Cafe Aphra: An Online Community for Writers

The catalogue of husbands has arrived and is as thick as a brick. Mum clears all the bits of homework and unopened letters off the dining room table and plonks it down. ‘We get a reduction if we order today,’ says mum in the voice she usually uses in front of other people. She only has a few twenty pound notes left in the bundle she found tucked into the arm of nana’s old chair. I chew the end of a red pen and stare at the catalogue. ‘I’ve got to go for something different Lily. Men aren’t always what they seem. Just nice. Normal, you know?’ Mum flicks through the catalogue. There is one man on each page. As the pages turn, faces run into each other like a cartoon character who has swallowed a potion. ‘Let’s go to the no frills section,’ says mum, going to the back end of the catalogue. ‘But we haven’t made any rules yet mum, you said always have rules.’ Mum looks up at the ceiling, then talks while I use my best handwriting in a notebook. ‘No beards. Kind face. Likes animals. And chil...

Going out to top up the bird seed, Liz spots Dezzy hunkered by his frozen pond. Takes her a couple of seconds to spot what’s wrong with this picture – a jump back in time. What’s the man doing there? Forgotten he sold his house? Interfering old buzzard. He could never leave anything alone, once he’d spotted a fault. Liz, you got a blocked gutter there. Liz, that back door jamming again? However much you told him not to bother, he’d wear you down in the end. March round with the appropriate tools. Every job slow and determined, the end result checked and re-checked. Funny, but Liz can remember him as a bad lad. Smashing street lights with well-aimed bits of brick. His dad was a drinker; Liz’s mum said Dezzy would go the same way. She was wrong, though. He got a job at the car plant; stuck to it. Had some pretty girlfriends, but didn’t stick with any of them. Hard to see why. Like he didn’t want to be nobody’s property. Liz would have had him. Not for keeping, necessarily: just the havin...

There is a light at the end Of the Garden; garish red and Beaming back at me, solemnly I leave the last slivers of Summer: assuming it will come Around again. The glare catches me, promises A second chance, so I follow it Past the covered limbs and cracked Plastics until, I think, a voice Rumbled deep through the serene air Dull and plain: ‘No time this is to kill You live here, you are complicit; Undo your thousand deaths and leave This desecrated space before the Wind blows in a last cash injection. No time this is, no time’ What does it mean? The light is Too close to go back now, bright, Splendid it casts its gaze on a Child covered in black paint under The tree. A dull sigh, a quick glance; The golden clock is telling me –  I have time to kill by Stephen Durkan

Happy National Flash Fiction Day 2017! Hope you've had a great day of reading your favourite super-short stories... Here are a couple of websites to check out:  http://nationalflashfictionday.co.uk and the marvellous: http://flashfloodjournal.blogspot.co.uk Well done to everyone who got their work featured! Hope you enjoy a sunny weekend of reading and writing little flashes of brilliance that dance in the light. :)

June was an unpredictable month of little storms. At three o’clock, a pale Caribbean sun came into view and the girls begged Beatrice to drive them to the sea for an afternoon dip. They missed the salty heat of coral beaches and the iridescent waves. When they arrived at the deserted beach, the ocean was a cloudy colour. Seagulls sailed in the wind that carried the pitiless odor of seaweed. The girls sighed at the brown sea, and vented to their mother. After ten minutes of lying beneath an overcast sky, everyone retreated to the car and brushed the sand off their feet. Secretly, Beatrice was glad for the rain. A change in climate was auspicious for a dry island lashed by the long rays of a mercurial sun. But the rain also consoled her. It helped her sleep. Most nights, she would toss and turn on the bed and it was only the clamor of the rain on the galvanized tin roof that could soothe her.  Tonight, she lay awake waiting. There was no need for a fan. The trade winds bl...

Your image before me has traveled through time intact, yet your eyes see me here, in my now, your future yet to be. You are speaking to me with a stare telescoping beyond eons, and I hear you, your thoughts, hopes, ideals, genius and sorrow fully blown. Reach out your hand, reach through the film that separates us, touch your barrier to  dissipate my radius, and our frontier will be inhabited and haunted all at once. by Charlotte Ozment A note on the image: This is the oldest known intentional photographic self-portrait of a person (Robert Cornelius, 1839) and the photograph that inspired this poem.

Greetings all, If you enjoy hanging out in Cafe Aphra, you may like to check out this recent interview with the current editor, Sara Roberts: Six Questions For... Writer Jim Harrington has set up this excellent blog with a series of interviews called 'Six Questions For...' with editors of various literary magazines and journals. It's a really fantastic resource, with an incredible number of magazines listed, and w ell worth following for all those of us who are interested in submitting work for publication. Thanks Jim!