Temple in a city
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templeinacity.bsky.social
Temple in a city
@templeinacity.bsky.social
1.2K followers 3.1K following 890 posts
Lit mag for flash fiction, poetry, art and letters. Throw it all at us. Reading is punk.
https://templeinacity.com
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templeinacity.bsky.social
May we introduce with pleasure our Best Small Fiction 2026 nominees. templeinacity.com/temple-in-a-...
@emilyrinkema.bsky.social @mondickson.bsky.social
Ivan de Monbrison, Marseille, August 2nd 2025 Monica Dickson, How to make a living coffin Emily Rinkema, Lou Rachel Rodman, He Always Lied, I Always Told the Truth. And Then We Fell in Hate Vijayalakshmi Sridhar, I heard you became a father again
January 15, 2026 at 5:32 PM
templeinacity.bsky.social
Quick, read something that isn’t completley dispiriting but full of what humanity can be. templeinacity.com/category/imp...
Winter willow tree image against a cloudy sky.
January 3, 2026 at 6:27 PM
templeinacity.bsky.social
Run out of things to talk about? All talked out and in need of recuperation? Struggling with holiday stuff and looking for thoughtful diversion? Not celebrating any holiday? Grieving? Anxious? Happy? Feeling grateful? No matter your situation, this is for you.
templeinacity.com/category/imp...
A pressed frond on pavement.
December 26, 2025 at 5:55 PM
templeinacity.bsky.social
Our Joy issue has grown again. Three new poems and stories since the solstice. Always open for subs and always there for you.
templeinacity.com/category/joy...
A joyful painting, acrylic on canvas, bright yellow backdrop with pressed dahlias and flung paint in blue and green and more.
December 26, 2025 at 5:45 PM
templeinacity.bsky.social
A lovely little joy for you to sink into from
Huina Zheng. About family, and magic even in the hard places. This is one you want to lean back and read. Shut the world out for a few minutes. Take a rest into someone else’s story.
templeinacity.com/fiction-huin...
She also brought home bags of plastic petals, stamens, and leaves. She showed us how to glue petals around a stamen, how to wrap green tape around wire to make a stem, and how to attach the leaves in just the right spot. But we complained about the sharp smell of glue and how plastic flowers lacked the scent of real ones. "Use your imagination," my mother said. "We're conjuring blossoms." She told us we were magicians capable of creating beautiful, fragrant flower fairies, though she opened a window and set the fan facing outward for fresh air.
December 26, 2025 at 5:42 PM
templeinacity.bsky.social
If you haven’t looked in for while there’s new joy in this. Five new micros or poems since first published and still growing. templeinacity.com/category/joy...
Abstract painting with a yellow background, pressed dahlias and splashes of colour, one that looks kind of like a snail travelling outside its shell. Very happy. Daring snail. Whee.
December 22, 2025 at 2:54 PM
templeinacity.bsky.social
What’s happened to Grandma! @joannatheiss.com with a meaningful, whimsical tale.
templeinacity.com/flash-fictio...
You're on top of the world until you're not, until you totter past your granddaughter's room and hear her asking a Magic 8 Ball if Grandma will ever come back. Outlook not so good. Until her little friends visit and your goosey excretions stain the trains of their taffeta dresses. Until you remember that geese aren't made for company.
December 18, 2025 at 4:02 PM
templeinacity.bsky.social
A beautiful story of grief, connection and release by @hilary55.bsky.social
templeinacity.com/flash-fictio...
'It's not a peace offering,' she adds, in case God gets the wrong idea. I’ve not forgiven you for taking him.'
December 18, 2025 at 3:51 PM
templeinacity.bsky.social
A different kind of love story by @chriscottom.bsky.social
templeinacity.com/flash-fictio...
Through the night, she talks of whips she surrendered for baskets she never saw, how kids never collected her catkins, how her broad-rounded crown never sheltered a courting couple. She admits she's sad not to have lived in a meadow 'or just near a stream
December 18, 2025 at 3:48 PM
templeinacity.bsky.social
A little taste.
