A micro a day, June 1 – 22

June 22

First Place

Rebecca Ball – Christchurch, Aotearoa New Zealand

Late spring the time to birth a uterus

They wheel me back wrapped in hot towels, and husband says I look strangely radiant. I take a selfie like you do with a newborn, IV line curled on my chest.

I go home to tri-pillows, black XL Warehouse knickers, Panadol valuepack – everything but the Moses basket.

First two weeks, rest. Early sun finds veins in fern leaves. Pink lily petals part like eyelids. Silvereye suckle from bottlebrush flowers. The waxing moon pulls at my belly.

I wake in dim light to the cries of a blackbird. Pīwakawaka play in dry kōwhai pods, spin last seeds to soft ground.

Rebecca Ball is a poetry and fiction writer from Ōtautahi Christchurch. Her work is in Landfall, London Grip, Poetry Aotearoa Yearbook, Turbine | Kapohau, Mayhem, Flash Frontier and takahē, and special anthologies including No Other Place to Stand: An Anthology of Climate Change Poetry from Aotearoa New Zealand (AUP), More than a roof: Housing, in poems and prose (Landing Press).

June 21

Second Place

James Montgomery – Stafford, UK

The Days the Cartoons Crept Out the TV

Elton watches his mother, zonked in her dirty pink dressing gown, a halo of yellow canaries dizzying her head. When the rabbit asks the doctor what’s up, she stirs. Motions him close.

Outside, she whispers into his Tasmanian curls, the world force-feeds you dynamite. Creatures burst through drums, and anvils fall from the sky. But inside? Always technicolour, always happy endings.

With that, Elton clambers into her lap, and together they watch the box.

Sometimes, a lightbulb sketch appears above his head, before he quickly rubs it out.

Instead, they laugh, each time the scene a funny kind of hurt.

James Montgomery lives in the UK. He has won the Pokrass Prize and Retreat West’s best micro fiction prize, and been highly commended in the Bath Flash Fiction Award. Find him at http://www.jamesmontgomerywrites.com

June 20

Third Place

Melanie Maggard – Everywhere / digital nomad

The Better to Eat Him With

I push harder, running through the lobby of Grandma’s apartment building, pulling my backpack higher, scampering up four flights, catching my breath at the landing, stopping, noticing the absent smells of cookies and sweets, creeping towards our door, pressing my ear against it, thinking what a big voice he has, opening slowly, staring at the hairy man snarling slurred words at Grandma—she’s-mine-and-its-my-God-given-right-as-her-father, flinching from “Hey, Red! Let your old man look at you,” struggling from his paws, saving Grandma from shrinking into the couch, piercing him with our screams, realizing what a big voice we have, expanding, stretching, surviving.

Melanie Maggard is a flash and poetic prose writer who loves dribbles and drabbles. She has published in Cotton Xenomorph, The Dribble Drabble Review, X-R-A-Y Magazine, Five Minute Lit and others. She can be found online at www.melaniemaggard.com and @WriterMMaggard.

June 19

Shortlist

Anika Carpenter – Brighton, UK

How I Answer When My Boss Asks What I’d Do If I Won the Lottery

I’d shake my heart loose. Watch it tumble down an unswept staircase of responsibilities. If you attempted to return it, hurl it at my drawing room window, leave it on my marble doorstep wrapped in satin – I’d delight in the thudding, the ruined fabric. I’d lounge on a chaise longue, thumbing through chandelier catalogues. I’d select the most expensive, furnish my empty chest. I’d demand that staff dress in a glittering frost. I’d have mice scurry into my laughing mouth for warmth, leave droppings between my teeth, so if ever I spoke of you, it would sound like an infestation.

