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Flash Contest

We are not accepting entries for the book o' salt Flash Contest until further notice. Thanks to all who participated!

Email your flash fiction, flash poetry, flash nonfiction entry to: saltflatsannual@msn.com

Please include the following in the email body:
*100-1000 flash piece
* your name
* bio (150 word maximum)
* email address

Please include the following in the email subject line:
* book o' salt flash contest/ genre/ last name/ word count ( Example: book o' salt contest/ flash poetry/Jones/200 )

Prizes:
*The winning entry will receive one copy of the Salt Flats Annual journal.
*The winning entry,author bio and statement and appropriate links will be posted on the book 'o salt page.
*Finalists and their entry titles will be listed.

We wander along the dune crest, following meandering sand lines, wave markers; little holes, once bubbles speckle the dune’s lake side. With our bared feet the same size, we leave almost matching footprints, dry colored ones on the dark sand, wet colored ones on the dry. Further inland the dunes rise up, a gentle clutter of congregating grass. Our loose sweatshirts and jeans, rolled up to mid-calf flap wildly. The autumn breeze combs our hair, caresses our faces, fills our nostrils with the scent of clean sand, fresh, clear water, pushes the massed grey-tinged clouds in streams across the reflected sky. The great green-blue lake lashes roaring three-foot waves. We dodge them easily laughing, as they lap gently at our ankles. Stripe-necked sandpipers scatter on chopstick legs, leaving mazes. Herring gulls swirl above, glide through invisible dance patterns, dip abruptly to light amidst the foamy waves. We open our flapping sails to the breeze to take it all in, to pour ourselves all out, to become grains of sand underfoot, crystal jewels of sparkling foam, almost imperceptible whirs of gulls’ wings.

Jeanne Lesinski has published four children's books, including Bill Gates (Lerner), as well as hundreds of articles for magazines and reference books. Her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in the anthology Poem, Revised and the journals Pennsylvania English, The Binnacle, and The Tusculum Review, among others.

"Flight" was inspired by a trip to a Lake Michigan beach in 1982. It began its life as a poem, and when I revisited it a couple years ago, I wondered if it would work as a prose piece, so I trimmed it to its bare, yet lyrical, bones. As in my poems, I like to end with some sense of closure or aha. Thus the "almost imperceptible whirs of gulls’ wings," an image that has stuck with me for 25 years!

Uprooted
by Suzanne Aubin

I planted three shrubs in the garden today. It is my therapy, going to the Garden Shop and getting lost in all the colourful possibilities. I act as if I had a patio where friends would congregate this summer, as if there was a lovers’ bench under an arch of climbing roses where you and I would sit and watch the craters of the moon. I chose fragrant varieties of showy perennials, as if I had a future here. I sneak outside with my plants, trying to get them in the ground before the neighbour comes home and starts asking me about my day. He trimmed the clematis on our dividing wall, which leaves me exposed to his view and sorely missing the striking purple blooms. I work quickly before the rain and his return, climbing back into my hole, blinds closed, telephone mute.

The phone hardly ever rings any more. I come and go without rustling anyone’s feathers, without catching anyone’s attention. I file my nails and rub musk oil into my skin as if awaiting a lover’s touch. I pretend that someone will notice that my thighs are smooth and my hair silky. Aborted projects, watercolours and books half-read, fill my evenings.

I hold my breath till it is time for bed, the forgiving darkness licking my open wounds, the warm cocoon of blankets a dim reminder of your body shape, there, next to me, fencing out the vastness of the world.

Native of Québec City, Suzanne Aubin lived around the world before settling in British Columbia where she teaches languages, does translations and writes in her spare time. She has run a monthly column in a national aviation newspaper and published free-lance articles in "Okanagan Life",a B.C. magazine. Her latest publications include BluePrint Review, Salomé Magazine, Flash Flood Fiction and an Honourable Mention in the Mirrors and Masks Mindprints Contest.

Sue Miller - “Dear Siobbahn”, flash fiction

Cami Park - “ Flying or Falling”, flash poetry

Margot Miller -“Alone in the Dark”, flash fiction

Ramon Collins - “Cradle in the Rain“, flash fiction