Blog Archives - Friday Flash Fiction

Thanksgiving Haikus

30/11/2014

This series of haikus, each related to US Thanksgiving, was started by Robin Leigh Morgan.

By Robin Leigh Morgan

Thanksgiving Day’s here.
Time to feast and not overeat
Stomach ache comes next.

Family is here.
Relatives we seldom see.
Some we don’t care to.

Turkey has been stuffed.
So are we after the meal
Time for dieting

By Russell Conover

The meal was just great
But now I'm regretting it.
Darn post-food coma!

By Amy Friedman

Spoonful by spoonful

The mound of food grows smaller
My tummy expands ...

Gordon Lawrie offered a transatlantic viewpoint...

A SCOTSMAN LOOKS AT THANKSGIVING, by GORDON LAWRIE

It's St Andrew's Day
We're not eating turkey here
I think I'm relieved

In November, by Gordon Lawrie

16/11/2014

November
It seems
Is the month
When poets write most
Succinquaintly.

Happiness, by Jane Reid

16/11/2014

Flora
wags furiously
when Beulah returns
home to fix dinner
now

Mad Peter, by Eric Smith

16/11/2014

Mad
Peter viciously
Throws the librarian
Into the black van
Why?

Cinquain #4, by Janette Jorgensen

16/11/2014

Hell
broken self
colluding with past
weeping, shouting, praying, writing
hopeless

St Mary's County, by Eric Smith

16/11/2014

Who could leave St. Mary’s?
Turn his back on twin rivers
Brimming with sails
Dazzling, dancing in the sun
Rolling inexorably to
The bay?

Who could forsake softball,
Keno, bingo camaraderie
With pool-shooting, crab-picking
Pickup-driving deer slayers
Forsake the hams kale and cabbage stuffed
With holiday ceremony?

Forsake the charm of Amish farms
Rocking down rutted gravel roads
On to church or market with
Echoing hooves clopping on pavement like
Grandfather clocks gone insane inside
The rumble of buggy wheels?

Oh! St. Mary’s,
Tobacco barns’ tin roofs rusting,
Framed oak beams groaning, leaning,
Poplar planks rotting
To the sandy soil.

Fixes, by Eric Smith

16/11/2014

Sipping coffee clouded by cream
Absorbed in mindless morning prattle
Characteristic of our ilk
Alcoholics shuffle into liquor stores
Clutching exact change
Junkies writhe on roach-infested mattresses
Reaching for their works

By Jane Reid

15/11/2014

Alexy wandered down // alleyways
Always following // appetites deemed unnatural
By blind-minded bureaucrats //balking at belief
In things unseen // unthought-of
Insubstantial tales // Insight forbidden.
Though logic // limited
their lawless quest // a quandary when
vision verified:// The veins ran red
as Alexy, avaricious, fed.

Curling (Cinquain No 3) by Gordon Lawrie

14/11/2014

Curling –
A game
Invented in Scotland
But played in Canada
Fanatically

Cinquain No 2, by Gordon Lawrie

14/11/2014

Once
Two golfers
Stood in threes
Shouting "fore" but scoring
Five

Cinquain No 1, by Janette Jorgensen

14/11/2014

Alzhiemer's
clock ticks
Mom knits scarves
she wants to die
now

Anticipation Haiku, by Gordon Lawrie

14/11/2014

Friday Flash Fiction
Gives me so much amusement –
Can next week come soon?

Artistic Haiku, by Gordon Lawrie

14/11/2014

For those who struggle to get the syllables right.

Pure five-seven-five
May freely be thrown away –
Jackson Pollock would.

Haiku, by Emma Baird

14/11/2014

A blog says
Check out these pointless websites.
I do, and it makes me smile.

Cat bounce dot com
Is definitely my favourite one, though I hope
No animals were harmed.

Hapless Haiku, by Jane Reid

14/11/2014

Playing solitaire
On the computer screen
While other tasks lurk

Urgent deadlines loom
The mind wanders aimlessly
Down frivolous paths

Another day goes
Mindlessly past missed goals
Accomplishments: none

For George, On The Occasion Of His 60th Birthday, by Homer, ed. Janette Jorgensen*

6/11/2014

“You will never be
lovelier than you are now,
everything is more beautiful
because we are doomed.

The roaring seas and
many a dark range of mountains
lie between us –
We will never be here again

like that star of the waning summer
who beyond all stars rises
bathed in the ocean stream
to glitter in brilliance ... ”

*Jan assembled the above poem entirely of lines from The Iliad. In doing so, she has attracted our most famous author yet to Friday Flash Fiction

Short Vacation, by Eric Smith

5/11/2014

I live in a strange hotel
Stare at unfamiliar newsprint
Events without sequel or prologue
Speak little
Drink too much in the lounge
Walk untried streets
Under a Western sun
Buy an airplane
Ticket home with a movie

Backyard Haiku, by Janette Jorgensen

5/11/2014

neighbour's scattered food -
rooftop invitation for
an audacious rat

“the space is too small -
seagulls never land here,” oops
a defiant gull swoops

the crimson bird's song
pierces an evergreen hedge -
startles, rising high

lush green memories
hidden in pale, spring colours -
suppers in night air

transposed mirror rests
gently against the maple -
captures mystery

The Vermonter In October, by Janette Jorgensen

5/11/2014

the trees hesitate, blur
as if the train were a starship leaping into hyperspace

and I sympathize with the painterly fascination
for luminosity, I glimpse the space that inhabits solids

as light-infused pigments run together
in finger-painted finger-streaked impressions of pumpkin and acorn squash

dizzy, I turn away from the strata of glowing hues, earthy browns;
there is too much to see

Sheryl, by Eric Smith

3/11/2014

Grieving her father’s violent ride
Down the silent shaft
Sheryl’s tilted sad career
Pours from never-empty bottles
Sheryl feels the worlds collide
As when her mother dropped her
She hammers her twisted other self
Bloody with raging young woman fist

Québecois Grandma, by Gordon Lawrie

3/11/2014

A poet who came from Québec
Had a grandchild who left her a wreck –
She knew that release
Lay in bottled-up peace
But should it be brut or demi-sec?