Anika Carpenter lives and works in Brighton, UK. Her stories have been published by Ellipsis Zine, Fictive Dream, Gone Lawn, 100 Word Story and others, and have been shortlisted for the Bath Flash Fiction Award and the Bridport Prize. You can find her via her website www.anikacarpenter.com

June 18

Shortlist

Kathryn Aldridge-Morris – Bristol, UK

Back at the house

My mother’s nightdress is the only thing on my broken rotary line. It spins and the sleeves billow into arms, the chest plumps, skirt bellies with air. The shush of bamboo with this sudden breath of breeze. It was the kind of day without air. Suffocating you could say. Until that gust. I’d washed her whites before my blacks. The sleeves seem to beckon me and I take hold of a cuff. Sounds silly now. I take hold of the cuff trimmed with cotton stars, like I can still somehow comfort her. Like there is some place else to go.

Kathryn Aldridge-Morris has published flash fiction, essays and prose poetry in a variety of literary journals and anthologies. Her writing has won several awards, including The Forge Literary Magazine’s award for Flash Nonfiction and the Manchester Writing School’s ‘QuietManDave’ prize for flash fiction. Her website is www.kamwords.com.

June 17

Shortlist

Bronwen Griffiths – East Sussex, UK

Ghat

A cafe. Open patio and glass door. Inside, a smell of coffee and a group of men huddled around a television set. An old calendar, the pages torn. The town dark, the streetlights fitful. Opposite, a large squat building.  Now a black SUV drives by and a group of boys passes, chattering in Arabic. The boys slow down and fall silent when they see us. The town feels like the end of something. In one direction the border with Algeria, in the other a thousand miles of desert, sprinkled with stars and loaded guns. We will drive that way.

Bronwen Griffiths is the author of two published collections of flash fiction and two novels. Her flash fiction has been published online and in a number of print anthologies. She has also written two novellas-in-flash, one of which was shortlisted for the Bath Award. She lives in East Sussex, UK.

June 16

Shortlist

Kim Steutermann Rogers – Kauai, Hawai‘i, USA

Eclipse

I was five when the sky went dark. Dad and I emerged from the mall with new school clothes – red kicks and no-name jeans stiff as Dad’s spine had been at Mom’s funeral. Dad said not to look directly at the sun. I saw dozens of mini crescents lamenting on asphalt. As moon passed between earth and sun, I saw Dad’s eyes telescoping on a family of four. They wore those special glasses we forgot, the mother, a smile eclipsing red lips, exclaiming, “Oh, my God.” And I saw Dad drop his head in his hands, shoulders shuddering, back curved.

Kim Steutermann Rogers lives in Hawaii shadowing scientists into rain forests, volcanic craters and wetlands, but most days, she attempts to churn out words appropriate to the science and place and people of it all. Kim’s science journalism has published in National Geographic, Audubon and Smithsonian, and her prose, recently, in Bright Flash Literary Review, Five South and Fictive Dream.

June 15

Marjory Woodfield – Christchurch, Aotearoa New Zealand

There’s a song

I’m thinking of you. They must be important words because he sings them over and over again. I scan supermarket shelves to find Shower Glass Cleaner and Exit Mould. At the Hospice Shop I try on a skirt. There’s Always a Woman as I ease it over my hips. She folds it neatly, sings along. The Warehouse. I find the aisle that sells baby products. Reach for the sky ‘cuz tomorrow may never come. At the dermatologist’s I’m given a form. Love me tender. Ten minutes later, I’m told I have no moles. I’m low risk. Elvis, still singing.

Marjory Woodfield’s writing has appeared in such journals as Ōrongohau | Best New Zealand Poems, Landfall, Flash Frontier, The Pomegranate London and Orbis, and in anthologies such as Pale Fire, Best Small Fictions and erbacce Press. She was awarded the Robert Burns Poetry Prize (2019) and The New Zealand Society of Authors Heritage Poetry Prize (2022), and was second in both the Patricia Eschen Prize for Poetry (2022) and 2022’s Micro Madness. 

