by Lance Mazmanian
Black-hot shower, with rainbow sparkling custard. Lightspeed daggers and curious hedge... with berries of platinum and glass. Nightscape flames will do no harm. And though her skies may fall in sections, or her girders long and glittery boil, she keeps her garden, her gait, her world... with her eyes a harbor, and a journey. Daylight returns, and the ocean ahead she knows. On the dash of her car, a cup of coffee.
6S
Lance Mazmanian, word/visual author, was once distributed by Random House alongside Harlan Ellison and got a coffee as payment. Mazmanian was internationally published in 2025 by London Writers' Salon, Fiction on the Web UK, WILDsound Writing Festival (TIFF; Canada), and more. The late Leonard Cohen once proposed they collaborate on a poetry chapbook until a tragic hard disk crash ended the dream. A multi-genre builder, Mazmanian is Co-Creator of a 2025 Sky TV series starring Billy Hayes of Midnight Express fame. As a Homo sapien, Mazmanian is half "Old Country" Armenian, half Dame Judi-style English, minus her fabulous blue eyes, regrettably.
20250717
20250716
Crumbs in the Butter
by Alan Keith Parker
They implemented a rigid return-to-work policy on a sickeningly hot summer day when everyone was already sluggish and depressed. Their requirements were strict and unforgiving: five days a week, no flex time, pre-Covid dress codes, hours enforced by analyzing badge-swiping data, a half-hour lunch that kept us confined to a cubicle cluster that smelled like old farts, all while lorded over by middle managers who addressed legitimate concerns about employees’ plummeting morale with corporate double-speak, platitudes, and fake smiles through perfectly even teeth. It was on the seventeenth day of this imprisonment policy that I overheard a manager say that he couldn’t be happier with the new policy because it not only aligned with corporate strategic goals, but also allowed him to have his hands on his people. I stood, brushed crumbs from my skirt, quietly shut my laptop lid, and walked out into the heat wave with my shoulders thrown back. I work remotely now, for less income and fewer benefits, and often have to deal with a stubborn commode in my only bathroom, a moody air conditioner, and a parade of even more stubborn door-to-door salesmen and crumbs in my butter. None of that matters, though, because that manager will never, ever, ever have his hands on me.
6S
Alan Keith Parker writes literary and speculative flash fiction, with stories featured in SciFanSat.com, Six Sentences, 10x10 Flash, Flash Phantoms, and Bruiser Magazine. He’s been publishing short fiction since the 1990s. As a disabled writer, he values opportunities to contribute to inclusive storytelling communities.
They implemented a rigid return-to-work policy on a sickeningly hot summer day when everyone was already sluggish and depressed. Their requirements were strict and unforgiving: five days a week, no flex time, pre-Covid dress codes, hours enforced by analyzing badge-swiping data, a half-hour lunch that kept us confined to a cubicle cluster that smelled like old farts, all while lorded over by middle managers who addressed legitimate concerns about employees’ plummeting morale with corporate double-speak, platitudes, and fake smiles through perfectly even teeth. It was on the seventeenth day of this imprisonment policy that I overheard a manager say that he couldn’t be happier with the new policy because it not only aligned with corporate strategic goals, but also allowed him to have his hands on his people. I stood, brushed crumbs from my skirt, quietly shut my laptop lid, and walked out into the heat wave with my shoulders thrown back. I work remotely now, for less income and fewer benefits, and often have to deal with a stubborn commode in my only bathroom, a moody air conditioner, and a parade of even more stubborn door-to-door salesmen and crumbs in my butter. None of that matters, though, because that manager will never, ever, ever have his hands on me.
6S
Alan Keith Parker writes literary and speculative flash fiction, with stories featured in SciFanSat.com, Six Sentences, 10x10 Flash, Flash Phantoms, and Bruiser Magazine. He’s been publishing short fiction since the 1990s. As a disabled writer, he values opportunities to contribute to inclusive storytelling communities.
Posted by
Robert McEvily
20250715
The Thieving Gull
by Howie Good
Two gulls stand beak to beak on the shoreline, arguing in squawks and screeches. The bigger one finally has had enough. Lunging, it catches the other gull’s beak in its own. While they are thus contending, a third gull, smallest of the three, swoops in, scoops up the clam that has been the source of conflict, and swoops away. I gasp at its boldness. At the dentist they make you wear a bib around your neck and tell you when to spit.
6S
Howie Good is a professor emeritus at SUNY New Paltz whose newest poetry books, The Dark and Akimbo, are available from Sacred Parasite, a Berlin-based publisher.
Two gulls stand beak to beak on the shoreline, arguing in squawks and screeches. The bigger one finally has had enough. Lunging, it catches the other gull’s beak in its own. While they are thus contending, a third gull, smallest of the three, swoops in, scoops up the clam that has been the source of conflict, and swoops away. I gasp at its boldness. At the dentist they make you wear a bib around your neck and tell you when to spit.
6S
Howie Good is a professor emeritus at SUNY New Paltz whose newest poetry books, The Dark and Akimbo, are available from Sacred Parasite, a Berlin-based publisher.
Posted by
Robert McEvily
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