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Inside the cafe are two youngish women with lots of teeth and a pair of tureens and a glass counter full of rolls and loaves. One of them’s poking a ladle into a steaming mulligatawnyish thing. Each time a chunk of meat bobs to the surface she prods it back under. My mouth waters so much so suddenly I think I’m going to throw up. It’s just appetite though…
most recent:
flash
3/7/25
Chris Carrel
poetry
26/6/25
Sara Eddy
flash
23/6/25
Christy Hartman
fiction
21/11/24
terence hughes
flash
10/11/24
Elysia Rourke
poetry
10/11/24
chad Frame
Script
10/11/24
Anthea Jones
flash
27/10/24
Melanie Mulrooney
poetry
27/10/24
Chad frame
The full selection can be found on our dedicated page: The Word-Hoard. Or keep scrolling.
Welcome, fantasist!
Some announcements:
- Jun 3: We're back, baby! (Shiny new site design, too.)
- Jun 3: Submissions are open again: prose, scripts and poems. You'll find the link if you scroll.
- Jun 3: Please support literacy for adults. We love Read Easy, a charity whose link is at the top.
- Jan 8: We've deleted our social media pages. Ain't nobody got time for that.
- Jan 1: This one's here just to round things up to 5 announcements. Happy New Year, you.
[ˈfɪkʃn]
- literature in the form of prose that describes imaginary events and people
- something that is invented or untrue
Summer is winding to a close, and it has been three weeks since Eleni returned from the city hospital. She contacted them yesterday, postponing going back for her next placement. A polite, rational email which did not match how she felt.
Her mother has sold the small patch of farmland – no sons, only Eleni, with her deft mind full of medicine and her hands and hair scented by antiseptic – and the hilled, undulating land belongs to another farmer now. It is impossible for her to think that she will never again see her father – his thick back, sturdy arms – bending over the rolled nets of caught olives.
Eleni is managing her aunt’s shop while she is away. Isidora had looked at her niece, returned from the thrum of A&E rooms, still young, still a student, and sensing her thorned anger and her loss, had led her to her workshop. In the cool space of the pottery room, protected from the sun by thick, white walls, she sat…
He had always known the line of his life: to be as other men of his like and station. How that was to be achieved was far less important than the fact that it was achieved; that he had maintained what needed to be maintained until early…
I found him at the bar. ‘May I join you, Your Highness?’
‘Glad to have the company.’ He motioned vaguely to the stool beside him. ‘I’m not the king anymore, so you can skip the formalities. Call me Ed.’
terence hughes
Lisa Vitale
Matt Gillick
Harry Dobbs
Claire Jaggard
Lara Hurley
Rebecca Miles
Michael Trafford
Imagine not being able to read.
no !nt3rn3t. no 8ook5.
no 8!r7hd@y [@rd5.
Please take a look at Read Easy’s website.
[ˈpəʊɪtri]
literary work in which the expression of feelings and ideas is given intensity by the use of distinctive style and rhythm; poems collectively or as a genre of literature
My friend often stops by at lunch to talk
about our kids–how hard it is and how lovely.
It usually happens, because I love them,
that I’m eating an orange, or a mandarin,
Sumo, blood orange, temple–one of that whole
bodacious family of juicy mamas, and I separate
a section or two bursting with cellular juice
and hand them to my friend.
A little gift, a tender tradition.
After several years of these orangey
offerings, ripe recognitions
of our motherly friendship, she tells me
her mother did this for her too, when she was small,
peeling off a single wedge at a time, ensuring….
I hope not to burn in Hell forever but
burn in Heaven, be on fire for Jesus
as our Sunday School teacher says it,
burning the very best way she sings out
so Sunday after church I returned to
our classroom, empty then but for God and
Jesus and the Holy Ghost and me and
Miss Hooker and the Flag and Washington
and Lincoln, and caught her smoking Salems
as she was stacking our hymnals and I
didn’t know what to say, smoking’s a sin
and fetches Hell faster than anything…
Is your person wearing a hat? Mark asks, leaning
his metal folding chair against the cabin wall
with a creak, steepling his fingers behind his head.
I’m looking at the sunbeams streaming through
the open windows, the gauzy curtains flapping
lazily in late July breeze, terns on the wing
over the lake, my hands, the game’s plastic tiles,
the plastic rows of cartoon faces, anything at all
to avoid staring at the bulging baseballs
of his biceps, toned by years of throwing,
chasing, lifting, tackling, hitting, pinning—
No, I blurt, and he grins, all pearls and opals…
Chad Frame
Christopher Jones
Colin Dardis
RT Castleberry
Lisa Stone
Gordon Meade
Charity Reed
Thomas Dedola
Phoebe Gilmore
Jennifer Todd
Nancy Byrne Iannucci
Dominic Palmer
Written something and want us to read it?
You should definitely visit our submissions page.
[flaʃ]
- a brief fictional narrative
- a sudden brief burst of bright light
- a patch or sudden display of a bright colour
- ostentatious stylishness or display of wealth
There must have been hundreds of them, maybe thousands, but only on the one wall. They fit their small, black bodies closely together by pointing their wings upward, displaying the light tangerine color beneath. In this way, they painted the wall a warm triptych that made…
1994 – Cher
Dorothy Chandler Pavilion
Bathroom Attendant
3 strands
black/curly/synthetic
The hairs flash like a beacon on the bathroom’s white marble tiles. I wrap…
“Mare’s tails and mackerel scales
Make tall ships take in their sails.”
She’s studied the weather and knows about clouds which is why her lips are thin and tight. She does not want to tell him about the promotion. Tonight, she…
1. The Blue-ringed Octopus lives in colourful coral reefs. It relies on the rocks and crevices in its environment for refuge.
A customer wants to speak to the manager, but I’m trying to write my essay on cephalopods and their dedication…
The room seems to have more shadows with it bare. Empty shelves. There had been vases and books and objects, articles of life. Modern art in oak frames; how cultured they were, their easy touch of class…
A postcard of a bear. I flip it over and read Dave’s writing (It’s me! Missing you.), then drop it behind the coffee machine, a space normally reserved for brown envelopes and CVs.
Sandra sprays and wipes the empty…
Elysia Rourke
Melanie Mulrooney
Sean Glatch
Andrew Wickham
Anne Wilkins
Marcelo MEdone
Stephen Newland
Karen Walker
Polly Halladay
Rebecca Miles
David Kotok
John Sheirer
competitions past
We did some writing competitions last year. We might do some more again.
three rounds. three inspirations.
Check out the inspirations, judge’s comments and all the rest here.
round 1
round 2
round 3
The Top 10 of our first-ever flash fiction competition. Fandabidozi.
Our full report is here.
team results
