On "A River So Long" by Lynn Watson (250 words) ***

Beautiful writing here, and some kind of strange idea. This is a short short that does well what short shorts often do best--convey some sort of mystery in a moment. It's that mystery that makes this more than the sum of its parts. A woman and man spend the night in a hotel room, and later that night, the woman looks out on the Mississippi River, and some kind of transformational experience ensues. The river has power, as does the story, though in both cases, one isn't sure exactly why. Read the story here at 971 Menu.

On "Naming the Giraffe" by Lynn Watson (304 words) ***

Something seems missing in this story. There's a tension, a set of events, that underlies everything after the first paragraph, but the cause of that tension is a mystery that is only hinted at as one reads further. First we learn that . . . but I won't go into the details and ruin the story for you. Each revelation is a bit like discovering a maggot in your food, each one bigger than the next. This is flash fiction that succeeds at doing what flash fiction does best--evading the story, making us curious, making us want to read and know more, and never giving it to us. Read the story here at Pindeldyboz.