Andy Shaughnessy

he/him IP ‘gator/writer. I make perfect poached eggs. Freddie is my dog. Overuses parentheses—and m dashes. 🇨🇦 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁷󠁬󠁳󠁿

[Andy Shaughnessy @ashaughn]

@griffinpoetry @AAKnopf Fantastic performances tonight. Really great show!

[Andy Shaughnessy @ashaughn]

@Beno10_MFC 8

[Off Topic Publishing @OffTopicPub]

"that's what pens are for" - by Andrew Shaughnessy - March Poetry Honourable Mention - https://t.co/N0zjeSE6I6

[Andy Shaughnessy @ashaughn]

@TLTomljanovic Thank you!

[Andy Shaughnessy @ashaughn]

@SuGaR_Babbyyy 10:48. 12 minutes to the top of the hour for the minutes hand. On fifth of an hour for the hour hand.

[Andy Shaughnessy @ashaughn]

Happy to see Face Off among this collection. Thank you @MythicPicnic and @TLTomljanovic !

[Mythic Picnic @MythicPicnic]

Feast or Famine

Mythic Micros by @DChrisBader @twitnikki @NoraNadj @norabird @NinaMD1 @jenwithwords @FinnianBurnett @DelGeo14 @sugarpigblog @TKearnes96914 @bsherm36 @ashaughn & @Victoria_BPP

Curated by T.L. Tomljanovic / @TLTomljanovic

#MythicPicnicTweetStory

===
===

In Feast or Famine, hunger takes many shapes—a crowded cafeteria, reality TV, a Travel Lodge, and memories that taste like survival. These stories wander from an 80s pizza joint to the family kitchen. Hands fold manti and crust for water pie. Between bites of nacho-flavored chips and mustard-slathered burgers, characters chase comfort in creamy green curries and borrowed recipes. In this collection, every flavour is a gamble, every meal a small act of hope. 🍽️📖

T.L. Tomljanovic

===
===

Pizza Barn

by D. Christopher Bader / @DChrisBader
.

The bell over the door jingles, same as in 1981 when the hand-painted sign went up, its green letters now sun-faded. It’s a quiet afternoon in downtown Greenwood, less bustling than before. Inside, the air hums with garlic, oregano, and warm dough. Dad’s in the kitchen, forearms dusted white, knuckles deep in a mound. He rolls, folds, turns it—patient, certain. Folks said it wouldn’t last. “Pizza? Here?” He’d smiled, having sunk his last dollar into an oven that burned hotter than Arkansas in July. The door jingles again. A kid, maybe ten, clutches crumpled bills and squints at the menu. “Y’all got the one with pepperoni that curls up?” Dad wipes his hands. “Crispy-cup kind. Best kind.” The kid grins. “Mama says this place was here when she was my age.” Dad pauses. In his mind, the restaurant rewinds: Arcade cabinets—Galaga, Pac-Man—buzzing with quarters and sugar-high kids. Pool table, felt torn, claimed by uncles swearing they’re “one shot away.” His younger self at the counter, hair thicker, worries louder, eyeing the door for tomorrow’s crowd. He slides the pie in. Forty-five years. Same recipe. Same hands. The crust snaps under the cutter. He boxes it, hands over the warm weight. “Tell your mama,” he says, “we’re still here.”
.

D. Christopher Bader writes Western noir and small-town mysteries with a crooked grin and a soft spot for eccentric weirdos.

===
===

There under the mother of all mango trees

by Elisa Dominique Rivera / @twitnikki
.

At my grandparents’ farm, I would tell them. The one I used to climb even though red bull ants would beat me to the clusters of the sweet, golden fruits ready for the taking. There were always hundreds of them spraying us of their luscious, saccharine scent like a curtain dancing to the breeze and sway of the trees.

Under the mother of all mango trees whose leaves create dancing shadows and blow light balm on anyone sitting under its umbrella, we would gather.

Under the mother of all mango trees a wooden papag would be standing. My Atang built it with his own hands from one of the Narra trees. On it would be banana leaves laid flat like placemats, but there’d be no plates because we’d eat straight from the leaves. On them would be freshly grilled pork belly, large orange prawns, stuffed milkfish with reds and greens peeping out from its centre; marinated chicken bbq, and in the middle, fluffy clouds of rice.

Under the mother of all mango trees the whole family would be sharing the food. They’d be eating with clean hands and raucous banter. The younger ones would dart in between us adults asking for subo with their mouths open. We would feed them without missing the beat of the chuckling from an inside joke or latest tsismis.

Under the mother of all mango trees I’d quietly mention the prognosis. There’d be sudden silences and impromptu mango-picking. They’d peel the skin of the fruit, holding it in front of my mouth to feed me. There’d be rostered plans on who’d care for me, and who’d take me to the hospital. There’d be a combination of hope and despair mixed in with the sweet air.

This is how it would be.
.

Elisa Dominique Rivera is a Filipina living in Boonwurrung Country, Australia still craving for mangoes. Her big writing flex is being called a writer by her daughters. She's also published some stories.

===
===

How to make manti

by Nora Nadjarian / @NoraNadj
.

i
Knead the dough on a white-dusted formica kitchen table. Add water to the thirst, keep adding, inhale a puff of flour. Grandma pushes a loose hair up with her wrist and a bit of white rests on her brow. All ‘hands’ in these instructions. All hands for punching hunger, which lingers. ‘Make the perfect dough, be good humans, get good jobs, don’t go hungry like we did.’

ii
Chop up the onion and if it makes you cry, let it. Mix it with the minced beef in a bowl, get your hands as mincy and oniony as you can. There’s always a fork on the table to makes ridges on the mince. Turn on the oven, set it to 150.

iii
Cut the sheet of dough into thin squares. They won't be the same size, or perfect squares. There’s nothing perfect. Even the kitchen table wobbles. Place a little meat in each square, fold it in half, press opposite sides together. Seal each little dumpling boat so tight nothing can get in: no seawater, no doubt. ‘Let them survive, the way we did.’

iv
Grease the round baking tray with white, thick-as-paint Spry vegetable shortening. Place the dumplings in a circle going in, like embroidery. Soon, they sizzle golden in the oven. Soon, the plump dumplings are topped with yoghurt, sprinkled with burgundy sumac. Our mouths water. Grandma talks about waves crashing, boats rocking, history repeating itself.
.

