cover art by "Groom Left Waiting at the Altar" 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 Nine Letter From the Editor Steve Almond Pornography Stuart Dybek Brisket Cami Park The Names of Things Alexandra Fox A Deep Desire for Blue Lesley C. Weston Bird Tree Maggie Shearon The Woman Who Sold Her Flute to Buy a Cabbage Jai Clare Saft Henry Stanton Eros Max Ruback How We Can Be Saved Kay Sexton In Too Deep Michelle Garren Flye China Stephen Ausherman Living in Sin Sam Vaknin Pet Snail Joseph Young In The Dust Mike Young Irvin Hammers a Cat House