June 14

Annabel Wilson – Ōhinehou Lyttelton, Aotearoa New Zealand

Sugar and gravel

She was being followed around by thistledown. Kept finding nests, fallen  or in corners of old buildings, like in the chapel on Kamau Taurua  Quarantine Island, Ōtepoti (rammed earth, benches of recycled planks  from the old jetty, completed 1973). Later in a dawn lounge across town,  she will find bits of sugar and gravel stuck in the gaps in the soles  of her boots. She will leave a note down the back of the sofa: you need  a bed-coat for this Dunedin weather.

Annabel Wilson‘s writing has been published and performed in Aotearoa and overseas. She recently completed a PhD in Creative Writing and her micro e-chapbook dusk&us comes out this winter.

June 13

Tim Hennessey – Christchurch, Aotearoa New Zealand

Just passing

That’s her. Emerald green coat, fake fur collar. I hope it’s fake. She manoeuvres a shock of blond hair away from her eye with a carmine-red nail. She talks, smiling, into her phone.
She’s pretty.
            Closer. Our eyes meet. Indigo eyes. She says something and laughs. As she passes she crinkles her aquiline nose. At me? A jolt, intoxication, a lack of breath. I nod and smell her scent. Oranges, cloves. 
No. She’s beautiful.
          Should I run after her? I turn and the old bat behind me glowers.
          Maybe not.
          But there’s always tomorrow, 
                                                   same time, 
                                                      same escalator.

Tim Hennessy lives on the Banks Peninsula. He has studied fiction writing in a room above the Madeira Hotel in Akaroa, at the Hagley Writers Institute, and IIML at Victoria University – Te Herenga Waka – Wellington.

June 12

Marie Gethins – Cork, Ireland

A Little Night Music

Moon, soon. That’s what he says, but means blue moon, not soon. Like never. Fingers on keys. All that jazz. Give ‘em a tinkle, Joe. Swing my hips in the sweat and smoke. Gin Fizz. High Ball. Hanky Panky. Crimped bob, a blue fringe dress. Sparkle for them, Baby. Gold pinky ring on fat full fingers. He counts out a green stack. Shake and shimmy. Working it here, then there, but they’re all one. Sparkle, don’t shout. Speakeasy, Baby. Remember, it’s cold on the street.

He smothers my bare shoulders with creamy fur.

In a grey haze, the moon winks.

Marie Gethins lives in Cork, Ireland, splashing about in the Atlantic on a regular basis.  Her work has been selected for BIFFY50 2020, Best Microfiction 2021 and Best Small Fictions 2023. She is the flash fiction editor for Banshee, a co-editor of Splonk and critiques for the Oxford Flash Fiction Prize.

June 11

Kik Lodge – Lyon, France

Legs of Montmartre

Grandma talks of the time she opened her legs to Toulouse Lautrec. Draped herself in silk Georgette, danced to a mechanical piano. How he painted her without any paint, loved her for a week with every inch of his aorta. How Grandpa hates Paris and every daft thing it stands for.

But I know Grandpa is secretly thankful to Toulouse Lautrec. Ask her and Grandma’s legs can still soar to form right-angles, eclipsing even Rosa la Rouge at the Mirliton. And Grandpa, sunk inside his armchair, will be watching mid-doze – breath brief, a generous slap of shine in his eyes.

Kik Lodge writes short fiction from her flat in Lyon, France, or inside her caravan that never moves. Erratic tweets @KikLodge

June 10

Rebecca Styles – Wellington, Aotearoa New Zealand

Mamaku

Outside my bedroom window, two arms of the mamaku are coiled into fists and raised to the sky. The fists face each other as if waiting for the other to unfurl first. Yet, day after day, they stay coiled. Then two other fists raise up, as if coming to end the argument once and for all. But they don’t. They join in, knowing their young arms will outlast the others, knowing they will win.

Rebecca Styles has a PhD and MA in Creative Writing. She’s had several short stories published in New Zealand journals and anthologies, such as The Reading Room and Landfall. She also writes book reviews for takahē and The Listener and works as an investigative writer for Consumer NZ.

