November 2022 Issue # 27 Flash
@francinewitte
@francinewitte
Faye Brinsmead * Peter Cherches * Dan Crawley * Tommy Dean * Steve Gerson * Eliot Li * Frankie McMillan * Pamela Painter * Akhila Pingali * Meg Pokrass * Brad Rose
View the November FLASH Launch Reading here:
Faye Brinsmead
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On her hands and knees, the girl searches
She finds the letter Б in red-slicked grass near the hen coop. Wipes it clean with her T-shirt, as clean as she can, slips it in the china egg cup she found in the wrecked kitchen. The egg cup has a gold rim, a blue repeating forget-me-not pattern. It’s not even chipped, although the kitchen windows blew out and there’s a crater where the floor was. The Ю is in the plastic baby’s bath in the duck pen, swirled between ducklings’ paddling feet. She pats it dry with her fingertips. Runs her thumb over the hair-thin line joining I and O. She searches for hours and finds nothing, until she thinks of climbing the roof. From chimney to eaves, it’s intact. She props a ladder against it. Wedged beneath a moss-scrawled slate is the B. Patiently, she works it free. It flutters in the wind, nearly blows away when she pries it loose with her nails. She backs down the ladder, cradling the letter between her tongue and upper teeth the way a bird carries a morsel for its young. Two more, she thinks, clasping the egg cup. She knows she’s not alone. All over her country, people are searching for letters. Trying to put them back in the right order. Resurrect all the lost names. She crawls between cow stalls in the barn. Shakes the cherry tree. Crouches over the dog, snatches his bone. Clamped to its underside is the O. She doesn’t scold – he wasn’t to know. She has to rub hard to get the drool off. It’s dark now. She goes back into the house. It still has a front door, a front hall, an entire front half. As if a giant chalked a line down the middle, stomped the back end. Better to picture that than replay what happened. Her bedroom’s gone. The couch will have to do. Vertebra by vertebra, she inches under. Clutching the four black symbols. At first light, she’ll keep searching. For the last letter. She falls asleep imagining places it might be. Dreams of water meadows. A cracked moon, leaking silver. She bellies through wet grass. Skates her fingers between dandelion stalks. The missing Л hangs by a thread from a luminous puff. In her dream, she spreads the five letters of her mother’s name across her palm. ЛЮБОВ. It means love. |
Faye Brinsmead's writing appears in journals including X-R-A-Y Literary Magazine, MoonPark Review, New Flash Fiction Review and Twin Pies Literary, and is forthcoming in FLASH BOULEVARD. One of her pieces was selected for inclusion in Best Microfiction 2021; another was nominated for the Pushcart Prize. She lives in Canberra, Australia, and tweets @ContesdeFaye.
Peter Cherches
Limited Edition
Only five were ever produced. A very limited edition. Handcrafted by artisans
who were fed the tradition as mother’s milk. Two are in private collections, two in craft
or folk art museums, and one is unaccounted for—it was last seen in Poland in 1939. To
Shelly Kaminsky, who has the fifth one hanging on her living room wall, it’s just a
tchotchke she retrieved from the house when her mother died. She knows nothing of its
provenance, its rarity, its quality, but she remembers it from when she was a kid.
Just a little reminder of Mom, who never wanted to talk about Poland.
Only five were ever produced. A very limited edition. Handcrafted by artisans
who were fed the tradition as mother’s milk. Two are in private collections, two in craft
or folk art museums, and one is unaccounted for—it was last seen in Poland in 1939. To
Shelly Kaminsky, who has the fifth one hanging on her living room wall, it’s just a
tchotchke she retrieved from the house when her mother died. She knows nothing of its
provenance, its rarity, its quality, but she remembers it from when she was a kid.
Just a little reminder of Mom, who never wanted to talk about Poland.
Called “one of the innovators of the short short story” by Publishers Weekly, Peter Cherches is also a jazz singer and lyricist. His latest book is Masks: Stories from a Pandemic (Bamboo Dart Press). He is a native of Brooklyn, New York.
