cover art "The Vanishing Lotus" by Marty D. Ison Our Mission: SmokeLong Quarterly is dedicated to bringing the best flash fiction to the web on a quarterly basis, whether written by widely published authors, or those new to the craft. The term "smoke-long" comes from the Chinese, who noted that reading a piece of flash takes about the same length of time as smoking a cigarette. All the work we publish is precisely that—about a smoke long. Issue Twenty-Five Letter From the Editor Cynthia Helen Beecher Bush Chanting Pam Bolton Flying Pens Z.Z. Boone Rats Dan Chaon The Hobblers Frank Dahai Slanguistic Lipstick Natalie DeClerck Rain Steven Gullion Good Friday Mary Hamilton Me and Theodore Are Trapped in the Trunk of the Car with Rags in Our Mouths and Tape Around Our Wrists and Ankles, Please Let Us Out. Joan Harvey Underfoot Tara Laskowski A Minor Setback Dorianne Laux Woman in a Bar Amanda Nazario Matt: How It Will Happen Darlin' Neal Trace Ryan Ridge Exile on Payne Street Gail Louise Siegel Home Economics Ray Vukcevich A Funny Smell Lindsay Marianna Walker Andersonville Brandon Wicks Northern Migration