Your hands are stained yellow from the garlic shrimp. I had told you that you could eat the shells but your haole ass was never going to do that. You’ll never know that sucking on the head is the best part. You’re staying at one of them Waikiki resorts with the towers and the tourists. You said you wanted an adventure. You’d never been with someone like me. So we go north. In the rental car, you reach over to...
Ah Ba says he sees particles drifting, flying everywhere, rains of dust, he says, speckles that land on the back of his hands, “see, see” he tells me, even though he’s blind. He says, dust balls into blobs that float in his line of vision; he scrambles to follow them, points his fingers at the air, “see, see” he says, for me to get a glimpse of the invisible clouds, and I push away the chair that stands in his...
let’s pretend the day didn’t begin with death. let’s pretend you didn’t facetime my sister from your car crying, YOU’VE LEFT ME & I’VE FALLEN THROUGH THE EARTH, & then put a plastic bag over your head, start suffocating. let’s pretend that bag didn’t suction tighter & tighter & tighter, skin tight. let’s pretend your facetime with my sister didn’t end moments later & you weren’t missing for over a day. let’s pretend we didn’t find you lifeless in the...
On their way to the refugee camp in Okigwe, Nnodim toys with the idea of eating her sickly father. It is only a slight joke, a passing thought, one that nonetheless fills her with shame. She wonders if her father has ever considered this thought: eating another person. She can never tell what it is he is thinking these days. They walk silently and steadfast. Her father no longer sighs as he usually does when they pass by a bomb...
I wrote my best friend’s obit and left out what mattered most. It wasn’t the remaining children, his second wife, or being a mechanic. He didn’t love being a husband or fatherhood. He liked to drink and so did his women, so the kids came naturally. I witnessed him at dance competitions and ball games with foam on his mustache, head down, watching the Browns on his phone. And I’ve felt him huddled against me in the hood of his...
SmokeLong Quarterly has been dedicated to publishing the best flash narratives since 2003.
December 2024
I have so much to tell you. It’s been a crazy few months. The SmokeLong Grand Micro Contest is in the bag, and we have the top six micros in this issue. Writing a memorable, fresh micro is hard. It’s an art. A burst, a spark. And we are in love. In March we are… Continue reading New Front (continue reading)
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Angela Townsend (she/her) is the development director at a cat sanctuary. She graduated from Princeton Seminary and Vassar College. Her work appears or is forthcoming in Arts & Letters, Bridge Eight, Chautauqua, Clackamas Literary Review, CutBank, Door is a Jar, Lake Effect, Paris Lit Up, Pleiades, and Terrain, among others. Angie has lived with Type 1 diabetes for 33 years, laughs with her poet mother every morning, and loves life affectionately.