As they round a bend in the road a great house comes into view set on a low hill below them; it sits in a verdant expanse of grass, its sides studded with tall dark windows, columns support its wide portico. "Why are you afraid to answer?"
December 17, 2025 at 3:24 PM
templeinacity.bsky.social
Tension and release in this @callasmith.bsky.social story.
templeinacity.com/fiction-call...
In the darkness, I didn't have to worry about how close I would come to crossing the lines that were engraved on my body and burned into my skin. Boundaries were blurry in the confusion of the shadows that haunted all the places I passed through like a ghost. The bold letters of the signs I passed told me I was beautiful, or that I should let the animal out. Every time, while I was lost in the beauty of the stars and the throbbing music and the sparkling bars, I thought I could even believe them.
December 17, 2025 at 3:16 PM
templeinacity.bsky.social
The gentleness in this Lanie Brice story. A beautiful little ache.
templeinacity.com/fiction-lani...
"You're the best man I've ever dated,' say, bringing my mug to my lips. He takes the compliment impassively, staring into my eyes, probing around for the other shoe. We know each other well enough for him to find it before the words congeal on my lips.
December 17, 2025 at 3:13 PM
templeinacity.bsky.social
A little ghosty but what’s more haunting, the presence or the life dissolving in on itself? Tender and, well, haunting by @christinaltudor.bsky.social
templeinacity.com/fiction-chri...
During your last Christmas in this room, your oldest daughter pulled a set of keys from your hand. You don't drive anymore, remember? She asked. And you blinked into the white space in your brain, found a buzzing instead of clarity. I gave up my own life to raise you, you said, unsure of where the rage came from, wondered if was always inside you.
December 14, 2025 at 3:00 PM
templeinacity.bsky.social
We mean: templeinacity.com/two-poems-am...
Tell her they grabbed her and ran and her mother said go and you raced to follow, to ask, to protect but they didn't explain and she didn't cry then they said she needed help to breathe to be that maybe she wouldn't learn, wouldn’t walk
December 13, 2025 at 5:28 PM
templeinacity.bsky.social
We mean: templeinacity.com/two-poems-am...
My grandmother notebook always kept overflown with wonderings whether anyone cares on about things left unheard, misundershared unsaid, always writing, often feeling less than understood
December 13, 2025 at 5:28 PM
templeinacity.bsky.social
Ezra Gatlin poem here, you don’t want to miss it. templeinacity.com/poetry-ezra-...
sometimes, i think about dying in a place where my sins backlight my regrets i am the poltergeist sleep seamripping crushed velvet in my i am the dancing santa on the dashboards of a suicide heist rum drunk off cherry wine and cyanide
December 11, 2025 at 8:18 PM
templeinacity.bsky.social
Two beautiful poems by Juanita Rey. Who has not felt these first few lines?
templeinacity.com/2-poems-juan...
IT'S ALL IN HERE He doesn't get my poetry. To him it's just words and more words, sprinkled randomly on the page.
December 10, 2025 at 2:34 PM
templeinacity.bsky.social
Issue 3 contributors.
L. Acadia Mehreen Ahmed Hilary Ayshford Samantha Backlund-Clapp Robin J Bartley Lanie Brice Chris Cottom Ivan de Monbrison Litsa Dremousis David Gaffney Ezra Gatlin S.A. Greene Alaina Hammond Rachel M. Hollis Amy Marques Rob Moore Jay Parr Juanita Rey Chris Scott R. P. Singletary Calla Smith Joanna Theiss Christina Tudor Dominic Walsh
December 2, 2025 at 10:43 PM
templeinacity.bsky.social
Also a weekend shoutout to our Pushcart, BOTN wnd Best microfiction nominations. More nominations coming soon. Full list (so far) in the link. templeinacity.com/temple-in-a-...
