"Education" and "Rivers" are up at the fabulous magazine Barzakh

 Ah, there's more! 

Two flashes, "Education" and "Rivers" are up at the fabulous magazine Barzakh Vol. summer-2022

 https://www.barzakhmag.net/summer-2022-in-nature-prose-2/2022/7/14/avital-gad-cykman

"The Twist" is up at Spire Light and "Teacups in a Cupboard" has been published in Spectrum vol. 65.

 

 Hello from the Brazilian crazy spring time!

 

 The story "The Twist" is up at Spire Light, a magazine out of Andrew College. 

https://www.andrewcollege.edu/wp-content/uploads/2022/05/Spire-Light-Journal-2022.pdf

The flash "Teacups in a Cupboard" has been published in Spectrum vol. 65.

Since it is not online yet, here is the flash:

 

Teacups in a Cupboard

I’m taking with me the minimum necessary. The hyena who’s had me bite by bite, can finally feast on organs fed by hopes and expectations. I won’t need hope where the future is a glow of sunset. I’m stripping down to my bones, where memories are mapped.

A desert town, where dunes surrender to my bare feet, and a mum and a dad, mine only, raise a white house with a red tiled roof and plant struggling fruit trees. Wildflowers and eighteen-year-old boys are cherished here, and in danger of extinction.

Sea sand weighs down my bathing suit every Saturday morning, and the remained sand that isn’t swept by the sea waves pours down into the wet floor of the shower. Children grow free in nature. But in ceremonies, we stand, ordered by size, like teacups in a cupboard.

In the desert town, Samson gave his life to save others, but the bible telling it enters home only by the school request. The book of Genesis is wrapped with a blue cotton, and sewn letters sparkle like gems. Saturday’s candles are never lighted, only memorial ones.

At seventeen, the hyena goes for my heart. The heart, swollen from a tsunami of death, steels its walls, blocks its valves and throws itself at the hyena’s paws. The hyena’s fingernail makes a fine scratch, but the teeth meet an uncrackable cold surface.

Now, the hyena can feast on a heart that's mellowed from loving and lovers, tired kidneys, heaving lungs and a slightly embittered pancreas. The desert town is carved in sand and bone, and I need no binoculars to see the horizon, my home.

 

 

The flash "Grace" in Matter Press

The flash "Grace" is up at the wonderful Matter Press

Where is the future? Where is Leonard Cohen?

The Jewish Year - Litbreak Magazine is featuring my flash

Have fun with The Jewish Year.

The Fortnightly Review and Flash Fiction Magazine featuring my micro fictions/flashes

 The Fortnightly Review (look around-it's a classy one)

Flash Fiction Magazine (Dynamic and interactive) 

Mandy Eve-Barnett interviews me

 Better late...Right?

Mandy Eve-Barnett interviews me here:  Mandy Eve-Barnett's Blog for Readers & Writers

In Search of Perfect Light...: Light Reflection Over Blues

In Search of Perfect Light...: Light Reflection Over Blues:   And doesn't this image just about say it all…   That's the cover art for my dear friend Avital Gad-Cykman's  latest coll...

NEWS!

 My second book, LIGHT REFLECTION OVER BLUES, is ready for pre-order on Ravenna press's site: 

 http://ravennapress.com/books/light-reflection-over-blues/

I invite you to get a copy (the printer is at work!) and let me know what you think.

 

Reviews

The people in Avital Gad-Cykman's stories are haunted by both the past and the future. They live in a world where everything is fluid and impermanent--geopolitical boundaries, family bonds, the self itself. Their lives are simultaneously holy and profane, joyful and heartbroken--which is another way of saying deeply, recognizably, stirringly human. Life's unspeakable mystery winds through these stories like a whisper in the dark.

Ron Currie, Jr, Addison M Metcalf Award recipient from the Academy of Arts and Letters

A stunning collection. Though I nearly inhaled Light Reflection Over Blues in one sitting, Avital Gad-Cykman’s opalescent stories had me turning over each one in my mind. With poetic, condensed language, she evokes the pains of young women growing up amidst conflict in the landscape around them—as well as deep in their own hearts. Sometimes surreal, sometimes frank, but always engaging, these stories hit like smart bombs.

Viet Dinh, O’Henry Award winning author of After Disasters

In this stunning collection, Avital Gad-Cykman's elegant prose not only shines and reflects--it resonates. Her characters are curious and wise, surprising and real, full of depth and magic. LIGHT REFLECTION OVER BLUES is colorful, brilliant, and necessary. One of the best--one I won't forget.

Kim Chinquee, recipient of two Pushcart Prizes and editor of ELJ and New World Writing