Dan Crawley
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Composition
We sat behind old wooden tables arranged in a square. Furniture dating back to when the university was called State College, the table skirts stenciled with SC. We faced each other. I smiled reassuringly at everyone; there were two agreed upon rules we followed. First, no one declared another’s effort a waste of time. Second, no one used the word hate. The one who liked to start things off began. “A fascinating time-filler,” he said, all goddamn smirky. “A syrupy concoction, succulently sweet at first taste, nevertheless at the end of the day turns sour for those with sensitive palates.” In my office, I stared at the SC tagged on the bottom of my desk’s drawer. I’d never noticed it until now. These initials had become ubiquitous. And they were also the initials of my alleged beloved. I found SC’s last known email address and mulled over what to send in a note. I knew I’d follow the rules, regardless if ever reciprocated. I’d employ a multitude of terms, relating the same goddamn sentiment, line after line. I composed in the fullness of time. |
Dan Crawley is the author of Straight Down the Road (Ad Hoc Fiction, 2019) and The Wind, It Swirls (Cowboy Jamboree Press, 2021). His writing appears or is forthcoming in Jellyfish Review, Lost Balloon, JMWW, Five South, Atticus Review, and elsewhere. He lives in Phoenix, AZ.
Tommy Dean
Quick and Sharp
The first time he held the knife, the wooden handle polished and clumsy in his hand, he
dropped it in the dirt.
Your mother said you weren’t ready, his father said, bending to pick up the knife,
something in his body popping like a water bottle gripped too tightly.
The boy, for he was young then, imagines his father dying. The casket and the dirt, and
the headstone gleaming in the mid-afternoon sun, and he wanted to walk away.
But his father gripped his shoulder, and showed him how to get the blade out, how to set
it so it wouldn’t bend back in, told him to hold out his hand, palm up, fingers splayed.
Don’t flinch, his father said.
The boy waited for further instructions, but the man was silent as he gripped the boy's
wrist. The blade cold as it whispered across the pad of his thumb. Blood wept.
You have to understand how sharp it is. How quickly it can injure you. The father said,
wiping the blade on his jeans.
Quick and sharp. That’s how you face this world. You hear me?
The boy brought his thumb to his lips, the blood tasting of metal. He palmed the knife
with his other hand, closing the blade inside. Waiting for his father’s boredom to release him
back to the world of his imagination. Nothing died and pain was unheard of. He was surrounded
by birds and trees, and wild grasses, and knives were never needed. His father walked off, his
shoulders fading into the shadows of looming mountains, always on the horizon, watching over
him.
The first time he held the knife, the wooden handle polished and clumsy in his hand, he
dropped it in the dirt.
Your mother said you weren’t ready, his father said, bending to pick up the knife,
something in his body popping like a water bottle gripped too tightly.
The boy, for he was young then, imagines his father dying. The casket and the dirt, and
the headstone gleaming in the mid-afternoon sun, and he wanted to walk away.
But his father gripped his shoulder, and showed him how to get the blade out, how to set
it so it wouldn’t bend back in, told him to hold out his hand, palm up, fingers splayed.
Don’t flinch, his father said.
The boy waited for further instructions, but the man was silent as he gripped the boy's
wrist. The blade cold as it whispered across the pad of his thumb. Blood wept.
You have to understand how sharp it is. How quickly it can injure you. The father said,
wiping the blade on his jeans.
Quick and sharp. That’s how you face this world. You hear me?
The boy brought his thumb to his lips, the blood tasting of metal. He palmed the knife
with his other hand, closing the blade inside. Waiting for his father’s boredom to release him
back to the world of his imagination. Nothing died and pain was unheard of. He was surrounded
by birds and trees, and wild grasses, and knives were never needed. His father walked off, his
shoulders fading into the shadows of looming mountains, always on the horizon, watching over
him.
Tommy Dean is the author of two flash fiction chapbooks Special Like the People on TV (Redbird Chapbooks, 2014) and Covenants (ELJ Editions, 2021). Hollows was published by Alternating Current Press (2022). He is the Editor at Fractured Lit and Uncharted Magazine. A recipient of the 2019 Lascaux Prize in Short Fiction, his writing can be found in Best Microfiction 2019 and 2020, Best Small Fiction 2019, Monkeybicycle, and numerous litmags. Find him at tommydeanwriter.com and on Twitter @TommyDeanWriter.
Steve Gerson
What Lurks Beneath the Lake
“Davey was just diving, you see,” he said, pointing at the photo lying next to a watermark
scarring the kitchen table where he’d placed his sweating highball glass now drained.
A cigarette dangling from his gill slit lips, he lifted a bottle and said, “want one?”
“No,” I declined.
“Hah,” he chortled as if deeply inhaling unfiltered truth and blew out a plume of delusion.
