200 NIGHTS at Corium Magazine – “The oaks darkened to mocha as evening deepened. Mud and water, marsh grass, the rich earthy scent …”

6 A.M. at Emprise Review – (Not available online, but in print in Rattle of Want)

A BASIC TRUTH ABOUT SOME GIRLS at 50 to 1 – (No longer available online)

A FEW NECESSARY HOUSEHOLD RULES FOR SYBIL at Cleaver Magazine – “Don’t talk. Don’t say a word. Keep your mouth shut. Unless he talks first.” (Nominated for Best Microfiction)

A LITTLE SOMETHING AT THE DOOR at FIVE:2:ONE – “Mrs. Franklin, a woman in her late nineties, with beige hair that can only be produced from a box of cheap hair-dye …”

ABBREVIATED GLOSSARY at Melusine – “I slide my naked leg between his thighs …”

ACADIA LOST at Fictive Dream – “Summer evenings, while the grown-ups smoked Kents and shuffled cards in the kitchen, Denny Dale and I played Superman and Supergirl …”

ADULT EDUCATION at Jellyfish Review – “Coming into the classroom, Barb sees him at the snack table, plate bending under cupcakes…”

ADVENT at Sonora Review – (No archives available)

AMBER TRESSES TIED IN BLUE at Blink|Ink – (Print only)

AMOK at The Molotov Cocktail – “Sheila crouches behind discarded chimney bricks …”

ANCIENT MEMORY at Emprise Review – (No longer available online)

APPENDAGES at Atticus Review – “A man born with no arms and no legs, all torso and head, and one two-toed foot, jumped …” (Pushcart Nomination, 2013)

BEFORE SHE LEFT at 50 to 1 – “The clouds’ ominous umbrella darkened emerald hills …”

BETTER LIVING THROUGH CHEMISTRY – “Anabel is a writer, a book person, a lover of history, and though this chemistry class—even the word “chemistry” intimidates—”

BETWEEN YOU AND ME AND THE BEDPOST at Bending Genres – “We had sex on someone else’s waterbed. This was maybe 45 years ago.”

BEYOND THE CURVE at Women on Writing – “Three months after Allen Winter’s bicycle became a tangle of aluminum along Huntington Drive …” – (Winner, 2008/2009 Winter Flash Contest at Women on Writing)

BLANKETS at Spelk – “He sits in the cab of the snow-cat every night where there is no sky when it storms, nothing but snow everywhere …”

BLUSTER-FUCK at Pure Slush – “Your best friend, Layla, thinks the fresh scent of pine needles will do you a world of good …”

BODY-SNATCHING at LITnIMAGE – (Not available online, but in print in Rattle of Want)

BRANDED at Dime Show Review – “Chrissie waited. She was bored, she was tired, she was busy trying to put herself into another time …

BROKE AND BROKEN at 50 to 1 – “One hundred insipid grins from one hundred Cabbage Patch dolls mocked her.”

BROTHERLY LOVE at Literary Orphans – “Ally piled the lunch dishes into the rusty drainer, toweled off her hands, and slathered lotion…”

BURNED at Friday Flash Fiction – “Maybe she’s blonde. Maybe she’s funny. Maybe she fits against his body like the perfect puzzle piece.”

CALL GIRLS at Yellow Mama – “At Thirsty Liquors, I flapped eyelashes at the belly-heavy man behind the counter, handing over money for bottles of Sassy Bitch pinot …”

CAR BOUND at Gravel – “My parents took turns driving our Ford Fairlane, so old, it was held together by my mother’s clicking rosaries …”

CHALK DUST at Night Train Magazine – (No longer available online, but in print in Rattle of Want)

CLARINETS AND MILKY WAYS at Coachella Review – “Sally was in Mrs. Lee’s fourth grade class at Marshall Elementary, the third school she’d attended in four years.”

