Perfect Ten Marathon: Flash Fiction Finalists and Winner!!!!

Bravo to all the writers! I found myself swirling on imagination's magic carpet as I read these flash pieces. Each one invited me to experience its chosen art in a different, sometimes thrilling way. As it turns out, the winner took me to unexpected depths.

Sandi Stromberg

Congratulations to Yvonne Blumer for her story, "Sea Dragon Flute," winner of the flash fiction entries from the Perfect Ten Ekphrastic Marathon in July.

The flash winner was selected by editor Sandi Stromberg.

All of the finalists in flash and poetry were selected by editors Kate Copeland, Lorette C. Luzajic, and Sandi Stromberg. The entries were read and selected blind.

Approximately 50 marathon participants submitted work to the contest part of the marathon, including one to five works.

The Perfect Ten Ekphrastic Marathon was our fourth annual marathon event. The goal of the marathon was simply to participate, and included a wide selection of art prompts, along with optional ideas to inspire ekphrases. Writers connected in a Facebook group to view the art, chat, share their drafts or ideas and more. They wrote fourteen drafts, with sprints changing every 30 minutes. There was a zoom after party to celebrate their accomplishments. Those who chose to submit to the contest portion had two weeks to revise their drafts and send them in. 

A huge congratulations to everyone who finished the marathon! It is an amazing, intense, fun experience, a day of pure creativity. 

A huge congratulations to everyone who entered their work in the contest portion.

A huge congratulations to all the writers whose work was selected among the finalists! The flash selections are below, and the poetry selections are in a separate post.

And a special congratulations to Yvonne Blumer for her winning story.

We can't wait for the fifth annual marathon next July! Hope to see all of you there again, and many more of you joining the fun.

love, Lorette

​FLASH FICTION WINNER!!!

​Sea Dragon Flute
 
Sea Dragon Flute, (Italy) 17th Century, a wooden flute with dimensions of: height 138.4 cm, width 20.3 cm and depth 8.9 cm)
 
Leila stood at the open window above the canal. The lights of the village swayed on the surface of the water. Voices travelled from cafes and restaurants, people walking the narrow lanes, and from boats on the water. She was on the island of Murano in a small villa. She turned to the large wooden box on the bed and slowly opened it. Inside was the Sea Dragon flute she had stolen from the MET three months ago. She had repatriated it to Italy for no good reason other than to prove she could. Because she’d dreamt of a dragon flute, immense and moaning through her sleep, she looked online and found it and had to have it. She rested her hand on the long hollow back of the wooden dragon, its box as long as her bed was wide. She watched light from the window play on the surface of its gold-painted head. She felt the wood warm and soften under her hand. As her hand rested, the room filled with the scent of candles and incense, voices softened into song. The sun dropped, darkening the window. She ran an index finger from the gold snout, along the body to the tail and felt her skin ripple along her spine. She leaned over and pressed her lips to the reed, releasing a low moan of song. As she did, the surface of her arm itched, as if scales were forming on her dry skin. She stopped and stood, put her hand on her arm, just goose bumps and soft hair. She blew into the dragon again and its shape appeared to soften in the box, an animal stretching after a long rest. She stood and spun around, her loose skirt rising around her. Then she bent and lifted the dragon, held it like a bassoon and blew on the reed again. The Sea Dragon came alive and wrapped around her. She leapt, leapt again, then dove through the villa window into the canal below. A flash of gold and green, the water rose, and Murano’s sunken walls and deep brick foundations strengthened, rebuilt, as the Sea Dragon swam to the watery depths.  
 
Yvonne Blomer
 
Yvonne Blomer has published six books of poetry, most recently Death of Persephone: A Murder (Caitlin Press, 2024). Her work has won awards and appeared in literary magazines and anthologies in Canada, the U.S., the UK, and Japan. She has an MA with Distinction from the University of East Anglia and lives on the territories of the Lək̓ʷəŋən (Lekwungen) speaking people. She was the City of Victoria’s poet laureate from 2015-2018.

The Finalists, in Alphabetical Order of Author

​Movie Poster
  
The Summer Hit List expectations for Daphne Kato’s first venture in the Director’s chair, Summer Swim, were dashed in Cannes this spring when it was revealed that the movie’s theme song, Hemry Mancini and Johnny Mercer’s “Moon River” (which won the 1961 Oscar for Best Song when sung by Audrey Hepburn in Breakfast at Tiffany’s) had been adapted by an unknown derivative grunge garage band from South Cle Elum, Washington. There was also, of course, an egregious error in judgement by the studio heads, who used their final edit clause to force the director to leave in a photobomb mooning of the climactic romantic love scene in which black swans were substituted (“used as metaphors”) for the lead human actors, who were replaced just before the final take because the swans were willing to work for scale. The actors were heard shouting “Swans are scabs!” in unison with the background theme just as the grunge band’s drunken drummer imprudently improvised by bending over and dropping his trousers.

