Quickly – Issue 1

Flash pieces are often my favorite to read (and write), so when I came upon this brand new magazine, I simply had to review it (after delightedly sharing it with my fellow flash fiction lovers). Quickly publishes pieces unbound by genre or form, so long as they can say what they need to say in 703 words or fewer.

Flash pieces are often my favorite to read (and write), so when I came upon this brand new magazine, I simply had to review it (after delightedly sharing it with my fellow flash fiction lovers). Quickly publishes pieces unbound by genre or form, so long as they can say what they need to say in 703 words or fewer.

“The Neighborhood Psycho Dreams of Love” by Molly Fuller opens up the issue—a good move on the editors’ part. It invites you into the mind of this “neighborhood psycho” who watches “you,” a woman in the neighborhood. The narrator writes:

I want to bury you in my yard, under the Japanese maple; your crimson lipstick matches the fiery red of the leaves in the fall. I would plant flowers in your ribcage each spring to match your bountiful heart. I would rub your left, middle finger, knucklebone all day long, like a worry stone to ease my fears.

The images are just creepy enough to make me unsettled and delighted at the same time.

Brian R. Young’s “Truth,” is a short poem about a Macaw and how her colors make her stand out, “not like most / abstractions—ugly inside— // but bits of hollow bone hung / like Christmas lights with veins.” Something about those lines churns my stomach—in a way I like.

Bob Kuzinger’s piece unwraps the lie of an unfaithful wife, or perhaps a girlfriend: “Never a suspicious man. Ever. No. Except since you lied. You only set one on fire you said, but don’t you see? Can’t you feel the heat? It’s still burning. Now I am all of that, and that’s your fault.”

And it is worth sharing a rather large chunk from Mahalia Shoup’s “Disappearing”:

On Sundays, you genuflect, your knees clad with religiously calloused caps, cirrus clouds of dead skin and the chanting echoes in empty cathedrals corroborating the air in a kind of put-on generosity as soiled fingernails by the corner call the light for red and beg the yellow to hasten it to a stop. To a stop. Stopping constantly in gas stations, the fueled pace of impatience leading to seventy-five miles of blinking striations, of movements, of shifting gesticulations as the smoothie spills on the carpet next to the graphic novels, the dog-eared textbooks, the genuine hankering for the fifth scale on the parallel lines of music.

I dare say that Quickly is well on its way to a great magazine. I’m definitely keeping a tab on it; you should too. It’s the perfect size to read on the go, at the bus stop, on your lunch break, or whenever you have a few minutes.
[quickly.ws]