Nora Nadjarian’s stories have appeared in numerous journals including Centaur, Fractured Lit and CRAFT. Her work was chosen for Wigleaf‘s Top 50 Very Short Fictions (selected by Kathy Fish, 2022). She placed third in the Welkin Writing Prize in 2025.

===
===

How to Speedrun an Eating Disorder

by Nora Rawn / @norabird
.

First watch a lot of cooking videos and never cook. Go to dinner and order nothing, saying you already ate. Eat one apple slowly, over hours. Rotate the apple and eat it in a pattern of tiny nibbles, as if you were a very patient mouse. For lunch, try one container of snap peas: green, fresh, waxy. Ride the stationary bike for hours. Fit in crunches in bizarre places, on the floor. It’s not even about your body, except insofar as you are divorcing yourself from the realm of the physical. Eventually you may find your hip bones, though your face looks strange and drawn. Then find yourself hunched over a chicken carcass late one night in the kitchen, or another night, eating chili with your hands from the pot on the stove, red kidney beans, pink innards left to cool before refrigeration. Your body resurrects its demands, its needs, you can’t tell it no, you begin stealing food, you have shameful habits, you write post it notes, DO NOT BINGE, DO NOT OVEREAT, they fail, you are on the stationary bike again, your body is overfull, you have no control. Your hip bones recede, flesh reclaims them, your body asserts itself, who did you think you were to deny it? This takes years, flash flood receding slowly, puddles remain, you fall in the puddles, you are muddy of body and soul.
.

Nora Rawn works in publishing subrights and lives in Brooklyn. She has pieces published or forthcoming in Dodo Eraser, Dreck Lit, Be About It Press, Burning House, Electric Pink, Burial Magazine, Some Words, and Michigan City Review of Books.

===
===

Simmered

by Jenny Wong / @jenwithwords
.

When Hana moved out, she took nothing from her mother's kitchen. No scratched aluminum pots with stuttering lids. No clattering dinnerware. No metal utensils that shoveled and scraped up foods that held uncertainty. These were the sounds of being sick as a child. Back then, her meals were bare out of necessity, deprived of colorful seasonings and the warmth of spice, unable to be loved, cautiously choked down as she and her mother waited to see what would trigger a reaction and what new things her body would reject.

Despite all that, she did have one favorite meal. A splash of water, a few cloves of crushed garlic, and cubes of beef all simmered together for hours. A few drops of soy sauce came after the beef was done, soaking into the tender meat. A gentle seasoning. Just enough to cover the underlying taste of a mother's grief. The chop of the kitchen knife never quite hid the heaviness of her mother’s exhales. There were so few things she could cook for her child to enjoy. Even the sharpest knives grew worn after cutting the same ingredients over and over.

But nothing is permanent. And not all illnesses stay in a body forever.

Hana eventually got her own pot. It was tall and stainless steel with a shiny lid that whistled steam out the sides and never boiled over as it concocted creamy green curries, Creole-red jambalayas, and dill-garnished lohikeitto. She rarely thought of her childhood dishes. But sometimes, when she was alone and had no one to feed but herself, or on the anniversary of her mother’s passing, Hana would cube up some beef and mince some garlic while a bottle of soy sauce waited on the counter, the only witness to the emptiness that ached in her stomach.
.

Jenny Wong is a writer, traveler, and occasional business analyst. She is the author of “Shiftings & Other Coordinates of Disorder” (Pinhole Poetry, 2024). She resides in Canada near the Rocky Mountains. Find her on X, Bluesky, Instagram, and YouTube @jenwithwords.

===
===

Once We Were Whole

by Nina Miller / @NinaMD1
.

Troy and I sat at the bar watching men feverishly working pork into balls. I bit my tongue before speaking of men and their meat. It’s not something we joked about anymore, but at least our appetites were unchanged.

Our friendship had become a tepid trickle of holiday wishes and birthday greetings. From feast to famine, he’d say, though never said he missed my memes, my wry commentary, or my not-so-subtle innuendo. He was busy with his growing family. It was best to fade away rather than linger past my expiration date.

“You happy?” I asked, just as they brought stacked bamboo steamers filled with soup dumplings.

“Now I am!” said Troy, joy lighting his eyes.

“Here, let me.” I took his cup and picked up the delicate parcel. It slid off the cabbage leaf without tearing.

“Thanks. Sucks when they break apart,” he said, looking at me. The old pang of affection resurfaced. Troy pierced it with his chopstick, dribbled sauce into the hole he’d made, and brought it to his lips. Sipping before he swallowed it whole. Working on the dumpling made Troy’s cheeks puff out. He saw me watching and winked.

“You happy?” I asked again, not sure what I wanted to hear.

I was ravenous for the friendship we once had. I popped a dumpling into my mouth, teeth piercing it to drown hunger with hot soup. He grinned. His boyish charm shone through middle-aged wrinkles. Troy’s answer stuffed my ears with his news.

Later, I placed a sliver of ginger on my tongue. Its spicy coolness radiated, soothed the burn of both the soup and Troy’s life without me in it.

We’d once been everything to each other. Failing that, I’d chosen nothing. A famine that had taken its toll… on me.

As I took another dumpling, it broke, soup trickling beneath cabbage leaves. I cursed, and Troy let out a chuckle. I dipped the broken dumpling into the sauce, realizing that, though it may not be the experience I wanted, there was still something to savor, something to enjoy.
.