Roy J. Beckemeyer
​
Roy J. Beckemeyer’s latest poetry collections include The Currency of His Light (Turning Plow Press, 2023) and Mouth Brimming Over (Blue Cedar Press, 2019). Stage Whispers (Meadowlark Books, 2018) won the 2019 Nelson Poetry Book Award. Amanuensis Angel (Spartan Press, 2018) comprises ekphrastic poems inspired by modern artists’ depictions of angels. His first book was Music I Once Could Dance To (Coal City Press, 2014). His poetry has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize (2015, 2020, and 2024) and for Best of the Net (2018) and was selected for The Best Small Fictions 2019. His author’s page is at royjbeckemeyer.com.

Don’t Trust Your Poultry
 
I tried to keep an eye on her. The stories I’ve heard. We’ve all heard. But I had my work to do with the cauldrons, the linens, and the undergarments, boiling water scalding my already scarred and scabbed arms, my apron sopping wet. And she was such a bouncy, happy-go-lucky child putting her nose into everyone’s business. Cook, the scullery maids, even the groom. Her favourite was the serving girl who fed the poultry, collected eggs, butchered the birds for meat, and prepared our prize turkeys for market. 
 
The wash-house had grown too overheated. I could barely breathe, so I stepped outside and spotted him with her. His large, pointed ears, tiny horns, goat hooves. The black turkeys which now I recognized as buzzards, his minions, formed a shield around the two of them. The serving girl, her bodice torn open and cap missing, lay still on the ground. I screamed so to be heard in the village, but as he made off with my daughter under his arm, their images became fainter and fainter. His duck tail was the last image of them that I beheld. 
 
Luanne Castle

Luanne Castle’s stories have appeared in Your Impossible Voice, Gooseberry Pie, Bending Genres, Bull, The Ekphrastic Review, The Mackinaw, MacQueen’s Quinterly, Cleaver, Roi Fainéant, River Teeth, The Dribble Drabble Review, Flash Boulevard, and many other journals and anthologies. Her stories have been nominated for Pushcart, Best of the Net, Best Microfictions, and Best Small Fictions. She has published four award-winning poetry collections. Her hybrid memoir-in-flash will be published by ELJ Editions in December 2026.
 

How the Artist Dies
 
When human strives to be Raven the best they can manage is unreliable, though cunning. When Raven metamorphoses into human it’s as the artist who created the mask. The artist’s wings are strong and will carry anyone curious or rapt enough from where they were before to where they are after. Most transformational is the passage along the way. Now look at the eyes inside the mask. They may glow with a fire within as they are the origin of light and all that sustains us. Stay awhile, absorbing life before you catch your ride on the feathers of steel. Later, others will remember you as the wild-haired, wild-eyed rider of the Raven. 
 
Luanne Castle
​
Luanne Castle’s stories have appeared in Your Impossible Voice, Gooseberry Pie, Bending Genres, Bull, The Ekphrastic Review, The Mackinaw, MacQueen’s Quinterly, Cleaver, Roi Fainéant, River Teeth, The Dribble Drabble Review, Flash Boulevard, and many other journals and anthologies. Her stories have been nominated for Pushcart, Best of the Net, Best Microfictions, and Best Small Fictions. She has published four award-winning poetry collections. Her hybrid memoir-in-flash will be published by ELJ Editions in December 2026.

Mirror, Mirror

Annelise wishes she could just melt away every time she looks at herself in the mirror, how she yearns to be fit and thin like all the Insta girls who are effortlessly perfect, lip-glossed mouth, trimmed eyebrows, pink-cheeked and dewy skin, and to have such confident attitude when they stare at the camera straight at Annelise, their words ringing in her ears “you need to do this 7-steps-skincare routine, I did it for a week, and see the difference! I swear by this product, click on the link below to get a whooping 10% discount...intermittent fasting is the best...lose 20 pounds in 2 weeks with these kick-ass exercises, click on the link to subscribe” when she’s staring at her reflection in the glass, and then hearing her mother tell her “you don’t need to look like those girls, just be yourself!” but what does she know, her mother is too busy working and helping out grandma, and Annelise continues to spend hours seeing herself as a blob of blandness, a shapeless mass of hair, and legs like Easter ham until the mirror has had enough, and one day, yells back “You want to melt? Then melt!” and Annelise feels her flesh drooping, drooping, and she’s scared, because, after all she doesn’t really want to melt, she still wants to live, eat soymilk lemon ice cream before summer ends, play Pokémon Go with her bestie, watch movies, kiss a boy, but here her head is softening like a piece of chocolate on a Fondue pot, her bones are marshmallowing, and she finds herself on the floor, arms limp and legs that can’t hold her body anymore, and she’s crawling on the floor begging the mirror, “Okay, okay, I don’t want to melt, please help me” and the mirror bounces back “Fine, but only if you stop looking at me, and go visit your grandma, she’ll put some sense into that head of yours” and Annelise promises she won’t even look at her phone except to call grandma to tell her she’s coming and if she would please make her ham and cheese melt in a brioche because she’s just so damn hungry.

