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)
Book by February 20th!
In its third year, The March Micro Marathon will be, as usual, a prompt-a-day whirlwind for 24 days. You’ll exchange drafts of micro fiction, non-fiction, and prose poetry in small groups and gather for a series of online events (all recorded for participants unable to attend live). We’ll finish with 3 competitions, and participants who are not already in SmokeLong Fitness will be invited to workshop with SmokeLong Fitness until the end of April!
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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
Brandon McNeice is a Philadelphia-based writer and educator. His essays, stories, and poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Commonweal, Plough, Hunger Mountain, The Philadelphia Citizen, SmokeLong Quarterly, Flash Frog, ONE ART, and other journals. He writes about the daily negotiations by which people seek dignity, faith, and decency inside systems that are anything but simple.