Nina Miller is an Indian-American physician, epee fencer, and creative. Find her @NinaMD1 and ninamiller . bsky . social or wherever good stories are found. Read more at ninamillerwrites . com

===
===

Leave it for the Buzzards

by Finnian Burnett / @FinnianBurnett
.

There’s a dead dear in the field across from our house. I pass it on my daily walk and think about who to call, if anyone.

The buzzards will take care of it, probably. That’s what my wife will say when I come home.

In the meantime, it lies on the ground, one brown eye staring into space and I can’t stop looking at it, can’t stop wondering if was terrified in its final moments.

My therapist tells me to look for the good in the world. Retraining my brain, she calls it.

I remember the last time I saw a live deer, craning a neck toward the sparse greenery in the tree in our yard. I’d told my wife I wanted to throw it some apples, and she told me animals who become acclimated to humans are more likely to die than those who know how to forage in the wild.

But there’s nothing to forage, I said. They’re already starving.

The deer is still there the next day. I can hear buzzards, and I shade my eyes, watching them circle high above, black wings unfolding in the air currents.

The deer looks sad, I think, and though I hear my therapist telling me not to anthropomorphize everything, I want to touch it, to offer some comfort.

Something stops me. Fear of dead things, maybe. I’m afraid of the deer’s body, the crusted blood in the corner of its eye. Or my sudden understanding that it could be me lying in that field, waiting for the buzzards.

Because if the deer run out of leaves and water what’s going to be left for me?

I kneel beside it and close its one staring eye.

I’m sorry, I whisper and stand, wiping dirt from my jeans. I want to bury the deer, hide it from predators, but I leave, turning my back on it.

Something in me urges me to look back, to say a final goodbye, but I don’t.

The buzzards won’t die hungry tonight, I tell my wife when I get home.
.

excerpt from new novella-in-flash “Life in Dead Trees”

Finnian Burnett writes tiny stories and patchworks them into long-form novellas. The latest, Redshirts Sometimes Survive, is available through Off Topic Publishing.

===
===

Emotional Famine

by Delphine Gauthier-Georgakopoulos / @DelGeo14
.

Jane craves to complain and scream and growl and be (heard). But her social media ‘friends’ are all colleagues, bosses, customers, suppliers, ‘whateverers’ expecting her to smile, nod her not-just-a-pretty-face to their mansplaining, to be normal. Yet efficient.

She scrolls through her contacts, kicks the kitchen counter, and shrieks in pain. She has no one, has nowhere to turn to except her fridge. So she shouts at cherry tomatoes, barks at courgettes, slaps lettuce, and eats cheese. And jerkins.

Jane reads her father’s email again—a reminder for her to call her mother on her name day. She moans and opens the kitchen cupboard, grabs the funky, ridiculously priced nuts covered with honey she’d kept for a special occasion. ‘Happy name-day, Mummy’. She sucks the artificial sweetness, crunches the real anger, and swallows the overall bitterness.

Then she eats radishes for good measure, and cries.

An old rum bottle hides at the back of the cupboard, behind the chickpeas Jane doesn’t remember buying or wanting to cook. Rum, her mother’s alcohol of choice for cakes and pancakes and ‘grog’. Rum, warm milk, honey, thyme—the ultimate remedy for cold and flu or hyper, over-excited kids wanting to stay up late. ‘Have some grog and go to sleep.’

But her mother would deny it now, just like her father will deny sending that email.

Jane grabs a bag of crisps and salts her way through sadness, and grills some cheese to ease her growing bellyache as she books a train ticket to her hometown. To her parents.

Daughter’s guilt is eating at her and making her hungry simultaneously, so she devours all the biscuits and chocolate she can find, and drinks all the rum—but without the milk. Or the honey. Or the thyme.

Because she’s not ill, just sick of it.

Because he’s getting old, and the flowers on her mother’s tomb are as dead as she is.

Because her father’s denial is called dementia, and Jane’s is called bulimia.
.

Delphine Gauthier-Georgakopoulos is a Breton writer, Pushcart Prize nominee, co-founder of The Pride Roars and the EIC of Raw Lit. Her debut historical novel, Laundry Day, was a Novel Fair runner-up.

===
===

In the Cafeteria

by Megan Hanlon / @sugarpigblog
.

I remember free breakfasts—a piece of golden toast topped with a puffy American cheese slice just beginning to soften, the yawning cafeteria dotted with a few kids like me.

I remember the stubby half-pint carton of chocolate milk—waxy white cardboard printed with brown ink—and struggling to open it, reluctant as it was to show what it held inside.

I remember free lunches—rectangular pizzas topped with congealing mozzarella cheese, served alongside bright yellow corn, and a purple push-up popsicle that hid until it was squeezed into life.

I remember being nervous to tell the stern hair-netted cafeteria woman "mayonnaise" or "mustard" when it came my turn to get a hamburger, so I rehearsed the two syllables as I waited in line, saying it over and over to myself—mustardmustardmustard—until the word didn't make sense anymore.

I remember a hollowness inside me that had nothing to do with food.

I remember other kids jostling around the cash-only snack bar, eating a paper boat of fries and a Dr Pepper for lunch, or eating a huge sour pickle and a bag of vinegar and salt chips for lunch, and wondering how they weren't left hungry.

I remember wondering what they hungered for—at home, at school, in crowded cafeterias where everyone was alone on the inside.
.

Megan Hanlon has a silly little writing habit. Her words have appeared in more than two dozen literary magazines. She is currently working on a memoir about the meaning of home.

===
===

The Next Kind Thing

by Thomas Kearnes / @TKearnes96914
.