Christine H. Chen
​
Christine H. Chen was born in Hong Kong and grew up in Madagascar before settling in Boston where she worked as a research chemist. Her fiction has appeared or forthcoming in Cleaver, SmokeLong Quarterly, Time & Space Magazine, and has been anthologized in Best Microfiction, Best Small Fictions, Fractured Lit Anthology 3, Bath Flash Fiction. She is a recipient of the 2022 Mass Cultural Council Artist Fellowship. Her stories can be found at www.christinehchen.com

A Tale of Sea Dragons
 
We’ve been such good children that Ah Poh, our grandmother, says we deserve to hear a good story. Long ago Sea Dragons roamed the oceans, she says, and you could see them sliding through the waves, their bodies undulating, their scales shiny and deep onyx like a midnight sea. Sometimes, she says, these giant serpents would show their faces. We oh and ah! And Ah Poh shushes us, let me tell you, she says, they only show their faces when there’s peace and quiet, their faces are the most mighty and stunning, their faces are crowned by gold scales like a crest—we oh! again—their eyes are rubies piercing through the thickest fog, their breath, crimson fire—we ah! again—their teeth sharp like a thousand swords—and we ask Ah Po, where did these fearsome creatures come from, and she thinks for a moment, then says, from all over the world. One of us then says, but aren’t dragons from China? Ah Poh shakes her head no, says Sea Dragons are born from the seas, and the seas belonged to no one until human beings came and carved territories and fought wars to gain more territories, to own more land and rivers and oceans and exploit their riches. We oh! again, and one of us asks, what happened to the Sea Dragons, and Ah Poh whispers, they are still around, and we ah! again, and Ah Po quickly adds, but they are struggling, fearsome as they are, they cannot always survive men’s devastation of Earth, poisoning water and air, and we all ask, what are we to do, and Ah Poh says, if you’ve learned the story, then you will grow into human beings who will care for their survival and the Earth. 

Christine H. Chen
​
Christine H. Chen was born in Hong Kong and grew up in Madagascar before settling in Boston where she worked as a research chemist. Her fiction has appeared or forthcoming in Cleaver, SmokeLong Quarterly, Time & Space Magazine, and has been anthologized in Best Microfiction, Best Small Fictions, Fractured Lit Anthology 3, Bath Flash Fiction. She is a recipient of the 2022 Mass Cultural Council Artist Fellowship. Her stories can be found at www.christinehchen.com
 

Dust
 
It’s all this dust, dust, dust. Everywhere. It gets into our hair, our nostrils, settles in the folds of our skin. 

And the smoke. It blackens our sheets when we hang them out to dry. We try to wash them on days the bombs are fewer and further between, but those days are getting fewer and further between. 

They think we don’t care about the ‘enemy’, but they, too, are our brothers and sisters. The media blames them for this war, but we know they were not the first to send the senseless bombs. But we are careful with whom we share our thoughts. Neighbours and co-workers have disappeared for less. 

As we hang out our sheets for the third time today, we know better than to complain. To utter a word to the wrong ears could lead to death. 

We school our children in buildings that need dusting every day. They play in the rubble of buildings blasted by drone strikes. Who can blame them, though?

It’s all this dust, dust, dust. And the smoke that cannot cover the dirty truth. 
  
Rosie Copeland 
 
Rosie Copeland is a New Zealand writer and artist. She is currently writing a novel for YA. Rosie belongs to several writing groups. Mayhem, Reading Room, Tarot have published her work, and she has also been a finalist in several poetry and fiction competitions in NZ. She has also had poetry and fiction published in the USA, Canada and several NZ anthologies.
 

Water Baby
 
Lucy checked the forecast first thing after she’d had her morning coffee. Higher than average temperatures expected.