June 9

Emma Philips – Cullompton, Devon, UK

When We Stood Under Turner’s Landscapes and You Saw Right Through Me

The black of the sky was smudges of kohl under our eyes, traces of goth, the murder of crows on our lips before we learned who we kissed could lead to unbecoming.

The clouds were teacup storms we unleashed, their swirls like swarms of gnats, the land our drawn-out vowels, thick with mud and longing.

The sea was the edge of our childhood, us on the swell, your hand on my back like a mast, the grey your familiar smell. “I know,” you said. I felt the roar of waves in my head, a shame that could undo me.

Emma Philips lives near the M5 in Devon, which sometimes lures her away in search of adventure. She is a teacher, writer and mum of one. Her words can be found in all sorts of places and her flash collection is available from Alien Buddha Press. She tweets @words_outwest.

June 8

Chris Macann – Canterbury, Aotearoa New Zealand

The travel agent 

There’s a personhole open on my footpath. Sulfuric. Nitrogenous. Pungent. It’s a blocked sewer. It’s the hotel at the bend in the river, the market in Kano, the backstreets of Jakarta.  

There’s smoke in the air. Acrid. Mellow. Stinging. It’s my neighbour burning rubbish. It’s the village on the road to Arusha, the campsite in Goma, the night bus to Lagos.  

There’s a forgotten towel in the washing machine. Sour. Musty. Fungussy. It’s the hostel in Nairobi, the riverboat to Boma, the beach shack on Santos.  

Noses. The greatest travel agents. 

Chris Macann is a journalist and aspiring creative writer. Chris has spent chunks of time in the Middle East, Africa, North America, and the Pacific. Chris attempts to create entertaining stories about the very mundane. Chris enjoys experimenting with economical word-use. Chris’s proudest moment is getting a story about laying sewer pipes, published. Chris likes biosecurity, civil construction, and space. 

June 7

Judy Darley – Clevedon, South West England

Our Landscape Abounds With Quiet Women

Hunting for Gran and our heritage, we fail to anticipate her mountainous stance: from certain angles she shadows the moon. Forests tumult down her hills, riverine green.

We climb and chant family legends lamenting security mistook for love; cherries swallowed whole, stones and all; the loneliness of colonial wifedom; quietness misread for a pebble heart. 

She is so much more than anyone guessed. 

Gran’s dreams hiss in my blood. Locks once coppered like mine sprout ash, holly, beech, wych elm. I press my forehead to our ancestral strata and thank my stars for her magma’s seethe in my veins.

Judy Darley is a British writer and journalist. She is the author of short fiction collections The Stairs are a Snowcapped Mountain (Reflex Press), Sky Light Rain (Valley Press) and Remember Me to the Bees (Tangent Books). Her words have been shared on BBC radio and aboard boats, in museums, caves, a disused church and artists’ studios. http://www.skylightrain.com; https://twitter.com/JudyDarley.

June 6

Afshan Q – Hyderabad, Sindh, Pakistan

Gift

I have had two rats, which are a gift from nature. It was a forced and unexpected surprise, and it was my obligation to never catch them and put them in a cage. According to the order passed by the universe, allow them to do what they want to do. They are constantly eating away at what is most precious to me. I try my best to avoid or ignore the pain of losing it through all kinds of joy and sorrow, but they keep gnawing and chewing my life. The first is day, and the second is night.

Afshan Q is an indie writer and poet whose work is forthcoming in On-the-High Literary Journal. She lives in Pakistan with her brother. In 2022, after a long teaching career, she began writing stories and poems.

June 5

Lee Fraser – Ōtautahi Christchurch, Aotearoa New Zealand

Search History

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Lee Fraser trained and worked as a linguist in Papua New Guinea and Kenya in her 20s, collided with domesticity in Ōtautahi during her 30s, and is now rediscovering health through writing. She won the Ōtautahi slam in 2023 and has since been published in Catalyst, Quick Brown Dog and The Fib Review.