“You’ve got to believe in something that will work.
I don’t, but you have got to.” -Amy Hempel

We’re walking through Montrose. We stop at a Kroger and he buys some sort of wrap. We perch outside the store while he eats. He’s never more alive than when he talks about food. He picks up the cigarette butt I flick on the concrete. My own Jiminy Cricket. I have no soul, but perhaps he will lend me his. Less than an hour later, we stop at a drug store and he buys nacho-flavored chips. While we walk, I joke about my lifelong distrust of flavored chips. Actually, I want to cry. Pardon me while I’m unladylike, he says, and dumps all the crumbs in the bag into his mouth. He’ll be fat when he’s older. I love him anyway. He tells me food is how he scratches the itch, the itch he can’t permit the dope to satisfy. It’s better than being strung out, he insists. I wonder if this is true. I need this to be true. But desire leads to disappointment—always. I want to tell him he’s still hurting himself. With him, there’s so much I almost say.
.

originally published in JMWW Journal

Thomas Kearnes bills himself as the QueerJudas of Swamp City, TX. He hopes to find a home or representation for his 12-story collection Rehab Redux! He went cold turkey the moment that draft printed

===
===

The Practical One

by Beth Sherman / @bsherm36
.

Great-aunt Charlotte baked water pie the night the gentleman came to dine. A Depression-era dessert, with water substituting for pricy milk or eggs. Her specialty. Charlotte had three sisters: Eva, the beauty; Mary, the brain; Abigail, the coquette. The gentleman married Eva, though reportedly he only had eyes for Charlotte, flirting with her as the moon drooped low in the sky. Each year, at her sister’s anniversary party, she brought water pie, which always tasted of sugar and home. Simply exquisite, the gentleman said, offering Charlotte his elbow, his handkerchief, his heart. Aunt Eva busied herself with the children, always underfoot, and the roast, always undercooked. She fussed over Charlotte, offering to set her up with one of her husband’s golfing buddies or even the gasman. But Charlotte demurred, smiling, insisting she was a happy spinster. Everyone aged poorly. We noticed in the photographs how Abigail’s spine curved, the sag in Mary’s cheeks. Eva lost her looks the way we’d misplace an odd sock in the dryer, certain it had been there before. Charlotte’s hair turned white. She worked in the library, spent summers in Greece. The gentleman grew portly. When Eva died, we were sure he’d begin courting Charlotte. But he took up with an audiologist half his age. Poor Charlotte, we said. Deserted by love. Destined to end her days alone. Each Sunday afternoon, she fed her famous water pie to the seagulls on the boardwalk. We can still see her face–joyful, laughing, tipped toward the sun.
.

Beth Sherman’s novella-in-flash, How to Get There from Here, will be published by Ad Hoc Fiction in July. She is also the author of five mystery novels.

===
===

Face-off

by Andrew Shaughnessy / @ashaughn
.

The celebrity host faced the studio audience, hiding the disappointment of being told by his agent it was ‘this’ or a pet food commercial. “Welcome to the finale. Tonight, two culinary talents will square off head-to-head. Welcome, past winner Sue Romero and her challenger, Nick McGovern!” Nick, well-groomed, bearded, middle-aged, wore a blue chef’s tunic bearing the logo of a popular hockey team. “Nick may be a stranger to our stage, but he’s no secret to hockey fans—a former enforcer and now owner of The Stanley Cupcake.”

The studio audience erupted cheerfully. The judges clapped. A team cap flew towards the stage. Nick caught it midair and put it on. “I’ll give ‘er one hundred and ten percent.”

The host continued, opening an envelope: “Tonight, your test will be an art cake, allowing each of you to present a dessert that looks as good as it tastes.”

Sue shot Nick a look. He wasn’t looking back. He was fixated on the judges, who were fist-pumping to chants from the audience: “Stanley Cup! Stanley Cupcake!” Sue wished she’d allowed her mother to come. If she’d had a friend who played trombone, that might have been nice.

The host yelled “Go!” and Sue and Nick rushed to their work stations. Sue was distracted by her tall, good-looking opponent, who seemed all too adept in the kitchen. Good technique. Ease with multitasking.

Sue, flustered, struggled. Her finished product—a structured cake she called Picasso’s Violin—was a chaotic sculpture of pink fondant, a chocolate fingerboard, and toasted caramel strings. It stood in awkward contrast to Nick’s sleek hockey helmet—complete with its sugar-glass protective visor.

The bell sounded and Nick backed away from his creation, arms aloft—with a raised wooden spoon as if he had just scored a goal. As the cake trolleys were wheeled to the judges, the ‘face’ of the helmet cake, its visor, detached.

The crowd gasped.

“I knew we’d need a face-off to get us going,” Nick joked. The audience erupted. Judges laughed hysterically.

Sue wished she had made a pink electric guitar and smashed it to smithereens.
.

Andrew (Andy) Shaughnessy is a Toronto-based intellectual property litigation lawyer, writer, and poet. He overuses em dashes (and parentheses) and has (the love of) a dog.

===
===

What the Travel Lodge Kitchen Sees

by Victoria Maxwell / @Victoria_BPP
.

You sit as if in a sacred moment, paying homage to the meal before you. Not because a cow was slaughtered—harvested—as placating ranchers say—but because you are a sommelier of flavour and taste. You are a devotee of deliciousness. A love child of Demeter and Dionysus.

Then you smile as you slowly raise the burger to your mouth. Pupils spread like butter melting in a pan. You open. You take a bite. That first bite. Oh, that first bite.

A chewing like a lover wraps his arms around his dear one.

You swallow. Eyes closed, your focus follows the morsel as it descends leaving a fatty trace on your tongue. Your breath slows; hands rest on your lap. You are full.
.

Victoria Maxwell writes microfiction and solo shows exploring the messiness of being human. She suspects all good stories begin with an appetite for adventure. victoriamaxwell . com

===
🍽️📖
===

[T.L. Tomljanovic @TLTomljanovic]

“a structured cake she called Picasso’s Violin—was a chaotic sculpture of pink fondant, a chocolate fingerboard, and toasted caramel strings.”

Face-off by @ashaughn

[Andy Shaughnessy @ashaughn]

Well, this made my day! Thank you @MythicPicnic and @TLTomljanovic !

