Flash the Court

Tag: Fragmentation

  • “Roll Call” by Barbara Krasner

    “Roll Call” by Barbara Krasner

    “Roll Call” by Barbara Krasner is a an ekphrastic flash fiction that reimagines agency and justice in a World War II-era Japanese American internment camp. With haunting imagery and fragmented language, Krasner captures the moment depicted in Hibi’s 1945 painting: the fear, the intimacy, the freezing frostbite, and finally, hopefully, the freedom restored.  —Court Harler

    After Coyotes Came Out of the Desert by Matsusaburo George Hibi (US, b. Japan), 1945

    William had just been following orders. Let the coyotes out of the pen, his commandant had demanded. Let them roam around the barracks. Let them howl. Frighten the inmates. So when roll call came, no one would leave, giving the commandant the excuse to punish them. As if standing in several feet of snow, feeling the pricking sensation of pins and needles at the onset of frostbite, wasn’t punishment enough for the prisoners.

    The signal came to sound roll call. No shuffling feet. No slamming doors. No talking. Except for one man, who took his place in the roll call. Alone. Bare feet.

    The coyotes gathered around him. He put out his arm, folded down his middle and ring fingers. Pointed the index and pinky at the animals. They ceased howling and approached him as if they were Labradors. He bent down and petted them, mumbling something in his native language, nothing that William could understand. One coyote licked the man’s face.

    The commandant strode into the square, barking orders at William and the man. The man stood erect, pointed at the commandant, resplendent in his uniform adorned with many medals. The man shouted a single word. The coyotes ran at the commandant. William turned away at first. Then he took off his own coat, draped it over the man’s shoulders, and escorted him back to his barracks. The sentinels could clean up the mess.

    BARBARA KRASNER is the author of three poetry chapbooks, including an ekphrastic collection, Poems of the Winter Palace (Bottlecap Press, 2025); as well as the full-length ekphrastic poetry collection, The Night Watch (Kelsay Books, 2025). Her work has also been featured in more than seventy literary journals. She lives and teaches in New Jersey.

    Featured image by Ricardo Gomez Angel, courtesy of Unsplash.

  • “Then Came Funboy” by Sam Berman

    “Then Came Funboy” by Sam Berman

    A little horror of a dream for Halloween is Sam Berman’s “Then Came Funboy.” But it’s not horror, exactly. And it’s not just a dream. Indeed, it’s a love story, of sorts, with no end in sight, much like the endless reverberations of a supposedly safe ship smashing again and again against the indomitable iceberg of history and lore, of breath and myth.  —Court Harler

    A dream I often have.

    Which I had again just last night.

    Is that I am on the iceberg right as the RMS Titanic approaches and becomes brilliant through the low fog. It’s moving slow but also fast. And I jump and wave. I yell. Loudly. I smash my hands together the way babies do when they build things. But. Of course––being a dream and all––the ship stays resolute. Stays coming. Keeps on me. And soon the hull is well over my head. And try as I might—and I do try, as best I dream-can to push the ship back out to a safer part of the Atlantic—my wrists just break. Just snap. Just explode, actually. Against the hull. I yelp. While the children up on the standing deck begin to hang themselves over the railing, showing me pictures on their cellphones of my body, and pictures of some family members I no longer mess with too much, and then they spit on my head, and call me a kike, and shoot Nerf guns with party blood, set on the most extreme power setting, right at me. And there are some lanterns in the dream. And screaming. And everyone’s breath looks like bulls’ breath when there’s screaming. Which is when I wake up, usually. A lot of the time. I wake up right then.

    Yeah.

    And.

    The dream I have the second most.

    My Darling.

    Is that I turn around in the bakery.

    And come back.

    And that I don’t do those, that, the, of course the thing I have already already done.

    SAM BERMAN is a short story writer living in Boise, Idaho.

    Featured image by Art Institute of Chicago, 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.