Flash fiction for contemporary multitaskers with short attention spans
South African flash fiction queen, Liesl Jobson, turned me on to the medium. Here is what she says about flash:
As haiku is to poetry, so flash fiction is to the short story: condensed, tight, tiny. Flash fiction has been fostered by internet technology, where a computer screen enables one to read some 400 words at a time without scrolling down or clicking away.
My first flash piece was published in the web based journal Flashquake in their winter of 2005/2006.
Digger
He digs a hole:
I am of the earth, I understand its substance. In dreams I have a pebble in my mouth; a stone lies under my head. I know the way in: my muscles drive into the substratum; sunlight spills in to fill the gap. Again and again, stave and spill, widening the breach. The rhythm of labourers, the heart, of sex and drums. I could fit in there now, I could curl up in the dusty cup and let them bury me, the sods jarring my jelly flesh, soil sifting into cavities. That is how the wives of great men used to die, sealed into tombs with the sacred corpse, their breath stopped by the rising earth.
