Flash 4/2010, #1: Jonathan vos Post

ZigZag Strikes Again

Very elliptical years, the 57th Century, or “Years of the Cat.” Practically nobody uses sentences. Anymore. Very eccentric. Tell story.

Am Time Bum. Name of ZigZag, honorable family, agent, sex-linkages. Manipulator and explorer of paraHistory via the Leonardo.

Journey to the Age of Styrofoam, the Coke Bottle Century, my favorite time, the 20th.... Read more: HTML

In This Issue: Jake Freivald

April Foolery

In springtime, this young man’s mind turns to thoughts of Heisenberg and Einstein. And alligators. And zombies — don’t forget zombies!

Yes, it’s April, which is the time for strange happenings and practical jokes. We hope you enjoy. And don’t forget Bruce’s column on Prose Poetry or Bill Highsmith’s blog while you’re at it.

The next issue goes up on May 4. Read more: HTML

Your ad could be here, right now.

Flash 4/2010, #2: Tom Crosshill

The Zombie of His Early Days

Every morning Bobby visits Chuck. He goes down to the basement and rattles Chuck’s cage with his cane. Chuck only snarls and spits, and grinds the rotten stubs of his teeth — gnish, gnash, gnish, gnash. He’s a real codger, Chuck is. Should have seen him back in the day, though. World ain’t got zombies like Chuck anymore.

As a boy, Bobby liked to climb the town walls... Read more: HTML

Flash 4/2010, #3: John Wiswell

Alligators By Twitter

5:00 PM (one day ago)
I can Twitter on my phone! No idea why I would, but it’s cool. Gives me something to do in the new house.

1:00 AM
Found mysterious hole in new house today. In floor. No basement. Calling my realtor after my sister and her kids leave.

Read more: HTML

Short-Short Sighted #21: Bruce Holland Rogers

Small Rebellions: Prose Poems

These columns are about writing flash fiction, but this month I want to peer over the border to examine flash fiction’s sister genre, the prose poem. At least some flash fictions and prose poems are similar enough that it can be difficult to see just which side of the border they belong on. Russell Edson calls what he writes “poems,” but all of his work is formatted as prose and is narrative. Readers can be forgiven for thinking that it’s flash fiction. Some of my own work that I considered to be fiction when I wrote it has ended up being published as poetry. Whenever I teach a class in the “short forms” of flash fiction, prose poem, and brief literary nonfiction, one of the first things I do is show the students a variety of short prose pieces and ask them to tell me whether those works are fiction, poetry, or nonfiction. Students seldom agree completely on the genre of any of the sample writings.... Read more: HTML

Classic Flash #29: Continental Monthly, April , 1863

Bust-Head Whiskey

In honor of April Fool’s Day, a Civil War-era practical joke.

For two days the quiet of the Rising Sun Tavern, in the quaint little town of Shearsville, Ohio, was disturbed by a drunken Democratic member of the Pennsylvania Legislature, who visited the town in order to address what he hoped would turn out to be the assembled multitude of copperheads, but which proved after all no great snakes! Read more: HTML