Category: Nonfiction

“Cordyceps,” a flash essay by Sher Ting

Did you know cordyceps colonizes the bodies of carpenter ants, chemically hypnotizing them to ascend to the highest point in the environment before releasing a mushroom cloud of spores? I have been told a hundred useless facts, with bread and a butter knife on the train to Oslo. The man next to me, knotted in…
“Hourglass, Hourglass,” an essay by Loie Rawding from Vol. 9

12:11 a.m.We lost power, just as my body was turning to stone and sinking into the wet concrete of Sunday sleep. The whole house. The street. From here to Broadway there was no light, no heat, only a failing sense of time. The missing spark of the water heater, the lung collapse of my humidifier,…
From Vol. 9: “Dear Editor Who Sent Me a Rejection Letter on Christmas, or Essay That Ends in a Fugue” by Sean Thomas Dougherty

At first I was like for real, man. Really? But then I immediately thought of my coworker Wayne, whose wife died a few years ago near Christmas, and what dismal days the holidays are for him, each colored light blinking on every house a stop light for this life, a demarcation, a calling back to…
Bards & Brews Reader, a 2016-17 anthology of series performers

BNB logo designed by Emily Weddle Table of Contents FICTION “Shangri La Dee Da” Dan Mancilla “Bigfoot’s Overcoat” Matthew Fogarty NONFICTION “Staff Meeting” “Rescue” “Scorpio, Born in the Year of the Cock” “Go, Jim Dandy” Ginny MacDonald Broadside Excerpt from “Field Notes” Josh MacIvor-Andersen POETRY “How to Skin a Rabbit” “Assembly Instructions for…
Flash Essay: “Pervert” by L Scully

I’ve been a pervert for Many Years he says, smiling at us in the backseat. He tells us his wife is with child and that’s why we had to stop for bananas. He wears a blue polyester polo and porn sunglasses to give us a ride. When we get to the sex party it’s a…
Flash Essay: “Land of Promise. Land of Opportunity. Land of Heroes. Land of Greatness” by Ron Burch

Land of Promise. Land of Opportunity. Land of Heroes. Land of Greatness. Land of Freedom. Land of Landowners. Land of Religion. Land of Justice. Land of White Supremacy. Land of Racism. Land of Lies. Land of Intolerance. Land of Theft. Land of Law and Order. Land of Slavery. Land of Nationalism. Land of KKK. Land…
Essay: “You’re Not Dead” by Reverie Koniecki

Don’t you think it’s creepy that your name is written there and you’re not dead? I ask. Why do you say that? my mother responds. I guess I’m just not ready to die, I say. We are looking down at my sister’s new gravestone. It is a rectangle with her name, birthdate, and of course…
Flash Nonfiction: “Cancer is missing” by L Scully

I You meet them when they get off the metro. You can’t tell who they are because you’ve only seen photos of them online, but the one with the mullet and 80s windbreaker comes up to you easily enough. They look better online. They’re standing with a man and speaking in your not-quite second language…
Essay: “Mohammed and Me” by Mandy Shunnarah

Our eyes met in the rearview mirror and he looked at me appraisingly. “You look Middle Eastern.” This would have been odd coming from anyone else, but my Lyft driver who’d just picked me up from a watch party for the 2018 midterm elections—with his keffiyeh scarf draped over the passenger seat headrest and his…