“Don’t forget to pack your sunscreen,” called her mum.

“Got it,” she replied.

After a quick coffee, Lucy drove straight to the river. She wanted to avoid the hottest part of the day when the UV rays were strongest. She sang along to the radio as she made the ten-minute drive to Rihanna’s "Stay." It had always puzzled her that the songstress sang it while naked in the bath in the music video.

There was no one around when she parked up. This was a little-known bend of the river, farther upstream than the section by the village.

She unpacked her towel, sunscreen and began to undress then realized she’d forgotten to put her togs on underneath her clothes.

She looked around. There was no one in sight. Just a few ducks on the riverbank and one in the water feeding.

“What the heck,” she said, and removed all her clothes, laying her shorts and underwear and tee on her towel. She slapped waterproof sunscreen all over her body, including her bare bum, and waded in.

She considered the rushes beside the river’s edge afforded her a screen from prying eyes in the unlikely event anyone turned up.

What a delicious feeling it was to swim in the nuddy. The cool water swirled and swished and caressed her body as she floated, waded, ducked right under. She vowed to do this more often. She’d been checking. There was no one else around.

She was a water baby. Her father had always called her that because even from a very young age she’d loved to swim.

When her skin was as puckered as an orange skin, and she was shivering she made her way carefully over the smooth stones to the river’s edge. Once on the bank, she could see her tee, but her shorts, underwear and towel were gone.

She searched frantically through the long grass, and behind rocks, but it proved fruitless. Her clothes were gone, and so were the ducks.

Suddenly she heard voices approaching. A man’s deep voice and a child. Oh my God, I’m going to get arrested for indecent exposure!

Lucy threw on her tee over her dripping torso and plopped herself down cross-legged amongst the long grasses and pulled it over her front.

But the voices were coming from behind her. Cringing, she turned as a man in his forties holding a small girl’s hand said, “Oh, sorry, I didn’t realize –”

His eyes looked everywhere but at her as he turned quickly, pulling the little girl, whose eyes were like balloons.

“Daddy,” she said, “That girl’s got no knickers on!”

“That’s–. Um. Let’s go,” he croaked with embarrassment.

Lucy called after him, “Sorry. Ducks must have grabbed them for their nest!” 

And she sat there laughing until her sides ached.
 
Rosie Copeland 
 
Rosie Copeland is a New Zealand writer and artist. She is currently writing a novel for YA. Rosie belongs to several writing groups. Mayhem, Reading Room, Tarot have published her work, and she has also been a finalist in several poetry and fiction competitions in NZ. She has also had poetry and fiction published in the USA, Canada and several NZ anthologies.

​Serial Nightmare

It came again to torture her sleep; came in the black cloak and hollowed out eyes—the ever-menacing, horned, grim reaper-like specter—only this time it brought friends. Were they benevolent or bedeviled? 

The nightmare emerged in pixelated frames and reeled out with flickering momentum. Heralded by the stench of musk and followed by an orange aura, it came, that menacing spectre; wafting its way through each scene where ax-wielding Bishops preyed upon herb-gathering nuns. 

It was the same old nightmare from which she could not wake. Only this time the nuns pulled out open-bolt, blowback-operated mini Uzis from beneath their habits. At last! The longed-for sequel!

The biting sound of guns rapid-firing across the dreamscape bolted her into wakefulness but she refused to open her eyes before witnessing the bullet-riddled spectre flicker into the hell awaiting him—him and his predatory Bishops. 

The nuns went about cultivating the aromatic herb garden that effectively dislodged the stench of musk, and our dreamer went on dreaming.

Karen FitzGerald
​
Karen FitzGerald is a genre-fluid writer from Sonoma County California. When not cycling, hiking, working a day job, and doing Happy Hours with friends and family, she is found with pen to page producing her debut novel in between writing bouts of poetry, essays, short stories and such. 

​Edgar Degas Visits Russia
 
 The famed painter of the ballet stages a new performance with three prima ballerinas. Though it will be difficult for them to even so much as plie in dresses to their ankles, Degas focuses on the flounce of the arm, the subtle movement of the fingers as they hang sheets and shirts on the line. On their hair coiffed in the traditional bun of the corps. The aprons flutter in the breeze, exactly as Degas intends. Each ballerina has her own dance to perform. One holds a basket on her scarved head and lunges stage left. Stage right, another prepares to pirouette. Center stage, one foot in front of the other, sets her the third dancer for a grand jete. Each leaps over the water trough and lands in a split. At the end of the performance, Degas hands his paintbrush to Natalia Sergeevna Goncharova and says, Paint what you see.