Best microfiction Elizabeth Rosen, Endeavor Slawka G. Scarso, And then she told Jack off Sumitra Singam, You-and-Kate in a field, loving me Vijayalakshmi Sridhar, I heard you became a father again Huina Zheng, The pin inside my body
November 29, 2025 at 5:37 PM
templeinacity.bsky.social
Remember our joy pop-up? It’s going to keep popping. We’re permanently opening subs for flashes of joy (well, as permanent as anything, which is not very but you get the idea). If we love it and it’s joyful we’ll add it to the issue. Like a little library of joy.
templeinacity.com/explore-the-...
TiaC Timely and JOY, always open If it's great and urgent now we'll publish it under TliaC Timely without waiting for a curated issue. And if it's joyful, send it our way. It may find itself in the ongoing JOY issue.
November 25, 2025 at 10:58 PM
templeinacity.bsky.social
Our nominees for the 2026 best microfictions anthology are here. The link is to all our nominations so far, with more to come so keep watching. Congratulations to all including today’s tiny gems.
templeinacity.com/category/nom...
Best microfiction Elizabeth Rosen, Endeavor Slawka G. Scarso, And then she told Jack off Sumitra Singam, You-and-Kate in a field, loving me Vijayalakshmi Sridhar, I heard you became a father again Huina Zheng, The pin inside my body
November 25, 2025 at 10:50 PM
templeinacity.bsky.social
Nominations nominations nominations with a corrected typo because we are having a very mercury retrograde day just like cloudflare
With apologies. templeinacity.com/temple-in-a-...
Best of the net 2025 Sumitra Singam, Bird swallowers Rachel Rodman, He Always Lied, I Always Told the Truth. And Then We Fell in Hate Kathryn Reese, Post-vespers Pushcart Prize 2025 Cole Beauchamp, If Only Emily Rinkema, Lou June Gemmell, The Homecoming Kendra Cardin, A change in the recipe S.A. Greene, Brian Wilson is dead and why can't I stop crying? Dominic Walsh, Slice of life, in Absentia
November 18, 2025 at 5:38 PM
templeinacity.bsky.social
For those who can’t bear to click on links, welcome to a sneak preview of our JOY special popup edition contributors. This little slice will be out soon which in our speak is between hours and days. But you’ll be the first to know, we promise.
templeinacity.com/joy/
Some of the work here is just a few words. Or just the right words. Sometimes nonsense words or nonsense use of words. Words to make you smile or laugh or feel, for a moment, the warmth of a friendly sun, the touch of a loving breeze, the touch of another being, human or animal, equally in the dark, equally looking for strength to keep going. That moment can fuel the next moment, and the next. It doesn't need anything else. It just is. Please let this issue wash over you. Let it give you some relief amid the burdens of being alive, with all that trying. Don't ask it to be anything but what it is, then give yourself that same kindness. We hope you find joy, here and everywhere you can. Contributors Karen Baumgart, Denise Bayes, Jessica Coles, Kristin Houlihan, Patrick Johanneson, Rachel Abbey McCafferty, Kathryn Reese, Slawka G. Scarso, Sumitra Singam, Karen Walker
November 12, 2025 at 3:43 PM
templeinacity.bsky.social
With a brand new category. templeinacity.com/submit-writi...
Mix and match: Creatives, we see you. Why stick to one form when you have three? Send up to 3 pieces of any mix of micro, flash, poetry or art. One poem and two flash? Sure. Two poems and one micro? Why not. Fly free. Same word counts apply (up to 1,000, no minimum). Submit in one .doc or doc file, art as 1000-1500 pixels wide files
October 28, 2025 at 7:08 PM
templeinacity.bsky.social
This you?
templeinacity.com/submit-writi...
Mix and match: Creatives, we see you. Why stick to one form when you have three? Send up to 3 pieces of any mix of micro, flash, poetry or art. One poem and two flash? Sure. Two poems and one micro? Why not. Fly free. Same word counts apply (up to 1,000, no minimum). Submit in one .doc or doc file, art as 1000-1500 pixels wide jpeg files
October 24, 2025 at 8:45 PM