“More for me then” and poured three fingers of Jim Beam.
“I didn’t mean anything, you know. I was just funnin’ him, saying, ‘come on, jump, jump, the
water’s fine. Look, I’m dogpaddling it’s so deep,’ though I was standing on a sandbar.” And he
laughed again, a squeal sounding like nails pulled from a coffin.
“You know how kids are,” taking a swig of his liquor, the liquid burning his throat like an
acetylene home brew. He coughed, wiped his eyes, and stared into the past as if drowning in an
undertow. “The twins were jostling on the pier, waiting their turn.
Sis, as always, a marsh reed filtering sludge, sat off to the side, wearing red, to stop. She’d
warned us all, whining, ‘Don’t be diving, you hear.’ I don’t know what fear had fed her. Maybe
them damn skeeter bites, maybe some water moccasin thrashing, maybe a squall we saw earlier
that day building in the north, maybe the pier’s jagged pilings looking like gator teeth or like a
fiend’s fingers grasping, but it all enclosed her like a noose. I guess you gotta’ believe in ghosts
if they speak to you,” and he shivered at the memory.
“Anyway, Davey dove, the water too shallow, him barely breaking the water’s surface, the dive
like a dagger. The coroner said Davey probably didn’t feel a thing with a broken neck.”
He pulled the highball glass to his lips for another sip. The glass was empty, but one bead
dripped down its side like snake venom.
“Davey was just diving, you see,” he said, pointing at the photo lying next to a watermark
scarring the kitchen table where he’d placed his sweating highball glass now drained.
A cigarette dangling from his gill slit lips, he lifted a bottle and said, “want one?”
“No,” I declined.
“Hah,” he chortled as if deeply inhaling unfiltered truth and blew out a plume of delusion.
“More for me then” and poured three fingers of Jim Beam.
“I didn’t mean anything, you know. I was just funnin’ him, saying, ‘come on, jump, jump, the
water’s fine. Look, I’m dogpaddling it’s so deep,’ though I was standing on a sandbar.” And he
laughed again, a squeal sounding like nails pulled from a coffin.
“You know how kids are,” taking a swig of his liquor, the liquid burning his throat like an
acetylene home brew. He coughed, wiped his eyes, and stared into the past as if drowning in an
undertow. “The twins were jostling on the pier, waiting their turn.
Sis, as always, a marsh reed filtering sludge, sat off to the side, wearing red, to stop. She’d
warned us all, whining, ‘Don’t be diving, you hear.’ I don’t know what fear had fed her. Maybe
them damn skeeter bites, maybe some water moccasin thrashing, maybe a squall we saw earlier
that day building in the north, maybe the pier’s jagged pilings looking like gator teeth or like a
fiend’s fingers grasping, but it all enclosed her like a noose. I guess you gotta’ believe in ghosts
if they speak to you,” and he shivered at the memory.
“Anyway, Davey dove, the water too shallow, him barely breaking the water’s surface, the dive
like a dagger. The coroner said Davey probably didn’t feel a thing with a broken neck.”
He pulled the highball glass to his lips for another sip. The glass was empty, but one bead
dripped down its side like snake venom.
Steve Gerson writes poetry and flash about life's dissonance. He's proud to have published in Panoplyzine, Route 7, Poets Reading the News, Crack the Spine, the Decadent Review, Underwood Press, Dillydoun Review, In Parentheses, Vermilion, and more, plus his chapbooks Once Planed Straight: Poetry of the Prairies and Viral: Love and Losses in the Time of Insanity from Spartan Press.