Barbara Krasner

Barbara Krasner looks forward to the marathon all year. Her ekphrastic poetry chapbook, Poems from the Winter Palace (Bottlecap Press) debuted this year and will be joined by an ekphrastic collection, The Night Watch (Kelsay Books) soon. Her ekphrastic work has also appeared in The Ekphrastic Review, MacQueen's Quinterly, Blaze/VOX, and elsewhere. A historian and multiple Pushcart Prize nominee, she lives and teaches in New Jersey. Visit her website at www.barbarakrasner.com.

​Instructions to the Postwar Stylist
 
So many young lives lost in the whirlpool of war. Plunge the postwar knife into what remains. Wipe away the foam, cut into the beer-belly bloat of the Weimar Republic and von Hindenburg. Neither will last. Wear the dirndl like suspenders. Bob the hair and wrap the severed strands into the wheels and gears of industry for fuel. Impale impotent heroes, draw mustaches on clean-shaven faces. Remember Trotsky. Tear away from the past. Snip passe images, reposition them with revision glue into a new world order. See what sticks.
 
Barbara Krasner

Barbara Krasner looks forward to the marathon all year. Her ekphrastic poetry chapbook, Poems from the Winter Palace (Bottlecap Press) debuted this year and will be joined by an ekphrastic collection, The Night Watch (Kelsay Books) soon. Her ekphrastic work has also appeared in The Ekphrastic Review, MacQueen's Quinterly, Blaze/VOX, and elsewhere. A historian and multiple Pushcart Prize nominee, she lives and teaches in New Jersey. Visit her website at www.barbarakrasner.com.

​We Ride the Train for Home Past the Third Avenue Apartments in Summer
 
 Evening light paints gold over her face, body dress. I see her every night on my way home—her and the man in the seat in front of her. She sits across from me tonight, reading undisturbed by the usual longish stop at Third Avenue where most of the other passengers leave the train. 
 
The ride always seems longer in summer. Even with the windows open, the heavy air, still fetid from the earlier crush of sweating bodies is inescapable. The woman comes prepared—always. She has a book propped on her purse. She has tied back her long auburn hair and pinned it up to get it off of her neck and  has opened the top of her dress as much as modesty allows. The arm not needed for her book dangles at her side. Her feet rest softly, though likely they cannot wait to be freed from those pointy pumps. Her relaxation spills over to me,  not to the man sitting, back to me, also across, but in a side seat, looking out the window.
 
He sits up straight, as always, suit jacket on, no matter how hot the day, white shirt, and yes, usually a tie, with its Windsor knot intact. He is always dressed that way. The golden glow that suffuses our car shines off the back of his bald head as I observe him watching life on display 
in the third floor of the apartment across from our elevated line.
 
We see them every night. A man lives there with his mother—at least I think she is his mother. Tonight their windows are open, and I hear them shouting to each other between the rooms in a foreign language. He, glowing with sweat wears a white undershirt but his gray-haired mother seems pristine still in her flowered house dress like the one my Grandma wears. Maybe they shout because she is deaf? Maybe they shout to be heard above the noise of the trains? He  rushes toward her. I wonder if the man in the jacket understands their language. His concentration on them is intense. For the woman, their words, like the noise of the train when it moves on, are only background for her reading time.
 
The train finally begins to rumble to life and our car rushes down the tracks toward its final  stop where we three will part ways. I do not have to climb the hill like they do, but before I turn to my path, I watch the man take off his jacket and put it over his arm and walk behind the shapely woman. I wonder if he, like I, wonders how she manages, every night, to move so strongly and surely up the hill in those pointed pumps.
 
Joan Leotta
 
Joan Leotta plays with words on page and stage. A multiple Pushcart and Best of Net nominee, Joan explores museums and beaches with equal fervor for poetic, short story, essay inspiration and the general solace of being wrapped in beauty in both locations. Her chapbook, Feathers on Stone is available from Main Street Rag. Contact Joan about her folklore performances and the show featuring Louisa May Alcott, writer and Civil War nurse.
 

