Kiley Brockway lives in a suburb of Chicago. She has been previously published in Halfway Down the Stairs literary magazine, and was admitted into a young writers workshop through the University of Iowa. You can find more of her work on Instagram (@kiley_a_brockway).
Maria Barleben-Adderley is an audience researcher, who has been passionate about travel photography for twenty years. She found inspiration in Iceland and South Africa, in New Zealand and Russia, and now resides with her husband and two sons in a beautiful countryside of East Sussex.
cloudassassins is a Scottish photographer focused mostly on nature and landscape photography in black and white or colour. Find out more on Twitter (@cloudassassins).
Foy Timms is a poet/writer/photographer based in Reading, Berkshire. Her work has been published or is forthcoming in Dust Poetry, Fevers Of The Mind Poetry Digest, Hypnopomp, Merak Magazine, North of Oxford, Peeking Cat Poetry, Pulp Poets Press, Sage Cigarettes, Selcouth Station Press, Small Leaf Press, Tealight Press and Twist in Time, among others. She is preoccupied with themes such as displacement, departure, solitude, British towns/villages, social exclusion and the socio-political dimensions of living spaces.
Pulling on scruffy, badly laced joggers
With savage triumph, I dig inky hands
Into the deep pockets of my tree-brown
Greatcoat, and across time’s unblurring sands
Stick my tongue out at the dark memories
Of grumps enforcing ladylike conduct.
I yodel my merry way to the shops,
Cheering because they cannot now deduct
Marks for running, nor take away my book –
I’m just saying: adulthood sucks;
But not all of it. Not quite all.
Tree trembling in the chill autumn,
Let your wheezing leaves fall,
Your twigs splinter
I turn grey; you merely gold. Come,
Drape your glorious shawl
Of gilded rot.
Tree of branches bared by winter,
Your spring will come again;
Mine will not.
Hibah Shabkhez is a writer of the half-yo literary tradition, an erratic language-learning enthusiast, and a happily eccentric blogger from Lahore, Pakistan. Her work has previously appeared in Bandit Fiction, Literati Magazine, Feral, Across The Margin, and a number of other literary magazines. Check out her Linktree here.
Glistening spiderweb –
street wires
at sunset.
Nancy Byrne Iannucci is the author of Temptation of Wood (Nixes Mate Review 2018). Her poems have appeared in several publications, some include Allegro Poetry Magazine, The Mantle, Gargoyle, Clementine Unbound, Three Drops from a Cauldron, 8 Poems, Glass: A Journal of Poetry (Poets Resist),Red Eft Review and Typehouse Literary Magazine. Nancy is a Long Island, NY native who now resides in Troy, NY where she teaches history at the Emma Willard School. Find her on Instagram.
Only you could say a thing like that at a time like this. I fix my gaze on the frayed brim of your baseball cap, avoiding your expectant eyes as I ruminate on my response. But truth demands expression, so I blurt it out: “I love you too.”
Lori Cramer’s short prose has appeared in The Cabinet of Heed, The Drabble, Flash Fiction Magazine, MoonPark Review, Truffle Magazine, and elsewhere. Her work has been nominated for Best Microfiction. Links to her writing can be found on her website. She tweets (@LCramer29).
You asked me what bird I would be if I were a bird and I told you I would be a Black Swift, living on the wing. I told you I would take the highest crag behind the waterfall and furnish it with the mossiest nest anyone had ever seen – even you would be in awe. And if anybody, bird or beast or man, ever saw my acrobatics in the fine morning spray, they couldn’t help but to believe in something higher, something more. At this point, you tried to tell me what bird you would be if you were a bird, but instead I told you that if I were a Black Swift, I would pepper the afternoon sky with shooting stars of charcoal grey, or hover on the current, in love with the Earth below. You told me that you would be a parakeet with green and gold – I told you that I would tell nobody of my secrets. You said that you don’t understand me anymore. I told you I would die on the wing.
Sean Cunningham is a writer of very short prose and poetry, from Liverpool. His work has appeared in publications such as Fugue, Ellipsis Zine, Bending Genres, and Breadcrumbs, among others. He can be found on Twitter (@sssseanjc).
What went wrong was that, many years prior to my birth, the planets were situated in such a way that – with hindsight – was perfect for me. As it stands, I was born wrong.
