DARSHANA
A REVOLVING MICRO CREATIVE NONFICTION ANTHOLOGY
Edited by Leslie Olsen and Bill Brown
Darshana: a glimpse of divinity or sublimity; a manner of seeing; the beholding of a revered person, sacred entity, or sacred phenomenon or object
The Smell of Paint by Johnathan Cramer
In progressive circles, working for a defense contractor marks you as complicit. My father clocked in there for over thirty years. No one in my family really ever took a stance on my father working for them. Although, there have been more than a handful over the years happy to tell me I was raised on blood money. My dad doesn’t engineer the jets. He does paint them. He got good at it the way he got good at everything. …
A Compendium of Our Fears, Dec 3, 2025; Two Years and Four Days Before the Unexpected End of Things (As We Knew Them)
Looking stupid in front of others. Being rejected. Being looked at. Having something on my mouth. People not understanding what I’m saying. Clowns. Clowns. Art the Clown. Momo. Mascots. Centipedes. Rats. Being eaten by rats. Spiders. Spiders. Bugs-all of them-spiders are the worst. Frogs. Sharks. Fake People. The ocean. The ocean. The deep ocean. What is down there? Tsunamis. Heights. Dark matter. Black holes. The silence of space. Asteroids. Airplane crash. Floods. Bridge collapse. Bridges with water under them. Drowning. …
Catch and Release by Ryan Beckering
It is our last day together at work. I’m washing dishes in the back while she sits behind me, distracting me the whole time. We are laughing at all the memories we made over the summer here. Then, she goes to her car and brings back a red acoustic guitar. I surprise her by playing it. “I never knew you could play!” she says incredulously. “I thought you would’ve figured it out by how many times I’ve mentioned it,” I …
Hershel’s Last Day by Sydney Moyer
I’m sitting on the vet room floor while my dog lies in front of me. The room is lit up by those awful LED lights that would be seen in a hospital or school. There is almost nothing in the room but a bench, a dog bed, and a cart that has dog treats and Hershey’s Kisses. The vets feel that everyone should get to have chocolate at least once, even if it’s on their last day. Dad is standing …
White Streets, Black Gold by Jared Giesen
She wanted me to understand that these towns and their streets once told a different story, one unlike the suffocating rust, slivered glass, and dust. These streetlamps, she said, illuminated company stores, bustling taverns, and the youthful faces of a town that, in its prime, really was beautifully gilded. In those days, on those vibrant streets, the white-painted buildings lay nestled, the sleek white cars slumbered, and complimenting white clothes clung below white smiles. But many who lived there knew that pristine picture stood atop anything but white. Beneath those polished streets …
Alchemy for Age Eight and Under by Rebecca Nace
Our time back then was given to observe the ants disappearing into sidewalk-melted orange popsicles like Morse code, given for paint buckets and blue cleaning fluids stirred with a twig, the judicious addition of Jay feathers and pill bugs, our mad cries at the explosive fizz of vinegar and baking soda (a pie pan foaming like a horse’s exhaustion). Flour and salt and water, shapes pressed into albino mud with thumbs. A tape recorder left running at night to pick …
Lunar Eclipse by Chris Plyler
May 16, 2022. A supermoon coincides with a lunar eclipse. It remains in totality for around 80 minutes, casting a deep orange over my childhood home. I’m standing next to my dad – step-father, technically – as we watch it. We talk about how amazing it is that we are able to see it from our tiny planet. How the universe is so vast and we are truly just dots within the totality of time. How we’re definitely not alone, …
Dear Dog by Angel Henry
You weren’t the baby. Not even maybe. Adopted, yes. And we said family. Yes. But doesn’t everyone? It’s so pleasing to the tongue. To indiscriminately call others “mom” or “sis” or “brother.” But when someone dies, that lie is startled into the kitchen light with its sad mastiff face. Dog, you were as precious as the moon. But you weren’t the baby, and the moon’s reflected light anyway, isn’t it? You slept with us, your warm breathing a space between …
The Delicacy By Ji Yun (1724-1805), Imperial Librarian and Investigator of the Strange
The “Eight Mountain Delicacies” are among the most sought after dishes from the Imperial Banquet of 1720, but they are nearly impossible to make. Some of the more exotic ingredients, such as leopard fetuses, are unobtainable because of the danger involved. Other ingredients are simply rare-such as the hump of the one-hump camel. Therefore, I’d only managed to try two dishes-bear paws and deer tails-when, in the fortieth year of the Emperor Qianlong’s reign, General Min Shaoyi gave me a …