CLOSED DOWN at 50 to 1– (No longer available online)

COLORES Y DOLOR at Ekphrastic Review – “Frida dreams of walking the Paseo de la Reforma in purpledlight, fingers spread across her pregnant belly like the thin branches of jacaranda…”

COMMUNION at Ghost Parachute – “The altar boy comes along the railing, gold communion plate steady in his hand.  His blond hair falls to his eyebrows.” (Pushcart Nomination, 2022)

COMPLICIT at Smokelong Quarterly – “The front door slams. Walls shake. A vase of tasseled wheat slides through my hands …”

CORDS at Smokelong Quarterly – “My suitcase, a torn and broken two-wheeler held together with bungee cords, rolls between car and curb …”

COVALENCE at The Airgonaut – “Jennifer, ‘Jen,’ as she preferred to be called, used to meet her neighbor, Howard, in Rocketship Park …”

CROSSING THE MEADOW at Lost Balloon – “They ate no-peek chicken, drank fresh cow’s milk, savored squares of cherry cobbler before taking …”

DANI-GIRL’S GUIDE TO GETTING EVERYTHING  RIGHT at Flash Fiction Online – “The minute the nose of my Honda Civic points north on the 5 …”

DEVIL IN THE DELI  at Degenerate Literature – “She’s rather outspoken,” Granny muttered. We were sitting at a deli next door to Wal-Mart …”

DOING MR. VELVET at The Battered Suitcase – (No longer available online, but in print in Rattle of Want)

DOPPLER EFFECT at FIVE:2:ONE – “Wherever we go out together, people ask if we’re sisters, sometimes twins. We look alike, Katharine and I …”

DOWN BAYOU BLACK at 10Flash Quarterly – “Pneumonia wears me down most winters and it takes the spring to clear my lungs.”

EXTRAORDINARY EVENTS FROM A VERY ORDINARY LIFE at Flash Boulevard

EYE FOR AN EYE at Right Hand Pointing – “An F-150 pickup—three laughing girls crowding the front seat—knocked Jackie Dolan’s mutt Boneyard into heaven …”

FARMER’S ALMANAC at Visual  Verse – “House like a church. Dour. Ribbed. Centered between these two corn-fed Iowans…”

FIREBUG at Flash Flood Journal – “He comes home smelling of cold coffee, smoke, and ash. I roll over, and through slitted eyes, study the exaltation …”

FLASH FLOOD at Every Day Fiction – “I flick on the TV to watch a rerun of “Without a Trace” and some news guy — the geeky, stand-up kind who gets the sidebar gig …”

FULL COLD MOON at 100 Word Story – “They bear witness, the girl and the supermoon, pinned to different worlds. She studies the ocean …”

FURY at Fewer than 500 – “Little brother Trev died at the clinic. Mom sprawled over his still-warm body. I know who did it.”

GUMBO at JMWW – (No longer available online, but in print in Rattle of Want)

HEADING TO PERDITION at 10Flash Quarterly – “Heat poured over them like hot lead. Three women on a hard buckboard plank, Raney in the middle, bones rattled, throat choked, her stomach shriveled to dried leather.”

GOD BLESS THE CHILD at Fictive Dream – “Penny gently closes her bedroom door and tiptoes along the edges of the creaky hardwood floor.”

GREEN SLEEVES UNDER THE MERMAID at New Flash Fiction Review – “A heatwave smothers Texas like a ten-gallon hat so I abandon the three fans rotating in the apartment and speed out the door, my Dallas Stars tee-shirt as damp as warm teabags.”

HEARTLAND at 50 to 1 – “She escaped to Iowa thinking corn, pigs, and a football hero. She scored a double-wide in the weeds …”

HUGGERMUGGER at Yellow Mama – She buys polyester dresses from Walmart, this kindergarten teacher, her doughy face and pliant flesh suggesting empathy, comfort, trust.”

HUNGER at Visual Verse – “He swallowed her whole, one gulp. She slithered down his gullet, settled in his stomach …”

ISLA VISTA, 1970 at Foundling Review – “You won, you won, you won, you fascist!”

IT’S XMAS AND MAUREEN FEELS LIKE DEATH WARMED OVER– at Yellow Mama – “Maureen is dog-sick. She can’t smell or taste, and her eyes burn like she’s rubbed them with jalapenos.”

KATNIP – at Yellow Mama –

JUICE PIPS at FIVE:2:ONE – “The illegitimate children of O.J. Simpson arrive at Nica’s modest bungalow …”

KINDLING at Prime Number (issue 37.3) – “Packs of Kents were wedged between the windshield and dash of the Plymouth …”

LAST FOUR SONGS at Pure Slush – “Morning light bends through leaded glass. Patterns form and reform on sky-colored walls. Frances wakes. She’s dreamt of dew …”

LAST REAL HUMAN BEING IN HOLLYWOOD at Pure Slush – “Selene’s Sunset Boulevard apartment was the two-bedroom on the left, away from the traffic, hidden …”

LISTING LISA at Salt River Review – “The uneven crack that splits the step from solid ground to my back door vibrates in the late afternoon …”

LITTLE PILGRIM at Fictive Dream – Small TV with antennae. Saturday morning cartoons. Cowboys and Indians. Roy Rogers. Gene Autry. Buster Crabb! Black and white. Shorts and halter tops. Annie Oakley hat.

