Flash fiction by Ron Nyren and Francine Witte, and several poems about stories

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The summer of no breeze, six men carried an enormous fan up the stairs of my grandmother's four-story townhouse and installed it in the roof.
--From "Vertical Travel," a story by Ron Nyren, 100 Word Story (April 24, 2019).

Six months gone, but it's still my sister's birthday, and so we buy a cake.
--From "Candle," a story by Francine Witte, Fourth & Sycamore (August 15, 2018).

Halfway through the sentence
she fell asleep.  She had been telling 
some sort of fable concerning
a young girl who wakens one morning
as a bird.
--From "An Endless Story," a poem by Louise Glück, The Threepenny Review (Summer 2018).

You chase me through a cornfield
and we arrive in a clearing.  All
that we know and do not know
shimmers between us, an invisible
door with no way to open or close.
--From "Bringing in the Sheaves," a poem by Donna Vorreyer, from her poetry collection Every Love Story Is an Apocalypse Story (Sundress Publications, 2016), p. 15.  A different version of this poem was first published in the Apple Valley Review (Fall 2012) and later reprinted in the 2014 edition of New Poetry from the Midwest (New American Press).

dark, the better for sleeping, brown like my eyes, 
you said, (may we all find that one person who will
compare our eyes to Ralph Lauren paint colors
instead of noticing the chipped polish on our left
foot) but my eyes aren't brown at all, . . .  
--From "We are painting the bedroom," a poem by Donna Vorreyer, from her poetry collection Every Love Story Is an Apocalypse Story (Sundress Publications, 2016), p. 64.

He's a happy baby.  How old is he?
I ask the woman who is reading a magazine 
and seems to have forgotten 
the baby at my feet.  She looks up and I watch 
her mind chew through my question.  
Seven months maybe.  Or eight, she says
then adds, He isn't my baby.
--From "Baby Facing the Wrong Way in the County Jail," a poem by Nancy Miller Gomez, from her chapbook of poetry and short essays, Punishment (Rattle, 2018), p. 22.

D. Nurkse's "The Bars," two other poems, short stories, and an essay

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"The Bars," a poem by D. Nurkse, reprinted in Knopf's Poem-a-Day series on April 4, 2013, from his collection A Night in Brooklyn (Knopf, 2012), and originally published in The New Yorker (October 31, 2011, p. 84).  

"Is This Part of the Love Ritual?," a short story by Jenny Bitner, PANK, Volume 5, Number 9 (September 2010). 

 

"Eleanor Writes She's Reading Rimbaud," a poem by Susan Aizenberg, Blackbird, Volume 12, Number 2 (Fall 2013). 

 

"Many Houses, Many Windows," a poem by Donna Vorreyer, from her collection A House of Many Windows (Sundress, 2013, p. 69), and originally published in Wicked Alice (October 11, 2012).

 

The Moons of Jupiter, a collection of short stories by Alice Munro (Viking Penguin, 1977).
 

"The Divine Auditor," an essay by Sarah Valentine, Prairie Schooner, Volume 87, Issue 2 (Summer 2013).