​Standing Out
 
I was starting to lose interest in Jerome, everything about him so beige. Sometimes I could no longer distinguish his facial features, more than once planting a kiss on the tip of his nose when I was aiming for his lips. It was as though he were a drawing I had etched into the damp sand on the beach below our cabin and gentle waves had begun washing it away. I felt guilty that I was almost relieved to think of him as leaving. Then one morning, he returned from a yard sale down the road carrying some sort of sceptre in his right hand. Look what I found. His voice seemed deeper. Only cost me a couple bucks. I didn’t care what he was saying because his tone warmed me where I had not felt warmth for a very long time. I’m heading out for a swim, come join me on the beach later. I couldn’t speak, only wagged my chin and he left, using the sceptre as a walking stick, to make his way down the path to the water. I rushed through my chores, pulled on my swimsuit and almost ran to the beach. There he was, damp from his swim, seated on a rock with the sceptre leaning against his thigh. He was gazing out toward the lake, a patch of ferns highlighted behind him. He turned towards me, and I saw that the ferns weren’t behind him—they had actually sprouted out the top of his head. They quivered, much like my knees, as I moved toward him. 
  
Louella Lester
 
Louella Lester is a writer/photographer in Winnipeg, Canada, author of Glass Bricks (At Bay Press), contributing editor at New Flash Fiction Review, and is included in Best Microfiction 2024. Her writing and/or photography appears/is forthcoming in: Cleaver, subTerrain, SoFloPoJo, Neither Fish Nor Foul, Ink Sweat & Tears, Six Sentences, Temple in a City, Switch, Gooseberry Pie, Hoolet’s Nook, Roi Faineant, Mad Swirl, Dog Throat, Paragraph Planet, and a variety of other journals.

The Trolley Song
 
The bell of the trolleybus rings urgently as he hurries to board.

”Wait!” he hears a voice trying to make the 8 a.m. trolley. He's a gentleman so he makes room for her to pass.

His wife is away visiting her mother. It isn’t until he is aboard the trolley that he realizes that the voice belongs to the woman with whom he has just spent the night in compensation for his wife’s absence. She doesn’t seem to notice him, but when he takes a seat, she settles in right behind him.

He hears her catching her breath after her run, a slight sniffle, the shuffling of a skirt, her hands turning the pages of a book. He quietly clears his throat.

As the trolley lurches, pulling itself past buildings in this neighbourhood, he notices the curtainless windows and sees that here life is seen in full view. Her room had been dark. He had found his way by touch. His hands delineated which parts of her were clothed and which parts were not. His face explored the crook of her neck. He felt her hot breath move across his cheek.

He thinks about buying a meat pie for dinner as a present for his wife. After all, she’d been looking after her mother all week. She needn’t cook right away when she gets home.

At the next stop, a large man gets on the trolley. Everyone looks up to take in his size. He thinks the man is smiling at him when he realizes that the man is smiling at her. He can hear her close her book and hum a happy noise.

The big man stands beside him while he talks loudly to her. The man says he’s missed seeing her in the club and asks when was the last time he heard her sing. She laughs and answers with a flirtatious line, full of flattery and reciprocation. 

The man moves back into the aisle and motions that she has a stage right here and now. She gets up and moves to the front of the trolley. She looks a little bit wicked. She’s more than up for the dare. The big man applauds as she begins to sing.

She sings a song about a man and a woman on the day of their wedding. They make their vows and all seems bliss. At the reception the couple are showered with money. The husband scrambles to pick up the bills, but the money runs through his hands like water. The money turns into birds who carry the wife away so she can be reunited with her one true love, away from the man that she’s just married.

The woman turns her head to her audience.

He knows if he turns sideways, he will disappear.
 
Barbara McVeigh
​
Barbara McVeigh is a Canadian writer and teacher-librarian. Her work has appeared in Pithead Chapel, Funicular Magazine and Ellipsis Zine, among others. Connect with her on Bluesky @barbaramcveigh.bsky.social. 
**
​

​Collage

She pasted the crown over his head at a jaunty angle, smiling in contrast to the serious expression, the weight of the world on his shoulders. She knew how that felt, trying to shield Maddy and Rob from their parents’ messy divorce without being too much of a “buzzkill,” which she’d recently become, according to her friend Reina.
 
Middle school is supposed to be fun, Reina said, but her favorite part of the day was after the last bell, when the halls emptied out in everyone’s rush to get to a club or practice or to hang out with friends. She had forty-five minutes to wait before getting Maddy and Rob from the elementary school down the street, so she focused on making beauty the only way she knew how—by taking existing things and turning them into something else.
 
The collage in her locker was alive with animals and insects and beating, burning hearts. She couldn’t bear to think of scraping it off on the last day, so she planned to get sealant, to carefully brush over it so some part of her would stay there, just right, forever.
​
Allison Renner
 
Allison Renner’s fiction has appeared in SoFloPoJo, Ink in Thirds, Atlas and Alice, Gooseberry Pie, and others. Her chapbooks include Green Light: The Gatsby Cycle and Won’t Be By Your Side. She can be found at allisonrennerwrites.com and on Bluesky @AllisonWrites.