LOCOMOTION at Anomaly (Drunken Boat) – “As the 7:05 rattles behind our trailer park, the cuckoo pops from his wooden house …”

LOSING GROUND at Tattoo Highway – “It began with hands. Doesn’t it always?
Fingers lightly brushing wrists. Thumbs in palms. Remove …”

LOVE MUSIC at Six Sentences – He tells me my naked back is a harp and flutters his fingers across my scales.

MADELINE IN HER COFFIN at Referential Magazine – (No longer available online)

MAUREEN FEELS LIKE DEATH WARMED OVER at Yellow Mama – (scroll down) – Maureen is dog-sick. She can’t smell or taste, and her eyes burn like she’s rubbed them with jalapeños.”

MARRAKESH at 100 Word Story – Rosemary, mint, and donkey dung perfume the hot, dry air.

MEMORIES IN THE PARK at Sundog -In Collaboration with Paul Beckman, April Bradley, Audra Kerr Brown, Gay Degani, Hillary Leftwich, Jan Elman Stout, A.E. Weisgerber, & Nan Wigington – “I remember the day when Mama swung across the river on a rope tied to the branch of the swamp oak. I saw her pleasure naked. I saw sky upon cloth upon skin.”

MONO LAKE at The Airgonaut – “Maya leaves the motel in bedroom slippers, her puffy coat tight around her. Across the empty highway, the rising sun …”

MONSOONER OR LATER FIVE PIECES at Nail Polish Stories 9/13 – “A stranger comes to you in dreams so you dress in white and go to the Chor Bazaar …”

NELL ON THE NICKEL at Perspectives Magazine – “I’m drowsing on the sidewalk, my back against a cinderblock wall, four legs straight out just like I like ’em …”

NO PECTIN NEEDED at f(r)iction – “The price of gasoline has gone up 200% because of those damn Opec-kers, the Yom Kippur war is raging …”

NO ONE TALKS at Gone Lawn  – “They gobble down dinner, the family of four. There’s plenty of food, no need to hurry. Dad teaches high school …”

OCEAN BEACH at Fictive Dream – “We moved from Pacific Beach to Ocean Beach leaving behind sunsets dripping flame into the water. What we had now was a weedy lawn, a tiny house, and steep hills.”

ONE-HAND SOLITAIRE at Midway Journal – “We were summer’s lost souls at the picnic table, sipping beer, smoking joints while someone fired up the bar-be-cue.”

ONE QUESTION at Every Day Fiction – “Hank asks me questions I shouldn’t have to answer. Like when I get up to pee at two o’clock in the morning …”

ORANGES at Every Day Fiction – “She’s small, waif-like, this girl/woman who stands by the freeway onramp with her American flag vest …”

PILGRIMAGE at Flash Frontier – “She wonders if it’s his art or his missing ear that enchants those who love his work.”

QUE SERA at Writers’ Bloc (Rutgers) – (No longer available online)

RAZING IOWA at Fictive Dream – “Pale morning light rims the kitchen faucet. I rub an index finger around its corroded bottom, sip coffee …”

RICHIE’S LAST SHOT at Apocrypha & Abstractions – “A sharp wind whistled under the freeway and ruffled the wiry hair on Richie Bertram’s chin …”

RIM SHOT at 3 A.M. Magazine – “November. 92 degrees. Brush fires gut the Inland Empire, char the Western Valley, suffocate the Southland …”

RUBY at decomP Magazine – “Ruby meanders through murky city streets in ragged jeans and too-small T-shirts, a fur-collared coat loading her down …”

RUNNING THE FENCE at Monkeybicycle – “They met each morning at the corner, Davy and Glen, and Glen’s twin sister, Brenda, who hung around like snot on a runny …”

SEDIMENT at Blue Five Notebook – (scroll down) “The mind is something John doesn’t want to think about. Not his nor anyone else’s …”

SEEING IS BELIEVING at Fictive Dream – “I’m looking at the newel post at the bottom of the stairs when my mother up comes behind me and asks, “What’re you doing?”