Eliot Li
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Mr. Ah Yup, Of The Mongolian Race, Applying For Naturalization
Holding his flickering candelabra, Judge Lorenzo Sawyer pulls two anatomy books from the wood paneled shelf in his study. He settles at his desk, in his white gentleman’s nightshirt. His task—to decide the color of an Oriental man’s skin. Mr. Ah Yup stood in his tailored suit, mustache trimmed, black hair parted to one side. He was the first Chinese man to petition for citizenship in the United States. “I’ve lived in California for 20 years,” he said, his voice booming across the courtroom. “I helped lay down the train tracks and build the station that put this town on the map. My loyalty lies here.” At his podium, Judge Sawyer leafed through the papers, the Revised Statutes that declared any free white person, and aliens of African nativity, may be admitted to become a citizen. He skimmed the document again, but there was no language addressing what to do with a man from China. Ah Yup rented a one bedroom bungalow with his family near the Mountain View train depot, two blocks from the Judge’s multi-storied Queen Anne. Mr. Ah was proprietor of the East West Oriental Food Company on Castro Street. Judge Sawyer passed the storefront every day on his walk to the courthouse. Mrs. Sawyer, a regular customer, bought chard and long beans―the freshest greens in the area. One Sunday after church, they brought Lorenzo Jr to Ah’s market, and Junior left clutching a live red-eared turtle, saved from the butcher’s knife in the back. Since then, every time Mrs. Sawyer picked through the market’s vegetables, Ah gave her a bag of lettuce clippings and zucchini for the boy to feed to his turtle. “My daughter, same age as your handsome son,” Mr. Ah said, approaching the Judge’s podium. “She wants to go to school. But without naturalization, she can’t.” He took off his coat, rolled up his sleeves, and held out his arms. “My skin is white. Same as yours. As white as everyone in this courtroom.” Judge Sawyer knows his wife is upstairs waiting for him. But he’s still mulling over Mr. Ah’s “whiteness” argument, while thumbing through Carl Linnaeus’ human taxonomy book Systema Naturae. Ah’s skin had indeed looked white, so why shouldn’t he be classified as white under the law, and be allowed citizenship? In the matter of the skin color of Homo Sapiens, there are four divisions: 1. European, whitish; 2. American, coppery; 3. Asiatic, tawny; and 4. African, black. What did Linnaeus mean by tawny? Judge Sawyer regards his own forearm poking through his nightshirt. In the candlelight, his skin looks something between orange and brown. He ponders his British heritage, the gold Sawyer family crest. Of course his own skin was white. Tawny, he thinks, the color of amber. Mrs. Sawyer appears in the study doorway, her eyes half closed. She leans against the carved wooden moldings. “It’s late.” “I’m trying to decide whether Ah Yup should be naturalized.” She glides forward, reaches over his chair, wraps her arms around his chest, nestles her cheek into the nape of his neck. “Mr. Ah is a kind man,” she says. “He has a clever wife and daughter. The whole town shops at his store. Of course he should be naturalized.” Judge Sawyer peels her hands off his chest, turns to her. “This is about more than just one man.” he says. “I need to be impartial. My ruling sets a precedent for the whole country.” Mrs. Sawyer’s gaze doesn’t waver from the grandiosity in his widened eyes. “My husband apparently cannot be both good man and good judge,” she says, backing away toward the door. “Which makes him neither.” Alone again in the dim light, he sighs. He opens the book On The Natural Variety of Mankind by the anatomist Johann Blumenbach. Mongolian variety: Colour yellow; hair black, stiff, straight, and scanty; head almost square; face broad, at the same time flat and depressed, the parts therefore less distinct, as if it were running into one another. He snaps the book shut. Yellow, Judge Sawyer concludes. Mr. Ah and his family are not entitled to naturalization, because they’re not white. They’re yellow. He envisions what Ah’s reaction will be tomorrow. He hopes for restrained indignation. He’s expecting rage. Books hurled against the courtroom wall. The podium overturned. There will be protests, Mr. Ah leading angry marches down Castro Street. The science is inarguable. Judge Sawyer rises, follows his wife up the stairs. Knows she will flinch at his touch. |
Eliot Li lives in California. His work appears or is forthcoming in CRAFT, SmokeLong Quarterly, Pithead Chapel, Trampset, Fractured Lit, Pidgeonholes, and elsewhere. He's on twitter @EliotLi2.
Frankie McMillan
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Breaking up a train
1 I’m taking the baby, Joe says. She’s already in his arms, her fluffy hair raised in the night breeze. I reach out, say you’re not going anywhere with her and Joe raises the baby higher, watch me, he says and I say who wants to watch a train wreck. Joe, I say, grabbing the baby’s foot, you’re way out of line, and he says you can put the brake on this thing any time sweetheart, and then the baby lunges towards me, cheeks quivering like a limp balloon and Joe bounces her up and down whhoo, whooo, who wants a train ride, whhoo, whoo, and I run behind waving to the baby, her face above his shoulder, waving as if it’s a game and she’s not going to be driven off somewhere and once, twice we chug around the yard and the neighbour’s outside lights turn on briefly and, Joe, I yell, you’re scaring her but the thing is the baby starts laughing at the train game and it’s me that scared, that sees something bad coming down the line, that feels us speeding towards it and no signalman in sight to save us. 2 Joe says the fireman and his crew bail out just before a collision. Two trains on the same line heading for each other is a thing you cannot stop. All the crew can do is jump clear from the cab. All they can do when they hit the ground is roll away from the noise, the flying shrapnel, the hiss of steam on twisted metal. Roll baby, he says, and the three of us roll over the carpet, one side of the room to the other. Roll the right way, Joe says, your chin resting on your chest, and no bones get broken. I hug the baby, my nose pressed into her warm scalp. Joe’s behind me. His arms tight around my middle. His breath steaming up my hair. |
Frankie McMillan is a poet and short fiction writer from Aotearoa New Zealand. Her latest book The wandering nature of us girls ( Canterbury University Press) will be launched August, 2022.
