Author: Monica McHenney

Monica lives in the San Francisco Bay Area with her husband and two foster dogs. She taught parents how to raise their toddlers for twenty-five years before retiring in 2015 to write. The secret to toddlers is to make sure you get enough sleep. Monica hasn't found the secret to writing, yet, but is diligently working at it. See links to her on-line stories on the publications page.

From: Vogon Ministry of Culture

By Tom Povey CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=78506711

To: Monica Flash Fiction

RE: Poetry posts

Honorable Ms. Fiction,

It has come to our attention that you publish poetry on your Escherous blog. How absolutely! Your poems are most spiraling and uniform. Consider this an invitation, no, a summons. Reality, under threat of death appear at the Grafitete Amphitheater of Doomicile for a command (no pun intended) performative.

A Vogon ship will be at your door on the day of cerebration promptly at midnight. Bring poetry to fill many hours. Bring copies of your latest book. Do you have a latest book? Publish one.

Apologies to Douglas Adams.

Autumn Chill

Photo by Monica McHenney
The dawn light has changed
to a grey gold cousin of the blue brilliance that brightened my summer. 
Max's golden lab fur blends into the tawny tall grass. 
He looks at me. “What do you want? The works? Right.” 
He pees again, strolls to the center of the meadow lawn, and squats to do his business. 

His business is to 
please. It is the thing he does best, most naturally. Despite arthritis, 
his portly, chunky body seems to yield. Face aging white, 
he's older than I am. Seventy-seven. 
At seventy-two, cranky and arthritic, I won't age gratefully or graciously.

Follow-up Questions for a MAGA Senator Concerning a Looser Dress Code in the Capitol

Photo by Yaroslav Shuraev on Pexels.com

– Sir, you have said that your peeps respect the “building,” the Senate, and the dress code should reflect that. Care to comment on the deer horns guy? January 6? He broke in. He was convicted of felony obstruction after sitting on the Senate dais encouraging rioters.

– Let’s just say, tourists can wear what they want. It’s a free country.

– But does it show respect, sir?

– Well, within our community, far right Republicans, free to dress and act is a cultural imperative that I am not in a position to judge.

Now, excuse me while I slip into something more comfortable.

Doomsday Clock

Photo by Pixabay on Pexels.com
Sun and rain ravage her wind tossed hair,
jet black strands smooth as onyx glass.
Silken threads like kitten's fur, 
new as morning dew on grass. 

A child, yet grown, eyes intent, 
round with wonder, bright with fire. 
Her night brings monsters, malcontents 
wreaking havoc in dreamland's mire.

Ruled by demons dangerous dark,
audacious lies we can do without.
Perdition's putrid stench arises 
ignoring famine, flood and drought.

An omen for tomorrow? 
Resist the slippery slope. 
Stand together against oblivion, 
build barricades of hope.

The future waits. We can save one another.
Honor the Earth for she is our mother.

Love Changes Everything

Photo by Olia Gozha on Pexels.com

Jack came in from feeding the geese. “That golden goose, she’s laying plain old eggs.”

His mother looked up from stirring the magic bean stew. “Are you sure?”

Jack produced an egg from his basket. 

“Let’s see what’s inside.” She cracked the egg against the iron stove into a bowl. The yolk was pure gold surrounded by opals. “What about the others? Did she lay more?”

Jack nodded and pulled three more eggs from the basket. “Maybe she got with the gander.”

His mother cracked them each in turn and found rubies, emeralds and pearls. “She’s one mixed up goose.”

The Collective

Photo by Eva Bronzini on Pexels.com

She came straight from weeding her small plot of land in the community garden.

The fiery redhead marched to the podium and gaveled the meeting to order. “The first item, the only important one, is the proposal to buy a mill to grind the wheat.”

A large man barked. “No one else grows wheat.”

The crowd quacked their approval.

Her feathers ruffled, the redhead said, “You eat the bread I bake. Let’s turn the garden into a wheat field and mill our own flour.”

A catlike woman spoke. “Hannah, dear, we thought you liked baking. We don’t.”

All That Shimmers Is Not Gold

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/
Category:Nathaniel_Hawthorne

He had the touch. Austin got in on crypto early. In college, he mined instead of studying. Hey, why not; the internet was free. He didn’t graduate.

No matter, he struck it rich and moved to a penthouse in Manhattan where he lived like a king. Austin had it made until he didn’t. A whiz kid, yes; a mensch, not so much.

He only knew crypto, which meant nothing to the women he met in bars. It got old with his drinking buddies; the world moved on to other things. Drowning in data, he’d no hope of getting a date.

Bring a Smile Wherever You Go

Photo by Torsten Dettlaff on Pexels.com

A prince and a commoner competed to cadge a smile from a princess. The prize: marriage and half the kingdom. The prince claimed the right to go first. Noob mistake.

“Look at him. Sad excuse for a man.”

Cruel, not funny, the prince was struck dumb by his own vanity.

The commoner called his posse. All kinds, all sizes of butterflies cavorted around the princess, a cloud of color. Her aroused senses softened her lips.

The commoner entreated the winged creatures. “Best beauties, brush against her ears, her nose, titillate her love of wonder.” They did just that. She smiled.

Labyrinth

Photo by Soulful Pizza on Pexels.com
A locked away monster,
bloody
quiet,
has escaped from the king's central labyrinth.

In the palace drawing room, the cultured crowd,
unaware,
exclaims learnedly regarding a jacket's weave, a jeweled neckline, a nice progression on the piano.

Hoi polloi sneak a peek,
stand in awe, in silence,
until their outside skins harden; turn to pale, plastic cellophane.
They wear tight smiles like lady's spandex girdles.

In voices that strain to be heard
they shriek,
“Let me in; let me be.”

Guards secure
the entrance to the drawing room. Posted on the door: 
Screaming, Crying, Pounding Prohibited.
Inside stand painted silk screens, embroidered room dividers, all crafted at the finest,
most secretive institutions.

Screens to sublimate,
to destroy the mundane and make it sublime,
An industry to craft silk purses from sow's ears.
The sows left bleeding, scatter
pieces of themselves along the path;
find a way away from the maze.

Roads Traveled

Gretel did these interviews reluctantly. She hadn’t been a saint, far from it. She did what she had to after her stepmother kicked her and Hansel out. “We were homeless.” The reporter looked into Gretel’s eyes and seemed to reach into her soul. It was an uncomfortable moment. The reporter’s face softened. “But you… Somehow…”

“There was an older woman. When she died we made a go of the bakery. We built a home to shelter runaways.”

The woman wiped away a tear. “She was my sister. The black sheep in an old Wiccan family. She wasn’t all that kind.”