Policy Of Truth

At age 16, Brenda promised she would only tell the truth. She had always detested lies, even little white ones, and felt sick when forced to feign compliments. Even worse, when she found out she'd been lied to after the fact, she especially hated being told it was out of a desire to save her feelings. Sounded more like an excuse to avoid a hard conversation.

Brenda found honesty liberating in many ways, including the shedding of former friendships. But the best part had to be how much she enjoyed justifying her innate cruelty by her commitment to total veracity.

Dragonfly And Crow

We—who were left by the fire after the boss stood on the flame's waving edge, wearing his black suit and immaculate boots, to tell the dragonfly and the crow that had bedeviled his every moment since the fire's first spark that he had found a solution and would soon be free of their cruelty, that he, the boss, would soon pull off their wings and grind them into dust, and then turned, the boss, and ran into the flames—joined our hands before spreading blankets on scorched grass, opening bottles of cold beer, and sharing figs fatter than those in eternity.

From Guest Contributor John Riley

John is a former teacher who works in educational publishing. He has published fiction and poetry in Smokelong Quarterly, Mojave River Review, Ekphrastic Review, Connotation Press, Banyan Review, Better Than Starbucks, and many other journals and anthologies. EXOT Press will publish a book of his 100-word prose poems in 2022.