Oblong III

Oblong Magazine's third issue is out, and I'm delighted to have a story, "Insurance," therein. A mere £3 will also bring you a nicely printed magazine of flash fictions by Alan Beard, Ric Carter, Margaret Eaton, Rhoda Greaves, Chad Greene, B. J. Jones, Nicole Matos, J. J. Steinfeld and Jon Steinhagen, as well as my own contribution. Many thanks to editor Jo Beckett King.

Fellow Sudden Prose writers may be interested to know that Oblong has just reopened for flash fiction submissions for its website, as they take a short hiatus from print issues.

New magazine, The Irish Literary Review, seeking flash fiction

The Irish Literary Review is seeking flash fiction submissions of 300 to 1000 words. You can learn more here.

New online magazine seeking flash fiction

Deep South, a new online journal from the University of New Zealand at Otago, seeks submissions of creative nonfiction, fiction, poetry and flash fiction up to 500 words. Find out more details on their website.

Sudden Prose Reprints: Meryl DePasquale's "On Parting"

On Parting

In that print two kids in kimonos slip sake to a rooster, trying to purchase a few more moments alone. Reverently, they stoop over a big orange bird. Lovely drooping tail feathers. Without horn-blast, the dawn creeps in fire and cream.

The same hour, he and I argue the entire way to the airport. Fat flakes fall against the windshield. No one can accuse us of graceful morning behavior. Once the weather clears my plane is in the air. Cottony clumps still hang around the mountain ranges. The woman beside me cries softly.

Passengers do not look to each other for sympathy. I want his hand cupped on the back of my neck. I imagine him saying I want you with bare sincerity. That sureness is enough to make a woman quiver all over, to cause her to crow. 

Meryl DePasquale lives in Minneapolis, Minnesota. She is a letterpress printer and participates in a collaborative mail art project called Four-Letter Press. Her chapbook Dream of a Perfect Interface is forthcoming with Dancing Girl Press. Her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in DIAGRAM, Interim Magazine, Paper Darts and The Offending Adam, among other places. Meryl teaches at Saint Catherine University and the Loft Literary Center.

I originally read this poem in Handsome.  

Sudden Prose Reprints: Lucy Hamilton's "The Compulsion"

The Compulsion

To emerge from my hideout and stagger to the mirror. To face the stranger in my face. Who is she in the white of her face, like the white of Robert Wyman’s Twin? Is it this white that fills the stalker’s dreams and fuels his nightly propulsion to the one-way mirror? The reflection is distorted. If I break the mirror I’m done for.

 Lucy Hamilton

"The Compulsion" comes from Lucy Hamilton's Stalker (Shearsman, 2012),  shortlisted for the Forward Prize for Best First Collection. More information as well as multiple purchasing options are available on the publisher's website.

FlashFlood and "Dreams He Can't Remember"

On Friday, 19 April, the people behind National Flash Fiction Day run FlashFlood, where flash fictions are posted online regularly throughout the day. My own story, "Dreams He Can't Remember," went up at 6 a.m. (no, I didn't get up early to check) and can be read here. Comments most welcome!

Sudden Prose Reprints: "Wish You Were Here" by Sandra Lim

"Wish You Were Here"

There is the ground between loving and being pleased. See, it is a city unto itself. Assess the points of entry, encampment, and escape. Level your eyes on the jagged horizon before your thoughts begin to scale. The mythological expressions that you feel coming on are merely exquisite irritations, curling routes that overrun the cityscape. The language never flies straight to the meaning, but in the meantime the sunsets here are quite resplendent.

Sandra Lim
Loveliest Grotesque
Kore Press, 2006



Sandra Lim is the author of a book of poems, Loveliest Grotesque, published by Kore Press in 2006. Her second book, The Wilderness, received the 2013 Barnard Women Poets Prize and is forthcoming from W.W. Norton in 2014. Currently, she is an Assistant Professor of English at the University of Massachusetts, Lowell and lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

In the UK, Loveliest Grotesque is available from Foyle's.