​Current
 
The sun turned the sky red, orange, and pink, the only way I can be sure that time has passed since he flipped my life upside down. Our perfect beach day, wasted. I had planned every aspect, packed towels, sunscreen, and a picnic. He’d driven us here but hadn’t even let me spread out the blanket before saying, “I’m not in love with you anymore.”
 
I could tell by the tone of his voice and the way he pushed the words out of his mouth and toward me that he’d practiced. He’d thought about this. He meant it, and there was no changing his mind.
 
But I had planned this day, just like I’d planned the wedding I’d now have to unplan, and I wasn’t going to let this go to waste.
 
So I spread out the blanket and plopped down and when he stammered, “Well, I’m going to go,” I waved him off with one finger.
 
I sat on the sand and watched the waves, valuing their consistency. I turned out the people around me—they sounded happy, but I knew no one truly was, not if we hadn’t been.
 
I ate the picnic and drank the bottle of wine and after the sunset cleared the families from the beach, I stood up to pack my things. I thought about how I’d have to find a ride home. I’d have to pack my belongings there, find a place to stay, call my family, our guests…
 
I was sick of planning. Of doing.
 
I left my things where they were. I took off my shorts, my shirt. I stood in my undergarments until I took those off, too. And then I walked into the water, resolving I’d go wherever the current took me. 
 
Allison Renner
 
Allison Renner’s fiction has appeared in SoFloPoJo, Ink in Thirds, Atlas and Alice, Gooseberry Pie, and others. Her chapbooks include Green Light: The Gatsby Cycle and Won’t Be By Your Side. She can be found at allisonrennerwrites.com and on Bluesky @AllisonWrites.
**
 

​Advert
 
Welcome to Holiday, where nowhere is out of reach. Always dreamed of spending time in a misty mountain resort on Chandra 7? We can take you there! Want to see the forming of nations on Earth? We can take you there, too! Revisit your childhood memories or take your children to witness their own births! Nowhere in time or space is off limits. Or maybe you have an important decision to make. Perhaps you’re standing on a crossroad and don’t know which way to turn. We can help you there, too! Just watch the ripples of possibility unfurl before your eyes to catch a glimpse of what could be, and I guarantee you will feel pulled to somewhen important. Glamorous. Maybe even a little dangerous. There is always an adventure to be found with Holiday! Just remember, the future is always changing. But! Though you can revisit the past, you cannot change it.   
 
Kaila Schwartz
 
Kaila Schwartz runs an award-winning high school theatre program in the San Francisco Bay Area where she lives with her spouse and kitty overlords. She loves ekphrastic writing and can often be seen in museums scribbling away in notebooks. Her work can be seen in Hippocrates Awards Anthology 2020, Ekphrastic Review, Moss Piglet, Waffle Fried, and The Yelling Continues, a Procrastinating Writers United Anthology. In her spare time, she researches her family history.

​The Third Avenue Train
 
Mr. Walters boarded the train, as usual at 8:15. His wife had gone to visit her sister at the seashore. He’d made himself coffee, spilled it on his shirt and had to change. 
 
Miss Albertini, in a red-orange summer dress, her black heels polished, was also on her way to work. She always carried a book and sat facing away from the window so she wouldn’t be distracted. She was determined to better herself. This book was on etiquette, but she’s very fond of mystery novels.
 
Mr. Walters didn’t notice her. He was looking out at an apartment house’s windows, at a man in his wife-beater T-shirt, at the wife he had beaten. Mr. Walters’ mouth formed an O, but what could he do? What did he know? 
 
The next day, Tuesday, Miss Albertini wore a blue dress. Mr. Walters burned his toast. The man in the wife-beater T-shirt yelled at him through his window, through the train window. Mr. Walters turned his head to Miss Albertini. “Did you hear that,” he asked?
 
“Hear what,” she said, barely taking her eyes from her new book, The ABC Murders.
 
On Wednesday, Miss Albertini wore green, which made her eyes sparkle. Mr. Walters broke a jar of jam on the kitchen floor and almost missed the train because he had to clean it up. The man in the window had horns growing from his head. His wife was translucent and seemed to float. Her eyes looked surprised; her throat wore a red smile. Mr. Walters made a noise in his throat, as he swallowed a scream.
 
Miss Albertini asked him if he was okay, then went back to her book. She was halfway through it.
 
