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| Issue 30X: | Dec. 2025 |
| Microfiction: | 16+6+20+12+11 |
| = 65 words |
By Bob Lucky
Five Atomic Tales*
Barefoot
A beggar asked me for a shoe. The sandal on his left hand was torn.
The Conversation
“Did you forget?”
“What?”
Practicalities
He realized no matter how clean his windows were, he never ran through them, so he stopped cleaning them.
Regret
As much as he wanted, he couldn’t forget the morning after.
The Time Traveler
Whenever he looks at the calendar, it’s today.
*Publisher’s Note:
“Atomic tale” is a variation of the original term “atomic story” coined by Colombian writer Umberto Senegal for a sub-genre of microfiction, tiny tales no longer than 20 words each.
Bob Lucky’s
latest book is a collection of tanka and tanka prose, Careful Not to Startle the Yaks (Cyberwit, 2025). He is also the author of My Wife & Other Adventures (Red Moon Press, 2024); My Thology: Not Always True But Always Truth (Cyberwit, 2019); Conversation Starters in a Language No One Speaks (SurVision Books, 2018), a winner of the James Tate Poetry Prize; and Ethiopian Time (Red Bird Chapbooks, 2014), an honorable mention in the Touchstone Distinguished Book Awards. He lives in Portugal.
More on the Web: By, About, and Beyond
⚡ Book Review: My Wife & Other Adventures by Rich Youmans in contemporary haibun online (20:3, December 2024)
⚡ Clare MacQueen’s enthusiastic endorsement of My Wife & Other Adventures: “a mondo memoir of tiny poetic narratives infused with [Lucky’s] signature wit, wordplay, and philosophical musings; a handbook of 63 haibun that takes us meandering on a taste tour through the Near and Far East, entertaining as it enlightens...”
⚡ Bob Lucky at Haikupedia.org (September 2024)
⚡ A Tribute and Commentary on Bob Lucky’s new collection, My Thology: Not Always True but Always Truth by Ray Rasmussen in cho (15:4, January 2020)
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