what the devil is a sentence tree baba asks so i show her the diagram the words the branches give me a sentence i’ll show you and she says today’s the fortieth are you coming and i write it out noun verb determiner noun without answering her and she shakes her head what nonsense you young people you can’t tend to a sentence make it grow and i’m not in the mood it’s finals week i gotta pass can’t lose...
Let’s agree that it was an accident, what happened when the tourist interrupted us choosing our king. All 12 of us boys were climbing on each other’s shoulders, turning our forearms into lances, charging at each other, crumpling at impact. Pine boughs buckled under the weight of the season’s last snow. The ground was so hard that when one of us fell it sounded like we were splitting the earth. Of course, when the tourist strolled into the clearing, his...
Do you have a favorite, Walter? You won’t believe me, but there used to be a sculpin in this tank that would suck the rings right off people’s fingers. They’d chase him down, but he’d always have his hidey-hole. Sometimes they’d get them back, but sometimes he hid those rings too well for anybody to find. They talked about putting that fish down. Or picking him up, I suppose, which is what you do with an unruly fish—you lift him...
Everything is as it was. The couch with the waterfall back and pleated arms, still fraying and peeling in the same places. Progression is sameness, sameness is progression, just look with one eye closed, and then the other. Open the other. We’re lying on it, sixteen years before this, Akuba on her back with her eyes shut, on her back with her mouth clamped shut, but I am patient. I say, do you remember that episode, what they were doing,...
I was coming down from an acid trip when I found out my best friend had her first child. Outside of a club at six in the morning, I saw her husband’s texts and photos, a red alien wrapped in a blue-striped hospital blanket. They said I could come. The cab ride from Bushwick to Morningside was the longest drive I’d taken in years. My friends were unfazed when I arrived in my platform boots and mesh muscle tee. They...
SmokeLong Quarterly has been dedicated to publishing the best flash narratives since 2003.
December 2025
I have so much to tell you. Issue 90 is a double issue with 17 pieces of flash brilliance. Thank you to everyone who lent a hand in getting this issue done. To the submissions editors, Circuit Trainers from SmokeLong Fitness, the creative writing classes and their instructors who read the submissions queue, thank you… Continue reading New Front (continue reading)
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In September 2022 SmokeLong launched a workshop environment/community christened SmokeLong Fitness. This community workshop is happening right now on our dedicated workshop site. If you choose to join us, you will work in a small group of around 15-20 participants to give and receive feedback on flash narratives—one new writing task each week.
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Flash writers approach the page–both drafting and editing–differently from writers of longer narrative forms. If you’re new to flash, you can now view the recorded version of “Elements of Flash” with Christopher Allen, the publisher and EIC of SmokeLong Quarterly. This 45-minute version of the workshop–without breakout rooms and timed writing slots–covers foundational aspects of… Continue reading Elements of Flash
CJ Scruton is a trans writer who splits their time between the Midwest and the East Coast. Their work has previously appeared in The Cincinnati Review, Pleiades, The Journal, and other publications, and their debut poetry collection, Suite for Hallucinated Voices, is forthcoming from Half Mystic Press in 2026.