On Thursday, Miss Albertini wore one of her two black skirts with a black and white striped blouse. She had nearly finished her book. Mr. Walters had cut himself shaving, then tripped on a rug in the bathroom. There were dark circles under his eyes and small bandage under his chin. He was determined not to look out the window, but he couldn’t help himself. Just a quick glance he thought. The man in the T-shirt, now spotted with red, pointed at him and grinned evilly, displaying pointed teeth.  
 
On Friday, Miss Albertini wore her one blue skirt with a paler blue top. Mr. Walters was not on the train. Miss Albertini has stopped at the library during her lunch break the day before. She settled down to read her new book, And Then There Were None.
 
Merril D. Smith
 
Merril D. Smith is a Pushcart-nominated poet. Her work has been published widely in poetry journals and anthologies. Her full-length poetry collection, River Ghosts (Nightingale & Sparrow Press) was Black Bough Poetry’s December 2022 Book of the Month. Her second collection Held Within the Folds of Time is forthcoming (2025). She writes from southern New Jersey. Find her at Bluesky: @merrildsmith.bsky.social;  Instagram: mdsmithnj  Blog: merrildsmith.org   

​Life’s Ups, Downs, and Cats

THE BIGGEST art dealer in Toronto just phoned to offer me a show!  I’m shaking too hard to play it cool. Is this a prank? 

He tells me why my work impresses him, says he’s seen three canvases of mine at a neighboring gallery today. HE EVEN BOUGHT ONE! (This must be a prank.)

Could I possibly get there next Wednesday? He’d overnight my first class, two-way ticket if I could possibly… I have no memory of what either of us said after that, but I did get my ticket and posh hotel reservation the next day.

Time to shop for a few sophisticated outfits. I usually look  like a hippie throwback or someone who just finished a workout at the gym. Maybe Tina can loan me a dress.

Time to call ALL my friends! No, my apartment can only hold eight people standing. At least the party’s a success.

The next morning, I realize it’s not so smart to party before my early flight – too much champagne. I barely make it  onboard.  I tell the cabby I’ll double his tip if he gets me to the airport in time. At least my cats are safely locked in my bedroom with a water fountain and a full cat food dispenser.

I’m still giddy from my trip till neighbour Jack, who picks me up at the airport, says, “Just so you know, someone seems to have died in your apartment.” Already wearing a mask, he’d stopped to pick up scrub brushes, disinfectant, detergent, and long rubber gloves for both of us.

Even before going upstairs, the stench almost kills me. “Yes, Jack. I did wash the dishes.” Dang, I was in such a rush to the airport that I forgot to run the party scraps out to the dumpster, and it’s August! Stinking shrimp! We hear my cats complaining, but I didn’t expect my feline Houdinis to break out of the bedroom. That’s why my best party plates were crashed to the floor. I don’t know whether to laugh or cry.

Jack ran the stinky garbage out to the dumpster, then began sweeping up the broken dishes. “Wait!” I say. “I can use those shards. My gallery boss wants me to bring some new canvases.” 

I start rearranging the broken china around the dead flowers.

“Jack, just look at this still life: broken dishes, sharp edges, dying flowers, a scratched photo, carelessly taped to the wall…this collage surely will make some buyer lament the unfairness of life. How briefly happiness stays with us.”

“Oh, don’t look so sad. I’ll also paint something you’ll like.”

Alarie Tennille

Alarie Tennille was a pioneer coed at the University of Virginia, where she earned her degree in English, Phi Beta Kappa key, and black belt in Feminism. She has now lived more than half her life in Kansas City. Alarie received the first Editor’s Choice Fantastic Ekphrastic Award from The Ekphrastic Review, and in 2022, her latest book, Three A.M. at the Museum, was named Director’s Pick for the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art gift shop. Her big news this year was being named the 2025 Muse of The Writers Place in April.

​The Potter Has a Business Decision to Make
  
The clay chose him today. Ada’s fingertips brushed against his tense smile before she saw it. The stubborn curls that defied his stifling need for order grew out of the wet block. Pushing her ex-lover back into the mud would feel like murder. It was enough that they had said good-bye, but here he was all over her hands in her messy studio. Although she couldn’t remember the man ever liking houseplants, she finished him into a planter. That was the clay talking again. The studio had one, empty corner where the sun could bounce off his curls. She decided not to sell him until the right buyer showed up.
 
Jane Vogel
 
Jane Vogel is a retired physical therapist. Although she has enjoyed reading poetry since high school, she spent 35 years writing to please insurance companies. Now she writes to please herself. Her poetry has been published in Blue Lake Review, Storm Cellar and The BeZine. She and her husband divide their time between Minneapolis, Scottsdale and anywhere else that the opportunity to travel pops up.