[Mythic Picnic @MythicPicnic]

Feast or Famine

Mythic Micros by @DChrisBader @twitnikki @NoraNadj @norabird @NinaMD1 @jenwithwords @FinnianBurnett @DelGeo14 @sugarpigblog @TKearnes96914 @bsherm36 @ashaughn & @Victoria_BPP

Curated by T.L. Tomljanovic / @TLTomljanovic

#MythicPicnicTweetStory

===
===

In Feast or Famine, hunger takes many shapes—a crowded cafeteria, reality TV, a Travel Lodge, and memories that taste like survival. These stories wander from an 80s pizza joint to the family kitchen. Hands fold manti and crust for water pie. Between bites of nacho-flavored chips and mustard-slathered burgers, characters chase comfort in creamy green curries and borrowed recipes. In this collection, every flavour is a gamble, every meal a small act of hope. 🍽️📖

T.L. Tomljanovic

===
===

Pizza Barn

by D. Christopher Bader / @DChrisBader
.

The bell over the door jingles, same as in 1981 when the hand-painted sign went up, its green letters now sun-faded. It’s a quiet afternoon in downtown Greenwood, less bustling than before. Inside, the air hums with garlic, oregano, and warm dough. Dad’s in the kitchen, forearms dusted white, knuckles deep in a mound. He rolls, folds, turns it—patient, certain. Folks said it wouldn’t last. “Pizza? Here?” He’d smiled, having sunk his last dollar into an oven that burned hotter than Arkansas in July. The door jingles again. A kid, maybe ten, clutches crumpled bills and squints at the menu. “Y’all got the one with pepperoni that curls up?” Dad wipes his hands. “Crispy-cup kind. Best kind.” The kid grins. “Mama says this place was here when she was my age.” Dad pauses. In his mind, the restaurant rewinds: Arcade cabinets—Galaga, Pac-Man—buzzing with quarters and sugar-high kids. Pool table, felt torn, claimed by uncles swearing they’re “one shot away.” His younger self at the counter, hair thicker, worries louder, eyeing the door for tomorrow’s crowd. He slides the pie in. Forty-five years. Same recipe. Same hands. The crust snaps under the cutter. He boxes it, hands over the warm weight. “Tell your mama,” he says, “we’re still here.”
.

D. Christopher Bader writes Western noir and small-town mysteries with a crooked grin and a soft spot for eccentric weirdos.

===
===

There under the mother of all mango trees

by Elisa Dominique Rivera / @twitnikki
.

At my grandparents’ farm, I would tell them. The one I used to climb even though red bull ants would beat me to the clusters of the sweet, golden fruits ready for the taking. There were always hundreds of them spraying us of their luscious, saccharine scent like a curtain dancing to the breeze and sway of the trees.

Under the mother of all mango trees whose leaves create dancing shadows and blow light balm on anyone sitting under its umbrella, we would gather.

Under the mother of all mango trees a wooden papag would be standing. My Atang built it with his own hands from one of the Narra trees. On it would be banana leaves laid flat like placemats, but there’d be no plates because we’d eat straight from the leaves. On them would be freshly grilled pork belly, large orange prawns, stuffed milkfish with reds and greens peeping out from its centre; marinated chicken bbq, and in the middle, fluffy clouds of rice.

Under the mother of all mango trees the whole family would be sharing the food. They’d be eating with clean hands and raucous banter. The younger ones would dart in between us adults asking for subo with their mouths open. We would feed them without missing the beat of the chuckling from an inside joke or latest tsismis.

Under the mother of all mango trees I’d quietly mention the prognosis. There’d be sudden silences and impromptu mango-picking. They’d peel the skin of the fruit, holding it in front of my mouth to feed me. There’d be rostered plans on who’d care for me, and who’d take me to the hospital. There’d be a combination of hope and despair mixed in with the sweet air.

This is how it would be.
.

Elisa Dominique Rivera is a Filipina living in Boonwurrung Country, Australia still craving for mangoes. Her big writing flex is being called a writer by her daughters. She's also published some stories.

===
===

How to make manti

by Nora Nadjarian / @NoraNadj
.

i
Knead the dough on a white-dusted formica kitchen table. Add water to the thirst, keep adding, inhale a puff of flour. Grandma pushes a loose hair up with her wrist and a bit of white rests on her brow. All ‘hands’ in these instructions. All hands for punching hunger, which lingers. ‘Make the perfect dough, be good humans, get good jobs, don’t go hungry like we did.’

ii
Chop up the onion and if it makes you cry, let it. Mix it with the minced beef in a bowl, get your hands as mincy and oniony as you can. There’s always a fork on the table to makes ridges on the mince. Turn on the oven, set it to 150.

iii
Cut the sheet of dough into thin squares. They won't be the same size, or perfect squares. There’s nothing perfect. Even the kitchen table wobbles. Place a little meat in each square, fold it in half, press opposite sides together. Seal each little dumpling boat so tight nothing can get in: no seawater, no doubt. ‘Let them survive, the way we did.’

iv
Grease the round baking tray with white, thick-as-paint Spry vegetable shortening. Place the dumplings in a circle going in, like embroidery. Soon, they sizzle golden in the oven. Soon, the plump dumplings are topped with yoghurt, sprinkled with burgundy sumac. Our mouths water. Grandma talks about waves crashing, boats rocking, history repeating itself.
.

Nora Nadjarian’s stories have appeared in numerous journals including Centaur, Fractured Lit and CRAFT. Her work was chosen for Wigleaf‘s Top 50 Very Short Fictions (selected by Kathy Fish, 2022). She placed third in the Welkin Writing Prize in 2025.

