bought vases of plants to change the air in their apartment, turning it into a microclimate of their own. When one day he returned home from work and found her crawling on the floor, he was the one who called her parents for help. He wanted to tell them about their daughter, how she could turn wine into blood with her killer smile, how the two of them shared a naked slice of pizza the night before and danced to Madonna like two good friends. How they’d become more.

About the Author

Sarp Sozdinler has been published in Electric Literature, Kenyon Review, Shenandoah, and Masters Review, among other journals. His stories have been selected as finalists for the Los Angeles Review Short Fiction Prize and the Passages North Waasnode Short Fiction Prize​. ​His work has been selected or nominated for several anthologies including the Pushcart Prize, Best Small Fictions, and Best Microfiction. ​He edits the literary journal The Bulb Region​ when he’s not working on his first novel.
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Two Nude Night Owls

by Adam Brannigan

Its past midnight, and I’m sitting at my fire pit, burning old letters from old girlfriends. Old photos. Old birthday cards. Trinkets and whatever. It’s time to let go. I’m getting older. Which means I’m dying.

The fat man next door is swimming nude again. He also stays up late. Night owls. I can see into his yard, he can see into mine. We’ve never discussed a fence or planted a screen of shrubs, trees, whatever. We don’t even talk. He goes for a nude swim almost every night in summer. He waves, I wave back and that’s it. I probably shouldn’t. I used to be worried that he might see it as an invitation and wander over in the nude to have a chat just because I wave. But he never has wandered over, probably never will. Not sure why, but that makes me sad.

It might be against the law to be nude in your own pool or whatever, but I haven’t bothered to check. I don’t call the police because he doesn’t seem to mind when the smoke of my fire pit blows across the waters of his pool while he’s swimming in the light from blue LED’s. I guess you could say we have an understanding.

But you know, if he waved me over and invited me to swim with him, I would join him. I’d take off my clothes and jump in. We’d talk. Learn each other’s names. Do laps and somersaults like we were kids, not fat, not bitter, not probably dying or whatever. Just two nude night-owls.

In that possible future I’d think I’d probably never had a friend like him, ever. I’d be right, you know.

About the Author

Adam writes across genres, favouring the surreal, the fragmented the dystopian. He has had his work published online and in international and Australian anthologies and journals and is the recipient of several awards for his short stories, flash fiction and poetry. Adam is of Bardi and Nyul Nyul descent, but has other bloodlines that whisper their agonies and ecstasies to him

Vagina First

by Emily Rinkema

Two weeks after my twentieth birthday my mother begs me not to move to Montana by myself because she says I will be eaten by a grizzly bear, vagina first, and I laugh as I pack and ask if this is supposed to be a metaphor, imagining some cowboy going down on me in the parking lot of a dive bar called Bucky’s or Lucky’s or The Watering Hole, and she says no, it’s not a goddamn metaphor, and grabs my Camp TakaWaka tank top from my hands and folds it as if she works at GAP, and tells me that it’s a dangerous world out there, says things happen that we can’t plan for, says, for example, grizzly bears can smell menstrual blood from 20 miles away, and she tells me even bear spray and bells, both of which she ordered for me and has already packed in the bottom of my bag, won’t scare them off once they smell me, tromping through the mountains like a bloody dumpling, and I say, “Enough, Mom! I get it,” and I tell her I don’t even like to hike, that I can take care of myself, that I’m not some little girl anymore, and she says, “I know,” and then more quietly, “But that won’t matter to the grizzly,” and she curls up on my bed, legs and arms tucked in like they tell you to do if your bear spray fails.

About the Author

Emily Rinkema lives and writes in northern Vermont, USA. Her writing has recently appeared in Fictive Dream, Okay Donkey, JAKE, and Frazzled Lit, and she won the 2024 Cambridge and Lascaux Prizes for flash fiction. You can read her work at https://emilyrinkema.wixsite.com/my-site or follow her on X, BS, or IG (@emilyrinkema).

My Husband Watches Henry the Donkey

by Debra A Daniel

When the news is overwhelming, my husband turns to Youtube. “Here comes Henry,” he says. Henry’s owner brings treats and the donkey prances to the fence, braying and showing his toothy glee.

My husband smiles. “There are too many bad asses in this world,” he says. “We need more like Henry”

These days we’re losing sleep. Losing friends. Blocking them on Facebook. Avoiding neighbors with unwelcoming posters in their yards. The list of businesses we’re boycotting grows daily. My husband’s blood pressure is problematic. Mine, too. Our hearts as well. It’s tough to be healthy when the world makes us sick. At night we listen to yoga music or British podcasts because their accents soothe like a lullaby. There’ve been days when we moped and brooded and even answered, yes, to doctor’s office questionnaires about depression and sadness.

Then my husband found Henry, with his ridiculous grin, his jubilation over something as simple as an apple or a carrot or a Twizzler. On particularly disheartening news days, he binges on Henry. It doesn’t matter if he’s seen the video before, he still finds relief in the joyful little guy.

“Look at him,” my husband says. “He’s glad to be alive.”

“He’s not worried about the end of the world as we know it,” I say.

“Don’t say that in front of Henry,” my husband says. He chuckles “We don’t want to upset him.”

We sit at the kitchen table making signs for the weekend protest. Bright markers. Huge letters, Catchy puns. Pointed barbs. In the background, the iPad plays Youtube. Over and over, we pause from our dire musings to take comfort from Henry’s simple life in a pasture green and pleasant.

About the Author

Debra A. Daniel, is the author of three novellas-in-flash, A Family of Great Falls The Roster (Ad Hoc Fiction), and In the Dark Eyes of the Rabbit (Ad Hoc Fiction) which won the Bath Novella in Flash Award in 2025. She is also the author of the novel Woman Commits Suicide in Dishwasher (Muddy Ford Press) and poetry chapbooks, The Downward Turn of August (Finishing Line Press) and As Is (Main Street Rag). She won the Fractured Lit Work/Play Challenge and was third place in Flash Fiction Magazine. She’s been nominated for Pushcart and Best Short Fictions, has been long listed and shortlisted in many competitions, and has won The Los Angeles Review short fiction prize. She was twice named SC Arts Commission Poetry Fellow, won the Guy Owen Poetry Prize, as well as numerous awards from the Poetry Society of SC. Work has appeared in journals and anthologies including: With One Eye on the Cows, Things Left and Found by the Side of the Road, The Los Angeles Review, Fall Lines, Smokelong Quarterly, Kakalak, Emrys Journal, Pequin, Inkwell, Southern Poetry Review, Tar River, Gargoyle.She is retired from a career in teaching, now sings in a band with her husband, and was once on ‘Who Wants to Be a Millionaire.’