Micro Prose: Costumes for a Different Woman by Candice Kelsey

Costumes for a Different Woman "The dresses in my closet are costumes for a different woman, though I hide myself in their silky textures. The man asleep in my bed knows me best in the dark." Linda Pastan  He grows smaller. Somehow he makes this old house feel draftier, like we live in a bank...

Micro Prose: At Auction by Sarah Priscus

At Auction Mrs. Breton’s third-grade class dealt in teeth. Mostly incisors, but canines were coveted most. No one took a shine to molars except Milly. She said they were smoothest, like plaque-covered pearls. The teeth were kept in pencil cases, swapped in calculated exchanges, polished with eyeglasses cloths, and used to practice subtraction. Some kids...

Micro Prose: Limits of the Flesh by Damien Roos

Limits of the Flesh  On fine afternoons, where the sun slips just right through the trees, I imagine being  smashed beneath some dense, massive object. It’s happened, you know. Not to me yet, but to others: in a warehouse where the lift fork slipped, a dockyard where the pulley gave. I make fourteen dollars an hour saying,...

Micro Prose: Overturned by Jenn Blair

Overturned I blame the gallows. I’d wanted to see them ever since I saw that movie and figured it would make a good stop on the drive from Atlanta to Oklahoma City. I was going home for Thanksgiving but also for my Aunt’s funeral—an imperious woman who crocheted tiny pink and blue hats for preemies...

Micro Prose: Collateral by Emily Kingery

Collateral Instead of exchanging actual gifts, we wrote poems about trees.  The metaphors extended like plastic bags about to drop: his tree was naked and praiseworthy and obviously my body in the cold interior of his car; mine was bending under ice in a cemetery I loved, where he decided he loved to park his...

Micro Prose: Crush by R.S. Wynn

Crush Johnny laid flat on the road as we waited for the school bus. I asked, “What’s wrong with him? He’ll get crushed.” My sister said, “Duh, he’s crazy.” Like that, I wanted him, though he was in high school and I was eight, though I hardly knew what wanting meant. Johnny had a sister,...

Micro Prose: To the houseplants during a depressive episode by Michelle Bellman

To the houseplants during a depressive episode I used to tear open helicopter seeds. I’d bury them in the mulch and wait for growth. They came down by the thousands, tumbling from the three large maple trees. I remember the smell that came with them as they decayed. We’d rake them up. Those that were...

Micro Prose: Texting my dad about the video store closing by Michelle Bellman

Texting my dad about the video store closing We used to rent movies in the summer. Walking at night: the air warm, light, cooling from the day. Our street quiet: filled with the humming of the orange streetlights. I don’t remember what we talked about. We’d rent 80s comedies and buy boxes of candy that...

Micro Prose: Birth Smell by Geula Geurts

Birth Smell Before I gave birth, every newborn I smelled was lemon fresh, unknowing seeds cracked open by promise. Glorious lemon, I said, holding a friend’s baby in my arms. Nameless sun. Crisp as wind. * During birth, I lay in the odor of my terror, body emptying itself out, unfurled gut, acid vomit, &...

Micro Prose: Road Trip with Anne Brontë by Ceridwen Hall

Road Trip with Anne Brontë Declivities, she says, and luster of August. Everything becomes scenery when one must paint. A blessed single life is declared, but the narrative is decidedly nonlinear; there is refusing and there is wanting. I think of Wildfell as a truck stop—someplace you can see from a great distance but don’t...