Pamela Painter
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Sorrow Everywhere
At first it was just light ash drifting down from somewhere. We didn’t look up and we didn’t ask. Children drew cartoons in the ash on the sidewalks, and my neighbor said it was good for cleaning windows—that and crumpled newspaper. For a week her windows glinted with the dazzle of clean glass. Then the ash wasn’t light anymore and it seemed to be drifting sideways. My neighbor stood at our fence and called over that it was good for her roses, and probably for my hyacinths. The children measured out a hopscotch grid in the driveway and dusted off round stones. My husband lost interest in football and blamed it on poor TV reception. Nothing seemed threatening. We went about our lives, to our offices and warehouses and schools. Newscasters swooped and glided in front of their digital weather maps, wearing brightly patterned dresses or silly ties. The government assured us that mail delivery would not be interrupted and that AI crews were assembled and at the ready. Banks ran out of bills larger than $20. We learned that small skirmishes in countries whose names we never knew came to a standstill and larger wars in countries we didn’t remember slowly ground to a stop. You would think these global developments would bring some degree of pleasure, but that didn’t assuage our grief. Grief is too strong a word for what we were feeling. My neighbor said this when she knocked on our door. She has always been helpful. We sat in the kitchen Over coffee and later over wine, she said it probably wouldn’t last―sorrow everywhere. |
Pamela Painter is the award-winning author of five story collections. Her stories have appeared in The Atlantic, Flash Boulevard, Harper’s, Michigan Quarterly Review, 100wordstory.org, Ploughshares, New Flash Fiction Review, Smoke Long Quarterly, Vestal Review, among others, and in numerous anthologies such as New Micro. Painter’s stories are on the YouTube channel, CRONOGEO, and have been staged by Word Theatre in Los Angeles, London and New York. Her newest collection is Fabrications from Johns Hopkins University Press.
Akhila Pingali
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First Response
Now I'm flying, now I'm nosing around the stopped-up bowels of Hyderabad, vipers gutter-studded and fluorescent, now I'm belting forward to the red-and-blue strobe overhead, to a pregnant woman screaming in the back against a chemical sky threatening to wrench its guts out, to the dead silence of a baby coming out the wrong way, now I'm a winding cirrus on a paper bridge over a plastic river, a city's collective relief, cries rising like methane from below, now under neon lights and exhaust fans a crimped sleep, past two teenagers in a photo cropping out street-trash and ambulance sirens like millions of lungs filtering, now the wind a messenger of burning sulphur, now my daughter’s sleeping form as I kiss her a motherless goodbye to bring someone else into the world, the world sometimes a room, the room once a body claiming a life to sustain another, the inching, the straining through tortuous entrails, the endlessly turning wheels of the city and the people churning under them, and for a terrifying split second that I will replay to exhaustion in the years to come, I hope, for its own sake, the baby does not make it. |
Akhila Pingali is a writer and freelance translator based in Hyderabad, India. She has an MA in English Literature. Her work has appeared (or is forthcoming) in Brave Voices Magazine, Five Minutes, Tint Journal, Contemporary Literary Review India, and an anthology called Ninety-Seven Poems. You can find her on Twitter @AkhilaPingali.