What went wrong was that, when I was younger, I believed too much in everything and too little in myself. I would tell people my name and they would correct me: No, your name is Scooby, or, No, your name is Spud. And it’s true, I was and I am Scooby, I was and I am Spud.
What went wrong was that, when I was younger still, I shared my jam tart – unprompted – with Human Jenny, and the both us began to expect this.
What went wrong was that, at some point, I started reading about how China was like the universe in the way that its borders were always expanding. This was due to large-scale dredging of the seafloor in order to attain material resources for the manufacture of artificial land. By 2045 it will be the largest nation on Earth.
What went wrong was that, long before any of this happened, I dreamt it all up whilst asleep on my cloud, and I have been in a constant battle between remembering and forgetting ever since.
What went wrong was that we began to establish rituals and traditions that we would participate in on certain days of the year for the purpose of celebrating arbitrary milestones and events.
What went wrong was that – if you will, please, turn your attention to exhibit A – as you can see, the instructions were utter nonsense.
[Exhibit A appears to be a nonsense arrangement of cut-up, handwritten words, titled Instructions]
What went wrong was that, after some good, hard thinking, I came to the conclusion that Jenny had been right all along.
What went wrong was that I added too much salt and too much sugar.
What went wrong was that I gave up on you – you never gave up on anyone, anyone at all. All I had to do was pay attention for five fucking minutes – minutes that I need now.
What went wrong was that I overheard things that I should have, about people I will never know.
What went wrong was that – if you will now regard exhibit B – there was never any way in or out. And it could be said that this was the main thing.
[Exhibit B is a seemingly slapdash drawing of a maze. There are entrances and exits, but there are no entrances or exits]
What went wrong was that it all came down to a choice between now and forever, and still I’m not sure it could even be called a choice.
What went wrong was that I said to myself, You can do this, but couldn’t hear a word.
What went wrong was that, as predicted, the ice caps melted. They flooded everything but China’s artificial coast, making it the largest nation on Earth.
What went wrong was that you asked me to be succinct.
What went wrong was that we insisted that everything was happening in slow motion – but we can’t live in slow motion.
What went wrong was that – please ignore exhibit C – we were led to believe our default position was being in the right.
[Exhibit C is a photograph of a photograph of an apparently nuclear family of ‘crash test dummies’]
What went wrong was that I stopped sharing my jam tarts.
Sean Cunningham is a writer of very short prose and poetry, from Liverpool. His work has appeared in publications such as Fugue, Ellipsis Zine, Bending Genres, and Breadcrumbs, among others. He can be found on Twitter (@sssseanjc).
Since having children, I often feel like my brain has turned into a Jabberwocky nonsense and déjâ-vu machine. But there’s no way I can ever have seen a pink flamingo crossing the road before. I mean, what the… I bleep the swear word out of my thoughts, as Tilly tugs my hand.
“Come on, Mummy, we’re going to be late again!” Tilly skips on ahead, then turns to look back, her too-big school jumper drifting off her left shoulder.
I sigh. What I wouldn’t give not to rely on cheap chain stores and others’ cast-offs! Still, second-hands are environmentally friendly, while my kids are bright, respectful and reasonably tidy. That’s what counts, right?
“The others will be playing without me,” Oscar chimes. “They’ll have gone in by the time we get there!”
That’s when it comes to me, the déjâ-vu of my flamingo – the six mothers that gather at the school gate every morning, all feathers and flounce with their long-legged elegance, plastic heels and expensive Radley handbags. Every morning, I shuffle around their flamboyance, flustered by the way they eye up the other mums from the looped-necked height of their immaculate grooming.
But not this morning. I let determination power me as I glide towards them. They’ve kissed their beautiful angels goodbye and are preening their perfection.
“Oh, look,” I say, bending down suddenly while they’re busy beaking away to each other. “I think you dropped this Primark receipt.”
I hand the crumpled scrap of paper to the snootiest, then turn away to watch Tilly and Oscar half-skip, half-fly, to their classroom like chirpy robins. For the first time that week, I smile a smile that doesn’t feel tired.
Sarah Leavesley is a fiction writer, poet, journalist and photographer, with flash published by journals including Fictive Dream, Ellipsis, Jellyfish Review, Litro, Spelk, Reflex Fiction, Flash Frontier and Bending Genres. She also runs V. Press poetry and flash fiction imprint. See more on her wesbite.
Briefly Write 