June 4

Karen Walker – Ontario, Canada

Starfish bodies aren’t bodies at all

They’re heads, all head! Brainiacs.

Everything else has disappeared, says star starfish researcher Dr. Darla Seaborne.      

Her gran, hating high heels, recalls walking feet vanishing. Hands were next when males said hey baby, no stilettos, no wedding ring. When starfish fronts and backs became flat, Darla’s daddy left for a more voluptuous creature.

A heart can break, so, eventually, it shrivelled.

But why do starfish have five arms?

Seaborne’s latest discovery—males fear odd numbers—will win her The Nobel Prize in Evolution, allow her to crawl the sea floor to Stockholm to accept, and really show her daddy. 

Karen Walker (she/her) is writing in a basement in Ontario, Canada. Her work is in A Thin Slice of Anxiety, Misery Tourism, Centaur, Cosmorama, Overheard and Bending Genres. @MeKawalker883

June 3

Charlotte Hamrick – New Orleans, Louisiana, USA

The Variable Properties of Water

A mother is staring out at unending acres of corn, unrelenting sun. A child watches from behind her eyelash curtain for an upturn of mother’s lips, for lines on her forehead to smooth out like gentle waves on a sandy beach. The child has seen the beach on TV, expansive and sparkling like thousands of smiles. 

The child moves from room to room, silent, like the tide. Wonders why her house is silent except for when the baby cries. 

Mother stares out the kitchen window, sweat trickling.

Baby cries.
Child watches.
Tsunami rumbles.

Charlotte Hamrick writes, reads, and photographs extraordinary everyday things in New Orleans. Her writing and photography are included in a number of literary magazines and in the Best Small Fictions 2022 and 2023 anthologies. She is Co-EiC of SugarSugarSalt Magazine, Features Editor for Reckon Review and former Creative Nonfiction Editor for The Citron Review.  Sometimes she writes in her Substack, The Hidden Hour

June 2

David Cook – Bridgend, Wales, UK

The Art of Invisibility

Each day at noon on the dot, Harry would take his regular seat, raise a drink, and salute those around him. A creature of habit, he was there day after day, week after week, year after year. Until, one day, he wasn’t. Nobody noticed his absence until, a week or so later, the park keeper idly realised the bin by the bench next to the pond was no longer half full of empty beer cans at the end of each day. He smiled thinly, relieved at the small reduction to his workload.

David Cook‘s stories have been featured in Ellipsis Zine, Janus Literary, Barren and many more. He’s a Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net nominee. He lives in Bridgend, Wales, UK, with his wife and daughter. Say hi on Twitter @davidcook100 and Instagram @davidcook1001.

June 1

Lincoln Jaques – Tāmaki Makaurau Auckland, Aotearoa New Zealand

The Comeback

The begonias have lost their colour. The TV flickers into the room. Onscreen the bear lies permanently crippled as they drip the bile from his gallbladder; unable to stand up, unable to scratch his back. Through the window I watch the trees, their leaves ink-spots against a nectarine-red sun. Rusted leaves mixed with bright yellow lemons, the greener grass after rainfall, the blue opening through clouds, a sun strike. I listen to my heartbeat. She doesn’t talk much about the war. She gets upset when I write about it. But I write for her to fill in the spaces.

Lincoln Jaques is a Tāmaki Makaurau-based writer. His poetry, fiction, travel essays and book reviews have appeared internationally.  He was shortlisted for the 2023 inaugural At The Bay | I te Kokoru hybrid manuscript awards, and was the Runner-Up in the 2022 IWW Kathleen Grattan Prize for a Sequence of Poems.

The 2024 judges

Past judges

On the radio: Micro Madness on Standing Room Only

2015 judges Nod Ghosh and Eileen Merriman talk about the competition’s first year, featuring micros by Sally Houtman, Patrick Pink and Heather McQuillan

Listen here.