"smiling, creases around her eyes like a soft-worn blanket."

October 25, 2020 6:34 PM

Arsenika "is a quarterly journal of speculative poetry and flash fiction." "Flash" means very short. "Mother?" by Cynthia So (starts with the protagonist's mother dead, but no new grief after that): "I came out to a moth, because I couldn’t come out to my mother." "Not an Ocean, But the Sea" by Nino Cipri: "The ocean behind the couch, she thought, had probably not been ordered from Ikea or Electrolux."
posted by brainwane (1 comment total)

These are fun. High quality, or so it seems to me, really good writing for a small web 'zine.

I love Flash Fiction. Always have. It's a real skill to be able create an arc and then reel it back in and do it in a page or page and a half. I love short movies for the same reason. And, top of it all, if I don't like the story or the film I've not given it but just a couple of minutes, bang/zoom, in and out.

But it's best of course when it's done well. An ocean behind a couch, a floor of pennies. A vision of the world where moths talk to us, but some are quiet. Open doors to those stories, make us glad we opened the doors, and stepped in, and now it's time to step out, leaving us with just a bit of a happiness, or more than a bit.

Great post.
posted by dancestoblue at 10:44 PM on October 25, 2020 [2 favorites]