Flash the Court

Author: Court Harler

  • “Mrs. Luzajic as Hebe” by Lorette C. Luzajic

    “Mrs. Luzajic as Hebe” by Lorette C. Luzajic

    “Mrs. Luzajic as Hebe” by Lorette C. Luzajic is part poem, part essay; part dream, part terror. Hebe is the ancient goddess of the prime of life, but “when you’re dying, nostalgia kicks in the way desire once did.” The narrator journeys near and far, searching for chardonnay and ceviche, but also seemingly never leaves her own kitchen. There, she brews espresso and spins stories. There, eventually, she lives and lives and lives, thank the goddesses.  —Court Harler

    a love poem for Brent Terry

    Under the knife, under the needle. I can’t even say I was determined to survive. The reaper had followed me for so long, in different disguises, with an impressive array of tactics, I was not certain I’d outwit him again. I hoped for the best and planned for the worst. I took my medicine. 

    When you’re dying, nostalgia kicks in the way desire once did. Hard and hungry. Tantalizing flickers of foolish yesterdays: I had my middle finger to the world and an arsenal of dreams left to shatter. Then, there, driving through Dakota. The stars from the back of the pickup. Patti Smith growling her poems from the front cab radio. A bottomless bottle of bourbon. Now, here, you are a deer caught in the headlights. You’ve been caught with your pants down. Life has you by the balls.

    When you are careening along that winding hairpin cliff, the Pacific Coast Highway, everything you know unravels. You are unbecoming. You let go of unfinished things. The details whir past in a slurry, intangible. I took that highway again, later, further south, in Mexico, on a bus, splattering iguanas. Reeling into the turquoise forever with a gone friend, who was, then, there, mirror Ray-Bans and eggshell linen trousers. I prayed my heart out for the driver. And we made it to the sea.

    There was more: the portent glow of a bright moon and the sound of silence in the southern swamps. The bats in Barcelona. Their swooping, and the swallows.

    What you find here in the valley of the shadow of death is how every moment matters. The beauty, of course, yes, sublime: Spanish guitar; pastels de nata; head-back laughing; good chardonnay that tastes of cigars. But also: every single fucking hurt and hell is a magic spell.

    And then, sometimes, you come back. You find yourself in the kitchen, measuring out Lively Up espresso beans, getting ready for work. You find yourself at a table with good friends, slurping ceviche and lime. And you realize you really don’t have a clue how you got there. But here we are.

    I grew so much closer to God. And so much further away from knowing what that even means.

    There were times when I didn’t know who I was. And then I did. And sometimes, I felt like I had always known. Sometimes when I was flickering in the liminal, I saw the ghost light: beacons in the dark loam that slowly swallowed me, the lighthouse that was a friend.

    I had spells where I thought about strange things. Like, what if, you already were? What if your whole life was really the story of your unbecoming?

    LORETTE C. LUZAJIC reads, writes, and teaches flash. She is the founder of The Ekphrastic Review and The Mackinaw: a journal of prose poetry.

    Featured image by The New York Public Library, courtesy of Unsplash.

  • “on the brink” by Carolyn R. Russell

    “on the brink” by Carolyn R. Russell

    A cliché is a well-meaning tidbit of wisdom, built upon a solid generational foundation, even it’s meant to be made a mockery of itself. In “on the brink,” Carolyn R. Russell interrogates the very idea of the cliché—why we do and don’t say them, why we do and don’t (or can’t) believe them. In the end, we are only our irreplaceable selves, as diverse as we are divine.  —Court Harler

    most of us can’t afford to go big or go home or do one thing every day that scares us or fail forward. can’t throw a mix of seed and compost into the wind and wait for it to land in the deep pocket of a father’s friend or the ear of a mother’s former lover. if we’re lucky we might conjure a single slender stem, true-leaved and pale, and urge it into a bright and stubborn bloom. the sum of my father’s best intentions and my mother’s cheerful madness: one scrawny green moonshot to carry us all beyond reproach.