Meg Pokrass
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Unusual Loch Observations
Dinosaur to Dinosaur You probably weren't expecting a dinosaur, I said to the monster hunter. I don't even know how to use a dating app, he replied. His skin appeared non water-soluble, but my heart was a silly old sponge. Our lips stretched toward each other like fishing lines. Way Up North I found a mottled old hunter who might sort of love me. He was staring out at the loch for some sign that his monster was safe. He threw me a rope made of waterlogged compliments, then dove back into the water to save her. Martyr We waded into the loch, our wetsuits shining like renegade seals in the mist. Nessie, they say, lived to end our happiness. If we walked the dog twenty minutes late in the morning, her prehistoric eyes became overfilled buckets. Uncorked Whatever he said next would unpop the cork in my behavior which was going all eyebrows up. Because I was bait. Because he was neon happy around invisible creatures, and the more impossible the animal, the easier it felt to paddle near him. Injured Monster When I brought the monster hunter home, Mom flashed her pearly-yellow teeth and lipstick-stained smile. You're juicier than the last, she said, pinching his bottom. She hooked him her flipper, kissed the beast on his snout. This one is injured, Ma, I reminded her. Here we are, until we feel this useless So much about getting old is being ready to see the monster who shambles to your door with a cigarette dangling from its beautiful mouth, a satisfied gleam in its eyes, as if the world has finally made love to it the right way. But today I am all fished out, back to square one with the stars, drinking alone and hoping for a nice, long slumber. Clarity Threat Clarity flutters through the stale air of the trailer like a spastic butterfly trying to get out. Attacking like a Giant Hogweed sting, rising from exhaustion, playing the electronic piano with its smarmy little claws. Clarity tells me that there is only one truth and that it’s not the ecstatic one I’ve been hunting for. If you were canny, Clarity says, you would stop telling everyone that something might be out there. Clarity makes me a pot of chicken soup (from the carcass of a dead chicken). You need a regular life now, it says, a job, a man…you need to be less sleep deprived. It picks me up like a wave and delivers me back to the beach of my childhood, without a dream, and without a monster to love. What He Didn’t Find, and What He Did He did not find the monster, but he found a way to tell people what he didn't find. He called it "full disclosure". His sign read, "WE PROBABLY DON’T HAVE A MONSTER." It made him less accountable for miracles. He was in love again and wanted everything out on the table before she arrived. She may not look ready, and he'd forgive her for that. Her name was Salina. He met her on a website for recovered dreamers who wanted to get married quickly, before the next dream. He liked what she stood for. She said, "No Hollywood happy-ending for Salina is just fine." He liked that. He liked that just fine. Memories of a Kiss Last time I was at this place, an old monster hunter tried to kiss me. We’d had a nice discussion and ended up strolling around in the Loch. It was a lovely day, and the hedgehogs were out. When he leaned me against a thick tree trunk, I felt a bit pleased to know that this was not in any way going to be just a normal day. I was going to be caught. Some old hunters are like this, I now understand, unable to stop. I’ve read the handbook on this! So now I sit on the beach very close to him, wary of young men, holding my old dog close, tasting the salt from each wave, while the world's oldest monster hunter lets me know why it took him so long to find me. |
Meg Pokrass is the author of seven collections of flash fiction and serves as the founding/managing editor of Best Microfiction. Recent work has appeared in The Best Small Fictions 2022, the Wigleaf Top 50, and Flash Fiction America (W.W. Norton, 2023).. She lives in Inverness, Scotland.
Brad Rose
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Half-Way House
Over the weekend, while attending my liar’s workshop, I made some new friends. The take-home test was easy, so I was happy to share my answers, but who would have ever guessed I’d have my identity stolen while I was in a witness protection program? Naturally, it’s good to have life goals. My long-term goal is one day to be hanged alongside a jury of my peers, but now that things are getting half-way back to normal, I like to think I’m one thing, when in fact, I’m another. A double agent must have a monomaniacal purpose, although for a fee, I’d be willing to split the difference. Hey, did you hear that my two-timing ex is getting married next week to my best friend’s twin brother? Don’t you think I should get at least half the credit for that? Half a loaf may be better than none, but when you’re born in the Twin Cities, you can never be sure when enough is enough. Thank goodness it’s not leap year. Those pagans. |
Brad Rose is the author of five collections of poetry and flash fiction, Pink X-Ray, de/tonations, Momentary Turbulence. WordinEdgeWise, and No. Wait. I Can Explain. Six times nominated for a Pushcart Prize, and three times nominated for the Best of the Net Anthology, Brad’s poetry and fiction have appeared in The Los Angeles Times, The South Florida Poetry Journal, The American Journal of Poetry, New York Quarterly, Puerto del Sol, and other publications. His website is www.bradrosepoetry.com