Dog-ear it until all the pages are folded. Read it in the bath, teach it, store it in your bag, recite it on street corners. When people stop to ask you what you are doing, tell them that you are reading aloud from a collection by the best flash fiction writer in America." ~ Amelia Gray, Author of AM/PM and Museum of The Weird“People often say the purpose of flash fiction is to shine a spotlight, to illuminate, to light up our lives, a flash of insight. This to me has always seemed a dull reason to do anything, much less write or read flash fiction. And I think Kathy Fish proves the point, here in this book. Who cares what she may teach us, in flashes of blinding light or otherwise, in these stories so carefully built, so wonderfully turned of phrase. What Kathy does is expose us not to insight but to mystery. She puts us in the middle of these worlds she’s made and says, Look what I’ve seen. And then when we do, when we come to these stories’ ends, we shudder with confusion and love.” ~ Joseph Young, Author of Easter Rabbit and Name

    "The brew master of flash" (Sean Lovelace), Pokrass writes "like a brain looking for a body" (Frederick Barthelme), making her the "new monarch of the delightful and enigmatic tiny kingdom of mirco- and flash fiction" (Brad Watson). This collection of eighty-four tales is sure to "ruin your waking hours the way you'll want them ruined" (Kyle Minor).

    THEY COULD NO LONGER CONTAIN THEMSELVES contains--but just barely--five chapbooks of flash fiction, including the winner of the third annual Rose Metal Press short short chapbook contest, and four of the finalists from the fourth. Dropped toddlers, attempted drownings, juvenile promiscuity, road trips, and inappropriate therapy sessions compose the multi-voiced family portrait in Dear Mother Monster, Dear Daughter Mistake by Elizabeth J. Colen. Yoga stalkers, guns and gold, babies with iron stomachs, drunkards with t-shirt cannons, and warlocks are the stuff of Do Not Touch Me Not Now Not Ever by John Jodzio. Dominatrixes and fetishists, face paint and goo, fierce parental love and perverse longings cohabitate in Evan's House and the Other Boys Who Live There by Tim Jones-Yelvington. Leukemia, meteorites, Wal-Mart, bocce ball, Charlie Brown's clinical depression, the language of talking crows and of Che Guevara's omelets fill the eggs in How Some People Like Their Eggs by Sean Lovelace. And smallstories about pretty girls who sit quietly and behave themselves (or not) populate the pages of Paper and Tassels by Mary Miller.

    They're based on Tiff Holland’s relationship with her mother, a story arc all its own, only Betty isn't her mother and Holland’s not the narrator, not completely. Over the course of the chapbook, both Betty and the narrator suffer from serious illnesses. One of them is recovering; one of them is not. Consequently, they’ve ended up spending more time together. They have "adventures," as Betty calls them, and really talk for probably the first time in their lives. They inexplicably find themselves in Betty’s red PT Cruiser driving around to Walgreen's and Cracker Barrel, selling gold for cash, and pumping gas. In unsentimental and percussive prose, Holland examines Betty as character, dragon lady, mother, and reluctant superhero.

    There's nothing more terrifying than people and the things they're capable of doing to one another. Forget vampires, werewolves, and ghosts (even though there are a few in this compilation). The real scary stuff is happening all around us, every day, every night. A Twisted Twelve is a small glimpse into some of our more depraved moments...