“Say he’s ‘away on business,’” her mother said, after her father left the family. Now she tells people that her mother’s “away on business,” instead of saying she’s dead. “She passed” was a consideration, but it sounded too much like a middling grade in math.

Death is a trench coat 
a briefcase     a quilted tote 
Coffee at the station 

Tina Barry’s

third collection, I Tell Henrietta (with art by Kristin Flynn), was published in August 2024 by Aim Higher Press, Inc. Tina’s first two books were released by Big Table Publishing: Beautiful Raft (2019) and Mall Flower (2016). Her writing can be found in numerous literary journals and anthologies, including American Poetry Journal, The Best Small Fictions 2020 (spotlighted story) and TBSF 2016, The Fourth River, Gone Lawn, Gyroscope Review, MacQueen’s Quinterly, Maryland Literary Review, Nasty Women Poets anthology, ONE ART, Rattle, South Florida Poetry Journal, Sky Island Journal, SWWIM, trampset, Verse Daily, and elsewhere.

She has five nominations for the Pushcart Prize and several Best of the Net and Best Microfiction nods. Tina is a teaching artist at The Poetry Barn and Writers.com.

Author’s website: TinaBarryWriter.com

More on the Web: By, About, and Beyond

⚡ I tell Henrietta that before I left my boyfriend and It’s Ed Sullivan’s Fault, microfictions by Tina Barry first published in MacQueen’s Quinterly (Issue 18, April 2023), and reprinted in her collection I Tell Henrietta (August 2024)

⚡ Inside the amazing brains of Laura Rodley, Tina Barry, & Robert Slais by Big Table Publishing in Boston Literary Magazine (February 2023); includes Tina’s poem “Lilies”

⚡ Beautiful Raft: An Interview with Tina Barry by Hannah Grieco in Empty Mirror (28 February 2020)

⚡ “A Friend’s Daughter Dies” by Tina Barry in American Poetry Journal (Issue 14, Summer 2017)