    A Best Microfiction winner and a Pushcart Prize, Best of the Net, and Best Small Fictions nominee, CAROLYN R. RUSSELL’s short stories, poetry, and creative nonfiction have been featured in numerous publications. Her collection of cross-genre flash is called Death and Other Survival Strategies (Vine Leaves Press, 2023).

    Featured image by Artiom Vallat, courtesy of Unsplash.

  • “Tar Pits” by Meg Pokrass

    “Tar Pits” by Meg Pokrass

    In “Tar Pits,” award-winning flash-fictionist Meg Pokrass takes us on a bittersweet ride in a pink convertible —only to discover that fame, like any other earthly accolade, can sink you, and your sister’s “skinny smile,” to the lowest depths. “Tar Pits” is a dexterous, provocative exploration of what it means to be a woman in the world today.  —Court Harler

    First time my big sister took me to the La Brea Tar Pits, we met an out-of-work actor wearing a wilted expression. “You’re my hope,” he said, as if he were sinking. She beamed him her smile, autograph pen in hand. “Don’t give up on your dream, my friend,” she signed, feeling funny for being spotted at the grave of the La Brea Woman’s skeleton.

    Wrapped in faded denim, my big sister’s middle-of-the-night skeleton drove us again to the tar pits. She was pretty, nobody knew she was funny. “You locked in the part,” said her agent, “because of that skinny smile.” I imagined him bowing to kiss her hand but accidentally pinching her bottom. She was soaring over pitch-black places where other actresses were sinking.

    “She was eighteen years old when she died there, asphyxiated while sinking,” she explained, nibbling carrots. Deep in her bathtub, I’d stare at my twelve-year-old skeleton. I wanted to tell her it was a bad idea to revisit those tar pits. “I can feel you wrinkling!” she’d say, rushing in, grabbing my hand, pulling me out. “I’m your La Brea Woman,” I’d sing, wanting to be funny. 

    “When playing a role, an actress is no longer a skeleton,” she said. That day her eyes were bloodshot and we were eating lettuce straight from the bag. When she got bad news after a big audition, I held her hand. The two of us worked up our skinny smiles in the mirror before hopping into her pink convertible. “You used to be funny, kiddo,” she said, as if I were the one who was sinking.

    Not every girl has a sister who haunts old tar pits, I told myself. Now thirty, her agent dropped her and she was sleeping. I was a teenager with undeveloped features, beginning acting lessons. “Disappearing is recommended if it keeps you famous,” she’d say in her pj’s, popping a NoDoz before falling back asleep again.

    No longer a skeleton, she was eating everything she wanted, and it was almost funny. “Let’s binge on donuts,” she’d suggest, pulling me by the hand. One time we ordered twenty maple donuts at Zucker’s, our stomachs rising and sinking. “Relying on anyone,” she warned me, “is dying in a tar pit.” 

    Now I’m driving Hollywood Boulevard in my sister’s car, proud of my skeleton. When I find myself wallowing in memories, I stop for donuts or drive past those tar pits. She left me her pink convertible, and with my hands on the steering wheel, I feel myself rising.

    MEG POKRASS is the author of First Law of Holes: New and Selected Stories (Dzanc Books, 2024) plus eight previous collections of flash fiction and two novellas-in-flash.

    Featured image by Cash Macanaya, courtesy of Unsplash.

  • Are You a Writer?

    Are You a Writer?

    Welcome to Flash the Court. This new venture is more about creation and curation than submission and selection. (Am I hoping to fly in the face of conformity? Yes. Am I hoping to break the mfing mold of mundanity? Yes. As in, am I trying to radically reinvent the online lit mag? Well…yes.)

    Send me your flash prose, fiction or nonfiction. Your choice. Or no choice at all. Hybrid is lovely.

    For your (very generous) $5 reading fee, I will also provide two lines of (extremely subjective) feedback: 1) what I love, and 2) what I don’t love. As with all advice, solicited or unsolicited, you can take it or leave it, as you wish—your prerogative. Either way, you’ll get your money’s worth, I guarantee.