The guest bedroom is the only room in our home my mom doesn’t cover with wallpaper when she marries. Assuming this door will almost always stay closed, she sees no need. She leaves the walls the same color—a pale olive—that was chosen by her in-laws when they moved here themselves early in their marriage, believing as she does that none of her own family will ever spend much time here. No one who wanders into this space, as she imagines, will want to stay for long inside this room whose windows …
How to Build a Volcano
MATERIALS LIST: Pizza box. 20oz plastic bottle. Chicken wire. Newspaper. Flour. Water. Paint. TOOLS: Box Cutter. Serrated knife. Wire Cutters. Gloves. Staple Gun. Super glue. Mixing bowl. Paint brushes. Measuring Cup. ▲ It’s difficult for you to pinpoint when it started. This barking up the wrong tree. Free, yet overwhelmed with whatever marker you’ve used at that time to define a life, and a place, and a job, and a class, and a relationship, or the time that passed since its end, and …
Pressing
My mother’s iron was heavy, with a speckled cord and stubby plug. In the cellar, she and I pressed my father’s shirts. He worked a desk job he’d never dreamed of growing up in a South End tenement, working a machine in a nearby raincoat factory and letting it all proceed from there. His Aunt Sadie, who cleaned rich peoples’ houses, spoke to a priest who got him off the line. His life, and my mother’s and mine, proceeded from there. His desk job was the kind people from his …
Congrats to the Winners of our 2021 Flash Creative Nonfiction Contest!
We received an incredible response to our first-ever contest. And our winners are the best of the best! A big thank you to Heather Christle for judging and choosing the winners from our list of finalists. Read the flash pieces at the links below: 1st Place: "Blaze" by Merridawn Duckler 2nd Place: "in response to the viral r/askreddit thread titled 'what’s classy if you’re rich, but trashy if you’re poor?'" by [sarah] Cavar 3rd Place: "When I Hear the Baby" by Kelle Schillaci …
Supplications to the Gods of Can
Davening. Head bowed between feet, kissing forehead to earth, paper body folded on the sun-splashed kitchen floor. My toddler is keening in supplication to the Gods of Can. This time can I open the baby gate? Can I hold the knife Daddy uses to cut my blueberries? Can I stand on this chair and finally see what’s on top of the counter? But the governing forces of Can’t are as certain as sunrise and gravity and naptime. When I lift her squirming body and tell her that she can’t stand on …
Baby That Baby
She says, I don’t think that baby is eating enough, and I poke a pointy finger into its spongy side. But Baby, I say, that baby is a round baby. Round like pomelo, like a panda, like a wheel of Parmesan cheese. That baby is a terrycloth towel full of tapioca pudding. And Baby, that baby is gonna be fine. She says, I don’t think that baby is eating enough, and who am I to doubt her? I am not monitoring frequency and flow, and I only measure throughput in pre-portioned popsicles and tiny …