SEVEN WAYS to PREVENT GONORRHEA, SYPHILIS, CHLAMYDIA, and HERPES by the Application of Meticulous and Rigorous Public Restroom Hygiene at Bending Genres – “The over-ruling concept in public disease prevention is to never go into a wet, dirty, graffiti-ridden toilet stall.”

SHE CAN’T SAY NO at Paradigm Journal – (No longer available online)

SINS OF THE MOTHER at Ghost Parachute – “I stay in my apartment on Pine Street with black-out drapes on my windows and triple locks on the door.”

SMALL TOWN at Metazen – (No longer available online, but in print in Rattle of Want)

SMOKE at Ghost Parachute -“It’s 1954 or 55, and we’re living in a small midwestern town, maybe it’s Tauton or South Linville, I can’t be certain.”

SOCKS at Metazen – (No longer available online)

SOGGY SANDY at Every Day Fiction – “Although Soggy Sandy earned her nickname in Pre-K because of her tendency to pee her pants, it was the perpetual globule …”

SOGGY SANDY on YouTube

SO IT IS WITH MOTHERS at 50 to 1 – “She hates the ruby ring he gave her, preferring her baubles set with garnets, her pianos upright …”

SOMETHING ABOUT L.A. at Litsnack – “He puts me out of the Benz south of Four Corners. He’s pissed because they’ve closed the monument …”

SPOON-HOLDER at Bartleby Snopes –  “Inside the antique mall, Nora snatches up a hand-sewn quilt in a pattern of ruby hourglass blocks …” ( Nominated Best of Small Fiction, 2017)

SPRING MELT at Every Day Fiction – “Water drips from icicles outside the kitchen window. Clear skies glisten through dirty glass panes …”

STANDING BELLICOSE IN FRONT OF A CRACKED MIRROR – (No longer available online)

STARKVILLE at Words in Place

STRANGER ON THE PORCH at Every Day Fiction – “It was over 80 degrees in our Hollywood bungalow when my mother opened the door to our …”

THAT KIND OF TROUBLE at Blink Ink (print) – (2022 Pushcart Nomination & Best Microfictions)

THE BREACH at Every Day Fiction – “The sudden hammering on the door jolts him awake. He doesn’t know for sure if it’s dawn or dusk.”

THE BREACH Podcast

THE CONFESSION at For Every Year – “I lied and told them I was fifteen. I had grown brawny from stealing wheels of cheese from the dairy farm outside my village …”

THE ELLEN SHOW COMES TO VISIT at Blue Fifth Review – “Yes, Ellen, being on TV makes me very uncomfortable, the camera, your crew, YOU, in my house …”

THE GAME at Flash Flood – “In this bar with its boozy smell, a man bent to light her cigarette with a wooden match. How odd, she thought.”

THE GHOSTBUSTER IN LOVE WITH MY MOTHER at Bending Genres – “Bill Murray, comedian, movie star, and man about town, breaks open his childhood piggy bank, the one he purchased under the name of Charlie Rivers at a Five-and-Dime…”

THE GOLD-PLATED CRUCIFIX at The Phare – “The crucifix is ten inches long, its square metal staves a mere quarter inch wide and made of brass…”

THE HOMELY MUSE at Bending Genres -“It was desperate times, you know? A woman with three kids under the age of 7 and a husband who spends all his time trying to be a poet, rhyming words like he, she, we, pee, what else could I do?”

THE LONDON EYE at Every Day Fiction – “Fog creeps over the railing from the river below, up my legs and through the gaps in my jacket.”

THE LONDON EYE Podcast

The MAGICIAN’S DAUGHTER, or a Tale Not Told by Disney from Moon Park – “She lived in a colorful mule-drawn wagon with her father, a snow-white rabbit, and three ring-neck doves he used in his act.”  (Nominated for Best Small Fictions)

THE REAL WAR at Clapboard House – (No longer available online)

THE POSTAL CLERK at Punk Noir Magazine – She’s a loner, always has been since Eddie, the kid next door, made her drown her own kitten. He was eleven, she was six.

THE SCORPION-CHARMER’S DAUGHTER at 10Flash Quarterly – “Amunet glanced up as a cold breeze filtered in from the harbor.”

