My boyfriend's ex-wife abused him. The first time he told me about it, I was giving him a ride to Salamanca, New York, so he could buy a forty-year-old dump truck. He stared out the window at the half-frozen Allegheny River and described how she'd tried to tear off his testicles. How she poured hot soup on him while he was sleeping. How she chased him down the road with her black Volkswagen Golf. He tried to assure me that...
—mummy lock laura and me in our room because ojuju-kalaba is around and ojuju-kalaba is big-big like elephant and bad-bad like devil and he only visit when daddy's food is cold or not ready yet or mummy is wearing too much lipstick like she have a secret-secret boyfriend or laura have wet her bed or i'm watching too much tv or no many people in daddy's workshop today or daddy is drunk-drunk and left a slipper in a ditch, but...
I had the house painted yellow so she would know which one it was. She’d been getting lost more these days, and I started receiving biweekly calls from Kevin at the corner store saying “Mama’s here. Come get Mama.” When I’d pick her up, she’d be eating cheese crackers and rearranging the canned soups. “Bye bye, loverboy,” she’d say as I placed a five on the counter and herded her out the front door. I don’t know who she thought...
The year you disappeared, I turned twelve. I blew a candle out in the middle of the night and Achan made me wish for normalcy. What I really wished for was something simple. I asked for a sign. After Achan went to bed, I stayed awake waiting for the valley to speak to me. A collared dove bypassed the window and flew into my palm. We looked at each other, two diurnal creatures parlaying with God. You would have called...
An insectoid girl, beach mode, tank top, white shoulders, sloping belly, slop-slopping in flip flops. Insectoid as in oversized-compound eyes, as in visible exoskeleton. “Hey ya, hey ya, how you doing? I saw you last year right? How’s your wife? How you been?” Insectoid as in scratching her side with her long leglike appendage; as in burbling, contented noises as she scratches and swivels her eyes, a low level buzzzz. Your friend B. went on extended brown rice fasts....
SmokeLong Quarterly has been dedicated to publishing the best flash narratives since 2003.
June 2023
I have so much to tell you. With five of the best stories from A SmokeLong Summer 23, Issue 81 is a bit meatier than usual. We’re thrilled to share work by Lindsey Pharr and Frances Orrok, the winners of the CNF and fiction competitions of our summerlong workshop. They will each receive $500. And… Continue reading New Front (continue reading)
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Vibha Balaji graduated from The New School with an MFA in Fiction. Her short stories are an exploration of South Indian families, mothers and daughters, and the violence of inextricable relationships. She is presently working on a novel in which stuff happens.