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How to Speedrun an Eating Disorder

by Nora Rawn / @norabird
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First watch a lot of cooking videos and never cook. Go to dinner and order nothing, saying you already ate. Eat one apple slowly, over hours. Rotate the apple and eat it in a pattern of tiny nibbles, as if you were a very patient mouse. For lunch, try one container of snap peas: green, fresh, waxy. Ride the stationary bike for hours. Fit in crunches in bizarre places, on the floor. It’s not even about your body, except insofar as you are divorcing yourself from the realm of the physical. Eventually you may find your hip bones, though your face looks strange and drawn. Then find yourself hunched over a chicken carcass late one night in the kitchen, or another night, eating chili with your hands from the pot on the stove, red kidney beans, pink innards left to cool before refrigeration. Your body resurrects its demands, its needs, you can’t tell it no, you begin stealing food, you have shameful habits, you write post it notes, DO NOT BINGE, DO NOT OVEREAT, they fail, you are on the stationary bike again, your body is overfull, you have no control. Your hip bones recede, flesh reclaims them, your body asserts itself, who did you think you were to deny it? This takes years, flash flood receding slowly, puddles remain, you fall in the puddles, you are muddy of body and soul.
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Nora Rawn works in publishing subrights and lives in Brooklyn. She has pieces published or forthcoming in Dodo Eraser, Dreck Lit, Be About It Press, Burning House, Electric Pink, Burial Magazine, Some Words, and Michigan City Review of Books.

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Simmered

by Jenny Wong / @jenwithwords
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When Hana moved out, she took nothing from her mother's kitchen. No scratched aluminum pots with stuttering lids. No clattering dinnerware. No metal utensils that shoveled and scraped up foods that held uncertainty. These were the sounds of being sick as a child. Back then, her meals were bare out of necessity, deprived of colorful seasonings and the warmth of spice, unable to be loved, cautiously choked down as she and her mother waited to see what would trigger a reaction and what new things her body would reject.

Despite all that, she did have one favorite meal. A splash of water, a few cloves of crushed garlic, and cubes of beef all simmered together for hours. A few drops of soy sauce came after the beef was done, soaking into the tender meat. A gentle seasoning. Just enough to cover the underlying taste of a mother's grief. The chop of the kitchen knife never quite hid the heaviness of her mother’s exhales. There were so few things she could cook for her child to enjoy. Even the sharpest knives grew worn after cutting the same ingredients over and over.

But nothing is permanent. And not all illnesses stay in a body forever.

Hana eventually got her own pot. It was tall and stainless steel with a shiny lid that whistled steam out the sides and never boiled over as it concocted creamy green curries, Creole-red jambalayas, and dill-garnished lohikeitto. She rarely thought of her childhood dishes. But sometimes, when she was alone and had no one to feed but herself, or on the anniversary of her mother’s passing, Hana would cube up some beef and mince some garlic while a bottle of soy sauce waited on the counter, the only witness to the emptiness that ached in her stomach.
.

Jenny Wong is a writer, traveler, and occasional business analyst. She is the author of “Shiftings & Other Coordinates of Disorder” (Pinhole Poetry, 2024). She resides in Canada near the Rocky Mountains. Find her on X, Bluesky, Instagram, and YouTube @jenwithwords.

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Once We Were Whole

by Nina Miller / @NinaMD1
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Troy and I sat at the bar watching men feverishly working pork into balls. I bit my tongue before speaking of men and their meat. It’s not something we joked about anymore, but at least our appetites were unchanged.

Our friendship had become a tepid trickle of holiday wishes and birthday greetings. From feast to famine, he’d say, though never said he missed my memes, my wry commentary, or my not-so-subtle innuendo. He was busy with his growing family. It was best to fade away rather than linger past my expiration date.

“You happy?” I asked, just as they brought stacked bamboo steamers filled with soup dumplings.

“Now I am!” said Troy, joy lighting his eyes.

“Here, let me.” I took his cup and picked up the delicate parcel. It slid off the cabbage leaf without tearing.

“Thanks. Sucks when they break apart,” he said, looking at me. The old pang of affection resurfaced. Troy pierced it with his chopstick, dribbled sauce into the hole he’d made, and brought it to his lips. Sipping before he swallowed it whole. Working on the dumpling made Troy’s cheeks puff out. He saw me watching and winked.

“You happy?” I asked again, not sure what I wanted to hear.

I was ravenous for the friendship we once had. I popped a dumpling into my mouth, teeth piercing it to drown hunger with hot soup. He grinned. His boyish charm shone through middle-aged wrinkles. Troy’s answer stuffed my ears with his news.

Later, I placed a sliver of ginger on my tongue. Its spicy coolness radiated, soothed the burn of both the soup and Troy’s life without me in it.

We’d once been everything to each other. Failing that, I’d chosen nothing. A famine that had taken its toll… on me.

As I took another dumpling, it broke, soup trickling beneath cabbage leaves. I cursed, and Troy let out a chuckle. I dipped the broken dumpling into the sauce, realizing that, though it may not be the experience I wanted, there was still something to savor, something to enjoy.
.

Nina Miller is an Indian-American physician, epee fencer, and creative. Find her @NinaMD1 and ninamiller . bsky . social or wherever good stories are found. Read more at ninamillerwrites . com

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Leave it for the Buzzards

by Finnian Burnett / @FinnianBurnett
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There’s a dead dear in the field across from our house. I pass it on my daily walk and think about who to call, if anyone.

The buzzards will take care of it, probably. That’s what my wife will say when I come home.

In the meantime, it lies on the ground, one brown eye staring into space and I can’t stop looking at it, can’t stop wondering if was terrified in its final moments.

My therapist tells me to look for the good in the world. Retraining my brain, she calls it.

I remember the last time I saw a live deer, craning a neck toward the sparse greenery in the tree in our yard. I’d told my wife I wanted to throw it some apples, and she told me animals who become acclimated to humans are more likely to die than those who know how to forage in the wild.

But there’s nothing to forage, I said. They’re already starving.

The deer is still there the next day. I can hear buzzards, and I shade my eyes, watching them circle high above, black wings unfolding in the air currents.

The deer looks sad, I think, and though I hear my therapist telling me not to anthropomorphize everything, I want to touch it, to offer some comfort.

