Inspiration

By D.A. Donaldson

(Originally published July 12, 2018)

“It’s called The Drabble,” she said. “One hundred-word limit.”

He sneered, “And you call that being published?”

“It’s something. It’s a start. It’s better than your Letters to the Editor.”

“At least people read those!”

“Do they? When’s the last time you heard from a reader?”

“Gimme a break,” he swigged his beer, “I don’t see any book deals coming out of your online dribbles.”

“Drabbles,” she corrected. “And my last post got 147 likes. At least I know that someone is reading and enjoying what I write. And you know what else? You just inspired my next submission!”

The Very Short Poem

By John L. Malone

I’ve got a poem for you, a very short one, he promised with a garrulous grin, and then, in a long-winded introduction in which all the masters of brevity were cited from Basho to Lydia Davis, he proceeded to demolish all notions of shortness. The poem took ten seconds, the intro five minutes.

         
John Malone is a South Australian writer of short stories, flash fiction and poetry.

Disappearing is Harder Than You’d Think

By Anonymous

First, you must shed the detritus of your life. The car will be the last worldly belonging to go: Donate it. Toss your phone in the river. Photo albums, love letters, diaries: burn them. Cash out your bank account, stuff the cash into your couch cushions. Drag the couch to the curb, put a FREE sign on it. Flush the pills. Tie your wedding ring to a helium balloon, wait for a gust, and let go. Don’t watch. Swallow the hurt.

Now, walk away and don’t stop until you’re gone.

On a Gravestone in Ireland: Died of Disappointment

By Sandra Arnold

It’s time to face the truth. Your story is abysmal. It’s trite. Overblown. It’s full of mixed metaphors and sloppy syntax. The characters are one-dimensional. The plot’s missing. There’s no beginning. No middle. No proper ending. Who on earth would publish it? It will never win awards. Bookshops won’t stock it. The critics will crucify you. They will say it reveals a lot about the kind of person you are. Take our advice and burn it. Think of the pain you’ll be spared. No need to thank us. This is the whole point of our Writers’ Support Group. Who’s next?

      
Sandra Arnold is a Pushcart Prize and Best Small Fictions nominee. Her third novel, Ash, will be published by Mākaro Press (NZ) in 2019.

A Few of Our Favorite Drabbles of 2018

By The Drabble

To celebrate the conclusion of the fourth calendar year of our existence, we present some our favorite posts of 2018. While we are grateful to every Drabble reader and writer for helping to make this site such an unexpected success, we want to recognize a few pieces that truly accomplished what we were setting out to do when we began this blog almost four years ago. Here (in no particular order) are a few drabbles we loved in 2018, enjoy:

The Envy of the Village by J.E. Kennedy

Disappearing is Harder Than You’d Think by Anonymous

Grief by J. Hardy Carroll

Pack Your Bags by Hombrehompson

The Very Short Poem by John Malone

Table for One by rlmcooper

A Love Letter by Minyoung Lee

Mother – A Poem by Katharine Griffiths

Unwritten Poetry  by B.

Inspiration by D.A. Donaldson

On a Gravestone in Ireland by Sandra Arnold

Table for One

By rlmcooper

As usual, my back is to the restaurant’s kitchen door, a lone diner always parked in some out-of-the-way location as though I might, if seated amongst them, infect the other patrons with the “friendless” virus. Yet, as I glance across the thick-carpeted room I’m sad for the couple, long married, who no longer speak, for the parents attempting to rein in a disruptive child or get a sullen teen to eat. I celebrate young lovers and blindly happy newlyweds. No, I do not dine alone. Life’s comedy and drama unfolds before me, and I am content.

A Love Letter

By Minyoung Lee

In fifth grade, I wrote you a letter. I wrote my friend had a crush on you, which was true. I didn’t write I had a crush on you, too.

Your friends bullied my friend for a year. She cried all the time. She knew someone told you about her crush. I don’t think she knew it was me.

But that’s what you get for sharing your feelings.

I don’t remember what you looked like. I hope you were cute. I saw on Facebook my friend got married. Her husband looked hot.

If only I could remember your name.

Mother – a Poem

By Katharine Griffiths

Healing hands, harming fists
Comforting embrace, crossed arms
Soulful gaze, empty look
Validating ear, deafening silence
Understanding heart, selfish attitude
Heartfelt words, stinging criticism
In death sorely missed, free to find bliss

Unwritten Poetry

By B.

Hell-bent on repentance
I dug up my past
– a stack of confessions
in black ink and metaphors –
my religion,
true and false,
unstructured and incomplete.

Forgotten in the pages was
a decade-old whispered poem
to a future lover,
the writer of words and dreamer of dreams
who could make me believe
his theories of history and heaven
and me.

I wanted to write him poetry while the world burned
through its tribulation.
But you only like poems that rhyme.

The Envy of the Village

By J. E. Kennedy

Old Mrs Bergman’s roses were the envy of the village. The bushes bloomed in a congregation of scarlet and coral, sun-flare yellow and delicious tangerine. They spilled over the walls and lit up the pavement with their scattered petals, like delicate wishes skipping along the breeze, destination unknown.

Mrs Bergman plucked and preened, watered and fed. She whispered sweet nothings. She told the roses all that she would have told him if he were here. And they bloomed.

At night she would take the fading telegram from the drawer: Missing in action.

And she waited to meet him again.