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Literary

Short Reads-Madeline Anthes, Kendra Fortmeyer & Kim Addonizio

short reads by anthes, formeyer, and addonizio

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We hope you enjoyed our first selection of short reads.

This week, we’re sharing three new pieces, each that we’ve read over and over for their rawness and their deep emotional pull. Anytime people ask us what to read, they generally mean books; however, we always make sure to let them know about flash pieces.

There are so many wonderful, brilliant pieces that often go unnoticed. Usually, this is because they don’t gain much attention in the mainstream. Nonetheless, we think so many of these lesser known pieces should be read by more people.

The selection below contains more of our absolute favourites.

We hope you enjoy them as much as we do.

short reads by anthes, formeyer, and addonizio

Grab yourself a matcha latte and settle in to read these wonderful short reads.

Drop us a comment below with your thoughts.

Two Flash & One Poem – Our Selection of Riveting Reads

“The ghost that haunts my house comes home drunk on Thursday nights. Every Friday morning, she sits at the edge of my bed and tells me she’ll never do it again. But every Thursday night she paints her lips in my mirror and curls her hair around my barrel iron and tells me not to worry.”

Madeline Anthes
  • Operating Instructions for Your Broken Heart,” by Kendra Fortmeyer (not specified as creative nonfiction, but it reads as this genre so we’re included it here-either way, it’s a great read that plays with form)

“These are the things you may not do:

  1. You may not hide in or under your bed without speaking for weeks, time stretching cobweb-damp as the bright world rushes by outside.
  2. You may not be unseemly in public….

You may:

  1. Cry, either
    • a. yourself to sleep
    • b. on the phone to your mother.
  2. You may rate every flavor of Ben & Jerry’s, for Science, or….”

Kendra Fortmeyer

“If you ever woke in your dress at 4am ever
closed your legs to someone you loved opened
them for someone you didn’t….”

Kim Addonizio

Which one of these is your favourite? Let us know in the comments below.

-Isabel & Marilyn

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