The world is aflame—literally and metaphorically—and we are out of sorts, worrying our way forward. These little fictions turn the familiar on it’s ear, ask us to contemplate our place in this ever changing world. They are reminders of the power of memory and passing interactions. Though they are quick reads, they’ll stick with you like the leaf on the bottom of your boot.
Bullhead by Leigh Allison Wilson
“Every story is true and a lie.”
I try and sneak this one onto as many syllabi as possible. The haunting of young love. A flood. An ode to the one who got away but could never be forgotten. The fact that the daughter tells her mother’s love story packs all the more punch: “she always cries when she tells it and looks right through me, as though I hadn’t been born.” Oof. (395 words)
By The Gleam of Her Teeth She Will Light the Path Before Her by Tina May Hall
“First Daughter laughs at a flickering outside the window. She thinks it is an out-of-season firefly or a spark from the chimney, but really it is someone creeping through the trees with a flashlight.”
I return to this story as often as I can. It’s unsettling, this family terrorized by the motonoy of life as well as grandmother’s ghost. There are echos of fairy tales here, deep in the woods, where no one has a name and inanimate objects have their own concerns: “In the garden, rows and rows of green beans tangle closer for warmth. The eggs in the henhouse mutter in their sleep.” (893 words)
The Hobblers by Dan Chaon
“We’re having a lot of quiet time together. Looking out the window, reading books. We’ve both taken off from work, and the days begin to waver and lose their shape.”
This is a sweet story about love and loss and the slipperiness of time. A young couple grappling with illness becomes jealous of nightly ritual of an elderly couple. The husband remarks, “You could say that they are sweet, or you could say that they are something out of a horror movie.”
It seems even more important when life is on pause, when we are spending more time looking out of windows. (472 words)
Snow by Ann Beattie
“You remember it differently. You remember that the cold settled in stages, that small curve of light was shaved from the moon night after night, until you were no longer surprised the sky was black…”
A direct address to a former lover, Snow is a contemplation a shared life, the way we shorthand memory, and how two people see the same time differently. (744 words)
Curriculum by Sejal Shah
“I keep thinking about these objects that have no particular use, how I study them.”
Broken into three segments: Area Studies, Women’s Studies, Visual Studies, this segmented essay takes a look at how we define people by objects, even if the association is arbitrary, as a way of holding onto them. A handkerchief. Needlepoint. Glasses. A good companion to Snow. It’s the unsaid, here, that takes up so much space. (491 words)
A Story About the Body by Robert Hass
“He loved her work, and her work was like the way she moved her body, used her hands, looked at him directly when she made amused or considered answers to his questions.”
To be human is to make mistakes. To say ugly things. Technically, a prose poem, this tiny little “story” shows the hurt we cause one another, the stings we leave. (220 words)
Leap by Brian Doyle
“Their hands reaching and joining are the most powerful prayer I can imagine, the most eloquent, the most graceful. It is everything that we are capable of against horror and loss and death.”
A piece of creative non-fiction, Doyle sifts through the aftermath of 9/11 trying to make sense of the unfathomable and returns to this image of a falling couple.
It’s a difficult read, but important as the Covid count ticks higher, I think, to reexamine collective grief, the myths we cling to while trying to make sense of that which overwhelms. (573 words)
Zigzag. Yeah. by Scott Kreeger
“Zigzag take another bite of the Zagnut. Yeah. Zigzag hear the operator talk to her. Yeah. Zigzag hear the operator tell her who’s calling. Yeah. Zigzag hear her say she’ll take the call. Yeah.”
The repetition of zigzag are overwhelming, yeah. But just when your eyes glaze over with zigzagging, there in the middle, is the story itself. The ache of a child who is a little off, trying to navigate a difficult home life. The way that Kreeger characterizes Nathan at first seems like a barrier but upon reflection, shows the depth of his humanity. (539 words)
The Madwoman on BART by Jacqueline Doyle
“And while you’re writing, a red-faced old woman, white hair frowsy and wild, walks down the aisle screaming and gesticulating.”
Even as I’m writing this list, dogs are going bananas, barking on my street. The voice of a man who frequently walks my street carries into my house. Is he on the phone? Singing? I never know. Well or unwell, whose to say? That’s the sentiment of this sliding door story: “She continues to yell, a steady stream of incomprehensible angry words. You’re afraid to look at her. Will she come after you if you make eye contact? Are you afraid that she’s you?”
Are we not all screaming into the void, afraid and angry, in different ways? (394 words)
Deal by K-Ming Chang
“Half the commercials were for something called insurance, and my mother said she had never heard of so many kinds of accidents. Fires, earthquakes, lost dogs. Years later, I tried explaining to her: the commercial is asking for a down-payment on loss.”
A new one over at Wigleaf, this piece pits the starkness of consumption against that of grief. A woman calls a telephone number and reaches a service that will buy your unused years. “Yes, she said, the bad ones, the wasted ones. The ones you spent drunk or in bed. Years you grieved or spent on sadness.”
Would you return 2020 or have you made good use of it in spite of things? (1000 words)
So, tell me, what are some of your favorites these days?
Why Write Flash?
My MFA program was pretty traditional. Most classes focused on the fundamentals of storytelling. Had realism not been placed upon so high a pedestal, I think I would have found my voice sooner. I took a novel class that tried to convince me not to write one. A couple of creative nonfiction classes in which I realized my life was blessingly boring. A forms class, though I don’t remember discussing any forms, especially experimental ones, though we must have. I wish there had been more discussion on other ways of constructing narrative. Other than Jamaica Kincaid’s “Girl” I don’t remember reading any flash. In fact, I’m not certain that “Girl” was framed as flash at all.
Flash was not new nor were its writers. After all Sudden Fiction Anthology edited by Robert Shapard and James Thomas was published in 1983 and included stories from Carver, Cheever, Hemingway, and Updike, all of the dudes so revered by my teachers. Flash Fiction: 72 Very Short Stories edited by Tom Hazuka, Denise Thomas, and James Thomas appeared in 1992. And subsequent updates have been made over the years: New Sudden, Flash Fiction Forward, international editions, etc.
But somewhere along the line, things shifted in publishing, online journals became prestigious in their own right, and the flash floodgates opened.
My introduction to flash happened through friends I made at a writing conference just about the time Wigleaf began tallying their Top 50 list. Flash was easier to pass around on social media, and I began noticing it in ways I hadn’t before.
I didn’t consciously set out to write my first flash piece. It began as a bit of therapeutic writing to make sense of a relationship that had ended. Just a sliver of a story written in the corner of a notebook, with an image and a sharp toothed narrator who didn’t really want to sift through backstory. Nor did I. The lack of explanation made it feel all the more raw. I sharpened it some more and sent it out. The rejections came, but so did notes to send more. And then it stuck. Somewhere around the time that my town was being bulldozed by a tornado, I got word it had won a prize. Something about this this little one resonated while my longer pieces still weren’t finding homes.
It gave me confidence to keep writing. To try bite sized stories. More than one, even, about that storm. But mostly, it taught me to write lean. Even when I begin with flash in mind, they almost always exceed 1000 words. I have to whittle them down, worry every word.
Writing flash has made me a better writer. I’ve learned to let go of words that I don’t need. Of images that miss the mark. Of endings that don’t stick.
I have a tendency to write more than I need. To write competing metaphors. In flash, there is no room for that. The action happens quickly, and with a bang. Each image must be sharp. There can be no tangents, no spots that drag. Characterization, backstory, dialogue: these are limited to a line or two. Everything must earn its word count.
And I like the challenge of it. That eternal question: can I make this work? Can it lose a hundred words? What about a hundred more?