Something stops me. Fear of dead things, maybe. I’m afraid of the deer’s body, the crusted blood in the corner of its eye. Or my sudden understanding that it could be me lying in that field, waiting for the buzzards.

Because if the deer run out of leaves and water what’s going to be left for me?

I kneel beside it and close its one staring eye.

I’m sorry, I whisper and stand, wiping dirt from my jeans. I want to bury the deer, hide it from predators, but I leave, turning my back on it.

Something in me urges me to look back, to say a final goodbye, but I don’t.

The buzzards won’t die hungry tonight, I tell my wife when I get home.
.

excerpt from new novella-in-flash “Life in Dead Trees”

Finnian Burnett writes tiny stories and patchworks them into long-form novellas. The latest, Redshirts Sometimes Survive, is available through Off Topic Publishing.

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Emotional Famine

by Delphine Gauthier-Georgakopoulos / @DelGeo14
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Jane craves to complain and scream and growl and be (heard). But her social media ‘friends’ are all colleagues, bosses, customers, suppliers, ‘whateverers’ expecting her to smile, nod her not-just-a-pretty-face to their mansplaining, to be normal. Yet efficient.

She scrolls through her contacts, kicks the kitchen counter, and shrieks in pain. She has no one, has nowhere to turn to except her fridge. So she shouts at cherry tomatoes, barks at courgettes, slaps lettuce, and eats cheese. And jerkins.

Jane reads her father’s email again—a reminder for her to call her mother on her name day. She moans and opens the kitchen cupboard, grabs the funky, ridiculously priced nuts covered with honey she’d kept for a special occasion. ‘Happy name-day, Mummy’. She sucks the artificial sweetness, crunches the real anger, and swallows the overall bitterness.

Then she eats radishes for good measure, and cries.

An old rum bottle hides at the back of the cupboard, behind the chickpeas Jane doesn’t remember buying or wanting to cook. Rum, her mother’s alcohol of choice for cakes and pancakes and ‘grog’. Rum, warm milk, honey, thyme—the ultimate remedy for cold and flu or hyper, over-excited kids wanting to stay up late. ‘Have some grog and go to sleep.’

But her mother would deny it now, just like her father will deny sending that email.

Jane grabs a bag of crisps and salts her way through sadness, and grills some cheese to ease her growing bellyache as she books a train ticket to her hometown. To her parents.

Daughter’s guilt is eating at her and making her hungry simultaneously, so she devours all the biscuits and chocolate she can find, and drinks all the rum—but without the milk. Or the honey. Or the thyme.

Because she’s not ill, just sick of it.

Because he’s getting old, and the flowers on her mother’s tomb are as dead as she is.

Because her father’s denial is called dementia, and Jane’s is called bulimia.
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Delphine Gauthier-Georgakopoulos is a Breton writer, Pushcart Prize nominee, co-founder of The Pride Roars and the EIC of Raw Lit. Her debut historical novel, Laundry Day, was a Novel Fair runner-up.

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In the Cafeteria

by Megan Hanlon / @sugarpigblog
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I remember free breakfasts—a piece of golden toast topped with a puffy American cheese slice just beginning to soften, the yawning cafeteria dotted with a few kids like me.

I remember the stubby half-pint carton of chocolate milk—waxy white cardboard printed with brown ink—and struggling to open it, reluctant as it was to show what it held inside.

I remember free lunches—rectangular pizzas topped with congealing mozzarella cheese, served alongside bright yellow corn, and a purple push-up popsicle that hid until it was squeezed into life.

I remember being nervous to tell the stern hair-netted cafeteria woman "mayonnaise" or "mustard" when it came my turn to get a hamburger, so I rehearsed the two syllables as I waited in line, saying it over and over to myself—mustardmustardmustard—until the word didn't make sense anymore.

I remember a hollowness inside me that had nothing to do with food.

I remember other kids jostling around the cash-only snack bar, eating a paper boat of fries and a Dr Pepper for lunch, or eating a huge sour pickle and a bag of vinegar and salt chips for lunch, and wondering how they weren't left hungry.

I remember wondering what they hungered for—at home, at school, in crowded cafeterias where everyone was alone on the inside.
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Megan Hanlon has a silly little writing habit. Her words have appeared in more than two dozen literary magazines. She is currently working on a memoir about the meaning of home.

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The Next Kind Thing

by Thomas Kearnes / @TKearnes96914
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“You’ve got to believe in something that will work.
I don’t, but you have got to.” -Amy Hempel

We’re walking through Montrose. We stop at a Kroger and he buys some sort of wrap. We perch outside the store while he eats. He’s never more alive than when he talks about food. He picks up the cigarette butt I flick on the concrete. My own Jiminy Cricket. I have no soul, but perhaps he will lend me his. Less than an hour later, we stop at a drug store and he buys nacho-flavored chips. While we walk, I joke about my lifelong distrust of flavored chips. Actually, I want to cry. Pardon me while I’m unladylike, he says, and dumps all the crumbs in the bag into his mouth. He’ll be fat when he’s older. I love him anyway. He tells me food is how he scratches the itch, the itch he can’t permit the dope to satisfy. It’s better than being strung out, he insists. I wonder if this is true. I need this to be true. But desire leads to disappointment—always. I want to tell him he’s still hurting himself. With him, there’s so much I almost say.
.

originally published in JMWW Journal

Thomas Kearnes bills himself as the QueerJudas of Swamp City, TX. He hopes to find a home or representation for his 12-story collection Rehab Redux! He went cold turkey the moment that draft printed

