Ink in Thirds

Soooooo after writing last week about a perception that things were slowing down in regards to acceptances—I got another acceptance. This time from Ink in Thirds. From their website:

Established in 2016, Ink In Thirds is a boutique literary magazine that publishes Poetry, Prose, and Photography/Art. The focus is on the emotive, visceral layers of the human condition, bringing artists and writers together in cohesive fluidity.

The prompt asked for a prose poem and I had something on hand, in my portfolio. A piece originally written as a free verse poem and that I’d worked on to revise into a prose poem—about cycling at night on an October night along the Chicago Lakefront.

I write this to again reinforce the potential for all writing and keeping a portfolio of work on your computer or folder/notebook. You never know when a call for submissions will draw out a certain piece. Along with this I’ve been revising a piece of flash memoir about Opening Day (deer hunting) and have had insight into certain critical changes that I think make it better. Keeping a portfolio allows us to go back and see work through new eyes.

ALSO I’ve been seeing in submission calls under categories something called drabble. I understand the meaning of dribbles and drabbles as a colloquial ways of saying the equivalent of knick-knacks, little mementos, things we love that might sit on the shelf or china cabinet, but have no practical use. From Writer’s Digest, meaning of drabble:

When a writer I really admired announced that they were doing a 30-day drabble challenge, I was confused. They were kind enough to explain to me that they were challenging themselves to write a 100-word story every day that month.

Simply put, a drabble is a story of exactly 100 words.

Furthermore—

Dribble: A story of 55 words

Double drabble: A story of 200 words

Trabble: A story of 300 words

Pentadrabble: A story of 500 words

Readers, try to sit down and compose flash memoir using the above metrics—play and have fun, see what emerges.

In Uptown I lived near the House of Hair and A House of Prayer. There was a Gigio’s and a Gino’s pizzeria. Down the street used to be the Wooden Nickel Bar and the Loose Penny. Also the Green Mill and the Red Line. There was Siam Noodle and Siam Café—before one relocated and the other blew up in a grease fire. At opposite corners was a Corner Market and Corner Diner—under new management and renamed. Gone also Uptown Pawn Shop and Uptown Thrift. The adage that the more things change the more they stay the same: not true. The memories blur into amalgamations of name games. 109 words

In Uptown I lived near the House of Hair and A House of Prayer. There was a Gigio’s and a Gino’s pizzeria. Down the street used to be the Wooden Nickel Bar and the Loose Penny. Also the Green Mill and the Red Line. There was Siam Noodle and Siam Café—before one relocated and the other blew up in a grease fire. At opposite corners was a Corner Market and Corner Diner—under new management and renamed. Gone also Uptown Pawn Shop and Uptown Thrift. The adage that the more things change the more they stay the same: untrue.

100

photo Bob Rehak