Summer as a season is incredibly evocative—of childhood, of freedom, of sweat and heat, of moments when time seems to stand still—everyone carries indelible memories of summer with them. This season’s picks are just as evocative. They are engaged with heat and light, with the way memories can haunt and also bring joy.

“Drought Season,” by Elisa Luna Ady, gives us pure, unadulterated summer in its first line: “In Southern California, we did lines of light.” This short lyrical piece celebrates the bright, unyielding Southern California sun in all its terrible glory, spinning a world out of those golden lines.

“On Sunday, You Wake Up As a Firebird,” by Kate Horsley, is less engaged with summer than it is with the heat and rage of everyday life as a woman. When a woman turns into a firebird it is destructive, yes, but it also lets her toast her kids’ breakfast on her wings, wheel circles on the air above her home, and find her own peace within the chaos of her marriage. This piece was also the winner of Smokelong Quaterly’s March Micro Marathon 250-word category. We’re so excited to be featuring it in The Citron Review. 

“Shed Woman,” by Sarah Chin, uses the uncanny and some of the tropes of horror—creepy shed, a stalker—to invent a new type of haunting. When a child sees a woman walk out of the locked shed in her backyard, she doesn’t realize how significant this woman will become—in various iterations—throughout her life. In a very short space Chin has created an unsettling mood and enjoyably uncertain character. 

“Let’s Say It’s the Swallows,” by Rena Willis reads like a summer memory, slipping between mosquitos and birds rolls of pennies and the memories of a lost sibling. The indelible moment of the two children running down the street shows how messy those treasured memories can be—is it exuberance or fear that propels them forward? By the end of the piece I think I have the answer.

“Those spaces,” by Morgan Brie Johnson, tells about the ways mothers and daughters relate to each other through negative space, the things left unsaid. It is the story of a monster that assembles itself from the gaps left between the women, that can only be vanquished by their coming together, knowing full well it will be born (and borne) again and again and again.

“Out Loud,” by Sarah Kartalia, also is thinking about what can hide beneath the things that are actually said, tracking conversation as two lovers reunite in a coffee shop. They are feeling out one another, trying to discover what might still connect them, what might be safe to admit. 

Carolyn Abram 
Guest Flash Fiction Editor