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The Practical One

by Beth Sherman / @bsherm36
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Great-aunt Charlotte baked water pie the night the gentleman came to dine. A Depression-era dessert, with water substituting for pricy milk or eggs. Her specialty. Charlotte had three sisters: Eva, the beauty; Mary, the brain; Abigail, the coquette. The gentleman married Eva, though reportedly he only had eyes for Charlotte, flirting with her as the moon drooped low in the sky. Each year, at her sister’s anniversary party, she brought water pie, which always tasted of sugar and home. Simply exquisite, the gentleman said, offering Charlotte his elbow, his handkerchief, his heart. Aunt Eva busied herself with the children, always underfoot, and the roast, always undercooked. She fussed over Charlotte, offering to set her up with one of her husband’s golfing buddies or even the gasman. But Charlotte demurred, smiling, insisting she was a happy spinster. Everyone aged poorly. We noticed in the photographs how Abigail’s spine curved, the sag in Mary’s cheeks. Eva lost her looks the way we’d misplace an odd sock in the dryer, certain it had been there before. Charlotte’s hair turned white. She worked in the library, spent summers in Greece. The gentleman grew portly. When Eva died, we were sure he’d begin courting Charlotte. But he took up with an audiologist half his age. Poor Charlotte, we said. Deserted by love. Destined to end her days alone. Each Sunday afternoon, she fed her famous water pie to the seagulls on the boardwalk. We can still see her face–joyful, laughing, tipped toward the sun.
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Beth Sherman’s novella-in-flash, How to Get There from Here, will be published by Ad Hoc Fiction in July. She is also the author of five mystery novels.

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Face-off

by Andrew Shaughnessy / @ashaughn
.

The celebrity host faced the studio audience, hiding the disappointment of being told by his agent it was ‘this’ or a pet food commercial. “Welcome to the finale. Tonight, two culinary talents will square off head-to-head. Welcome, past winner Sue Romero and her challenger, Nick McGovern!” Nick, well-groomed, bearded, middle-aged, wore a blue chef’s tunic bearing the logo of a popular hockey team. “Nick may be a stranger to our stage, but he’s no secret to hockey fans—a former enforcer and now owner of The Stanley Cupcake.”

The studio audience erupted cheerfully. The judges clapped. A team cap flew towards the stage. Nick caught it midair and put it on. “I’ll give ‘er one hundred and ten percent.”

The host continued, opening an envelope: “Tonight, your test will be an art cake, allowing each of you to present a dessert that looks as good as it tastes.”

Sue shot Nick a look. He wasn’t looking back. He was fixated on the judges, who were fist-pumping to chants from the audience: “Stanley Cup! Stanley Cupcake!” Sue wished she’d allowed her mother to come. If she’d had a friend who played trombone, that might have been nice.

The host yelled “Go!” and Sue and Nick rushed to their work stations. Sue was distracted by her tall, good-looking opponent, who seemed all too adept in the kitchen. Good technique. Ease with multitasking.

Sue, flustered, struggled. Her finished product—a structured cake she called Picasso’s Violin—was a chaotic sculpture of pink fondant, a chocolate fingerboard, and toasted caramel strings. It stood in awkward contrast to Nick’s sleek hockey helmet—complete with its sugar-glass protective visor.

The bell sounded and Nick backed away from his creation, arms aloft—with a raised wooden spoon as if he had just scored a goal. As the cake trolleys were wheeled to the judges, the ‘face’ of the helmet cake, its visor, detached.

The crowd gasped.

“I knew we’d need a face-off to get us going,” Nick joked. The audience erupted. Judges laughed hysterically.

Sue wished she had made a pink electric guitar and smashed it to smithereens.
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Andrew (Andy) Shaughnessy is a Toronto-based intellectual property litigation lawyer, writer, and poet. He overuses em dashes (and parentheses) and has (the love of) a dog.

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What the Travel Lodge Kitchen Sees

by Victoria Maxwell / @Victoria_BPP
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You sit as if in a sacred moment, paying homage to the meal before you. Not because a cow was slaughtered—harvested—as placating ranchers say—but because you are a sommelier of flavour and taste. You are a devotee of deliciousness. A love child of Demeter and Dionysus.

Then you smile as you slowly raise the burger to your mouth. Pupils spread like butter melting in a pan. You open. You take a bite. That first bite. Oh, that first bite.

A chewing like a lover wraps his arms around his dear one.

You swallow. Eyes closed, your focus follows the morsel as it descends leaving a fatty trace on your tongue. Your breath slows; hands rest on your lap. You are full.
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Victoria Maxwell writes microfiction and solo shows exploring the messiness of being human. She suspects all good stories begin with an appetite for adventure. victoriamaxwell . com

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🍽️📖
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[Andy Shaughnessy @ashaughn]

@MythicPicnic @NinaMD1 @TLTomljanovic @DChrisBader @NoraNadj @norabird @jenwithwords @FinnianBurnett @DelGeo14 @sugarpigblog @TKearnes96914 @bsherm36 @Victoria_BPP Thank you for having us—though I must confess that I would do anything for @TLTomljanovic!

[Andy Shaughnessy @ashaughn]

@kendalljayyzhxu 25

[T.L. Tomljanovic @TLTomljanovic]

Love food? Love writing? DM me your work to be published @MythicPicnic this Spring. #WritingCommunity

[Andy Shaughnessy @ashaughn]

@Norma5387953815 1353

[Andy Shaughnessy @ashaughn]

@Joseph_Fasano_ I am lost in the love of trying to find the better words and the better way to express them. May I never be found.

[Andy Shaughnessy @ashaughn]

@AgathaChocolats “I won’t be checking a bag.”

[Jerry Thornton @jerrythornton]

This is going to stick with me forever

[Andy Shaughnessy @ashaughn]

@goodreads https://t.co/eYHQKongQQ

Debut novel smash.

[Andy Shaughnessy @ashaughn]

@VassB Delete “(trying to) make.” Insert “making.” Add cookie.

[Andy Shaughnessy @ashaughn]

@kateygoalie, the best part of my day was watching you interview @VassB on live tv and allowing life and humanity (and the love of a child) make the moment better than it otherwise would have been.

[Andy Shaughnessy @ashaughn]

@Rachie323 The real “Boo Radley” (Freddie, now age 11) says hello.