Judy Blume prepared me for first periods and first loves—not these rising muddy waters filling the streets like an open mouth beneath the sepia-tone sky tinged gray like food that's rotted before you can swallow. I reread Summer Sisters every year. Every summer since my mother brought home the book-on-tape from the library thinking it was another classic YA Judy Blume about a girl on the precipice of teenagerhood. It wasn’t. And of course my mother walked in right at...
We are at the hardcore show at the punk club in Salem. It is all ages; we stand in the back. The band is spectacular and we regret forgetting earplugs. We wear black, and we have comfortable shoes. We nod to the screaming beat and we will feel this in our necks tomorrow. The band is called Gaytheist and they are absolutely monstrous. The lead singer looks like he just drove over from his accounting job – middle aged, receding...
Los Angeles is pelted by torrential rains the same week my father is admitted to the hospital with too much fluid in his legs. You cannot safely empty them slowly, explains the doctor, as they hook him up to an IV to which they add, twice daily, a diuretic to drain the liquid so it will not rise up and reach his lungs and drown him. At the same time, when I’m home from the hospital, the house intermittently releases...
We saw a man getting mauled by a tiger. The man was our father. My brother Johnny and I didn’t recognize him at first, not because of the profusion of blood, but because the man, our father, had grown a beard the way fathers do when they no longer want to be recognized. It almost worked. But the way he wrestled with the tiger, how he thrashed first one arm and then the other, made his disguise fall away. It...
The envelope in the mail from Daddy had twenty dollars in it and a sentence scribbled on a cocktail napkin that still bore the impression of his glass. He wanted another visit. It was late February. Cold. The snow on the sidewalks had been there and been there. Dirty layers marked the winter’s passing like tree rings. Me and Irene and Kevin, trekked up the hill to the bus stop in so many layers of flannel and wool that we...
SmokeLong Quarterly has been dedicated to publishing the best flash narratives since 2003.
September 2025
I have so much to tell you. We have a banger of an issue to share with you. As usual “we” are a village that spans the global flash community—so many dedicated, talented writers, editors, interviewers, reviewers, readers, and artists. Producing an issue of SmokeLong always relies on the efforts of around 60 people. As… Continue reading New Front (continue reading)
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Now in the shop
Jump in anytime! It’s free! Join the SmokeLong workshop community for a mysterious month between November and December that we’ve christened Promptember! We’ll be meeting several times a week online with write-in and open mic events at various times to suit participants around this spinning globe. And the wonderful thing about Promptember is that it’s… Continue reading Promptember Nov 8-Dec 14!
Colette Love Hilliard is a writer and English teacher from St. Louis, MO. She is the author of two blackout poetry collections—A Wonderful Catastrophe and Celestial Timpani—and her work is featured or forthcoming in HAD, SmokeLong Quarterly, The Indianapolis Review, and elsewhere. Among other things, a photo of her dog can be found at colettelh.com.