THE STRAND at The Airgonaut – “Six on a beach blanket: a crone, a matron, a woman with child, a virgin, a girl, a baby…”

THE WAX MENAGERIE at Peacock Journal – “I slid off the torn seat of my father’s truck, juggling books, two paper bags, grabbing for them, my glasses slipping  …”

THE WAY IT CAN BE at Dogzplot – “Josh fired a blunt, sucked it down, exhaled a borealis of smoke …”

THESE THINGS HAPPEN at Connotation Press (click on Adobe Flash button) – “My father was plowing the cornfield under, getting ready for potatoes …”

THIS IS WHEN WE HAVE TO CHOOSE – ” ‘BEFORE THE END COMES,’ my mother says, ‘you must leave. Don’t think about me, sweetheart, just go. You’re young. You can make it out.’”

THREADBARE from South Florida Poetry Journal – “This small thing draws my attention. A needle? At least, I think it’s a needle.”

TIN STAR TOWN at 10Flash Quarterly – “Donnie came out of the town park restroom and handed Zach a tangled hairpiece, then tucked his own ponytail into a cowboy hat.”

TO EVERY SEASON at Fictive Dream – “A heavy rain scrubs Lily’s Chevy clean, a gleaming confirmation of her resolve.”

TO HAVE AND TO HOLD at Every Day Fiction – “In the luminescent dusk of their subterranean entertainment pod, Jana tells her husband …”

TOOLS OF THE TRADE at Writers’ Bloc (Rutgers) – (No longer available online, but in print in Rattle of Want)

TRACKED at Five Minutes – “That dang pickup is still there, has been since I left work. Lane-changing when I lane-change, that’s how I know he’s tailing me.”

TUMBLING DOWN at Flash Flood – “Someone shadows Merry Church down Chester Street. She’s a chubby girl with witch black hair, white makeup …”

UNSUITED in Suit Anthology (Pure Slush) – “She was the first buyer of women’s suits at Decklers department store. Not pantsuits …”

VICTORY IN EUROPE at Flash Flood – “They walked to the river in bare feet. He wore her brother’s clothes–his uniform on a peg in her upstairs room …”

VINTAGE ENVY at Shotgun Honey – “Belinda’s grandmother, who insists on being called Gabby, wears classic t-shirts with the images of bands fading across the front.”

VIVIANA’S AUNT at Fictive Dream – “The aunt, she’s always right. Don’t interrupt her. Don’t contradict her. Don’t defy her in anyway. When she says, ‘Darling Viviana, wouldn’t it be fun to take a road trip, just you and me, sometime this summer?’ ”

WAITING FOR GODO(NUT) at Spelk – “Last day of camp, performance day, with every parent and hated older brother in the audience, and I don’t know my lines …”

WATER AND POWER – at Ghost Parashute – “She scrubs the linoleum floor on hands and knees with a thick hard brush, left to right, right to left, in large arcs, the tiny glistening soap bubbles forming and reforming only to be washed away.”

WHAT COLOR THE BRUISE at deComp – “Anny sees the courtroom in shades of gray. Each jury member is an angry stroke of charcoal—vertical slashes, leaning left, leaning right—like pencils in a cup.”

WHAT STAYS WITH HER at The Cabinet of Heed – “Mama placed small bags of popcorn on the coffee table while Father set up the new-fangled television—the first in this town of 113 citizens.”

WHAT’S NEXT at 50 to 1 – “A disciple of Mensa, I make a habit of genius. It’s not easy; I’m not that smart …”

WHEN THE OVEN HOOD BEGAN TO WHISPER SWEET NOTHINGS at Fictive Dream – “This is what Loretta would remember if she could remember anything. She was like her mother, a homemaker who could whip together dinner in a half-hour flat if unexpected guests dropped by.”

WINDOWS at Fictive Dream – “Polar winds bang the windows, rake the roof. Inside, relatives, friends, and the homeless guy who lives in a lean-to behind the liquor store, all sit down to a glazed-ham dinner.”

YIELDING at Connotation Press – “Ann touched the dusty lace curtain, frowned at the rips in its gentle web. Beyond the window …”

YOU, HOT GUY at 10Flash Quarterly – “You: Hot guy in scruffy beard & flannel shirt, a forty in one hand, a pack of Marlborough’s in the other …” (formerly titled, “Spotted and Sought,” reprinted on this blog.)