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52|250 – A Year of Flash
Features
Weekly selections
- Week #27 – Lost in translation
- Week #28 – The postcard
- Week #29 – The palm of your hand
- Week # 30 – Urban convert
- Week # 31 – Missed the bus
- Week # 32 – Silence
- Week # 33 – Spontaneous combustion
- Week # 34 – Floating away
- Week # 35 – Loose connections
- Week # 36 – Animal behavior
- Week # 37 – Border town
- Week # 38 – Long distance
- Week # 39 – Password
thirtynine random sparks
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Central Market had a special on handcrafted yellow fog that rubs its back upon the window-panes, brushed with what did I know, what did I know to add just the right amount of piquancy. - J. Reese |
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It was clear to him that there was a woman on the moon, quite possibly waiting to be rescued since the Great Depression.
- M. Speh |
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The problem has not yet risen to a fever pitch, but one can never be too careful where the head is concerned.
- J. Riley |
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The deer’s head like a slab of meat on the grill grates in the cab of his father’s pick up.
- J. Harutanian |
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And they yawn and stretch without even looking at the clock.
- Mel. McEwen |
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We strangers sleep together family style.
- S. Tepper |
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Gone in a whoosh of flame, a smoke ring left to mark your place on earth.
- S. Gibb |
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I stood at their grave site and threw in three red roses and thank you, thank you, thank you ticked from my heart like hemlock needles falling, for the love, the spark, the living kindled.
- B. Sigriddaughter |
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I missed the way Irv woke up and immediately wanted to talk about the day ahead, the things we’d be seeing.
- L. Beighley |
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They were just kids, old enough to know better, young enough to be susceptible to dares.
- M. Brick |
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American flags and Whiting banners floated ghostlike from dozens of cranes silhouetted in tiny white lights.
- L. Simoni-Wastila |
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Within ten minutes, he was sitting right behind her, his garlic breath bouncing off the window.
- L. Kuntz |
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She’d grown up with soldiers, and learned the difference young.
- K. Hutchinson |
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"This family moved to the city after the war, and we’ve hung on like ticks on a dog’s ass ever since,” his father would say. “Someday, one of us is going to explode. You’ll see.”
- K. Grotke |
| Sleep, when it comes, comes in a rush like an orgasm. You’re not sleeping-you’re inside your head, thinking, tracing the action in the room with your ears, then suddenly you’re gone. - M. Webb |
| Upon the horrifying discovery that the citizens’ needs were met and their appetites sated, the regime moved quickly to avert a moral crisis. - B. Heise |
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The nun sitting across from them clutches her iPod like a crucifix and lowers the volume of her soundboard bootlegged Melissa Etheridge to better eavesdrop.
- S. Stucko |
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I read that hyenas come out of the womb already fighting. In that sentiment I recognised you. - R. Lawson |
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He worried that someone would look up from the honking streets, maybe some crazy kid. The kid might see the white dazzle of his shirt, might scream. - H. Taylor |
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He stood, stuffed the beep-boop twinkle stick into his breast pocket and headed back to the Impossible Blue Box, whistling an Arcturian pop tune that wouldn’t be written for another eleven centuries.
- T. Allman |
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Are you there? It’s been so long since I had someone to talk to. Besides Oscar and Wilde, I mean.
- F. Rasky |
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I dearly want to reject Darwin.
- A. McDermid |
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That is our bargain – a lifetime détente in exchange for a feast – although I had never been consulted. It’s an ancient marriage made by some outer space yenta.
- R. Houle |
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Hello ghosts. I’m not ready yet to become
part of your toothless frothing group but I
thank you for the bubbling foamy offer. - D. Price |
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Four feet is all a shark needs. - A. Lockwood |
| It started with other things—snow globes smashed through windows, dead birds tucked behind the chocolate milk—but it was her hair the rest of the world noticed. - L. Kuntz |
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The wind tricks the lock shut. The hourglass is turned. Your feet touch together and you hold them - D. Bond |
| her body
in general reminded him of sacks of damp fodder left in a field
- S. Power-Chopra |
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each sends sound waves that ripple across the interminable unfoldings of the apparent dissonance of an earthquake in winter - S. Hastings-King |
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I should have learned to be patient in my loneliness, still enough to watch a rosebud bloom - S. L. Compton |
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He pictures their heads and bodies exploding, the blood spilling into the water, or maybe diluting the soft sand - A. Nair |
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Their children are borne from small stones that lay atop a dusty hill - M. Hamilton |
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You can’t believe the dirty girls we get here for head shots - S. Tepper |
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just breathe, until the only noise is my pulse thumping through my brain and all I see are smoky-white trails of spent fireworks echoing against my closed eyelids - L. Simoni-Wastila |
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It meant she could slip outside when the insomnia got to her, curl up in the driver’s seat, and smell his last remaining trace - E. K. Switaj |
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I’d like to say we didn’t remember the Alamo, but one of ours had to piss - R. Collins |
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I could see a glimpse of admiration in her eyes: the men in her future would have to be able to moo just like that - M. Speh |
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It spreads itself across the back of my head. I’m ready to pull off a piece of my skull to get to it - A. McDermid |
| She had been warned. On first glance, this species seemed like another average task: anthropoid, medium-brained, clueless about any realm beyond the third dimension - D. Lang |
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thirtynine
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Do you plan on creating an anthology from this? I’d buy it. :)
May 12, 2011 at 6:31 pm
it was more than an honor to have been part of this project, it was great fun and enriched my writing, too. i can’t say that i read all of the over 1000 flash stories, but i read many of them and i was astonished and amazed by the high quality and literary value of this collection. i’m glad you’ll take it to the next level because you’re a great team of editors – the entire site and the quarterly anthologies are evidence for that. good luck to you and to all of us!
May 15, 2011 at 11:22 am
ps. and – once again- the invititation to all flashers of 52|250 to join us at kaffe in katmandu – leave your e-mail here & mention that you’re a 52|250 author! keep posting your flashes there even if this great place will be discontinued.
May 15, 2011 at 12:55 pm
I am so grateful for the passion of the editors and writers here.
May 15, 2011 at 12:17 pm
i’ve learned a tremendous amount and derived as much pleasure from reading the work that folk have generated as part of this project. i’m pleased beyond words to have been part of it. it’s a little sad to see it ending. but i think much of the reason it was as it was followed from the constraints. so breathe, think a little, start moving on to the next thing. maybe making stuff makes slow-motion nomads of all of us.
May 16, 2011 at 2:48 pm