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SmokeLong Quarterly

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Chancing

Story by Utahna Faith September 15, 2006

Her blueberry eyes and lemon hair made her look like she should be playing a harp on a big hunk of cotton. I could tweak hard on her, man, if I had to be away from her. If I could even get a chance to get next to her to start.

I know how it’d all end up, though. The cops outside, a teardrop shimmying its way down her ripe peach cheek, her fine ass sitting on some peely-painted staircase, and me jag-eyed and sweating into my A-shirt, throat scraped out from non-filters and high-octane cussing. Yeah, I know I could be different with her, and then I know I wouldn’t.

She looks me over, and I sprout wings and feel my own halo.

One foot in front of the other. Even an evil fuck like me gets to try.

About the Author

Utahna Faith’s writing appears in journals including New Orleans Review and Night Train, and in anthologies including Flash Fiction Forward and French Quarter Fiction. She is editor of Wild Strawberries: a journal of flash fiction and prose poetry, and is co-editor of 3:AM Magazine. Utahna lives in Austin, Texas, with her husband and son.

This story appeared in Issue Fourteen of SmokeLong Quarterly.
SmokeLong Quarterly Issue Fourteen
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The SmokeLong Grand Micro Contest

Deadline November 15th!

The SmokeLong Grand Micro Contest (The Mikey) is now an annual competition celebrating and compensating the best micro fiction and nonfiction online.

The grand prize winner of The Mikey is automatically nominated for Best Small Fictions and any other prize we deem appropriate. In addition, we will pay the grand prize winner $1000. Second place: $500. Third place $300. Finalists: $100. All finalists and placers will be published in the December ’25 issue of SmokeLong.

Previously published as well as previously unpublished work will be considered.