R.R. Menon
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roopamenon.bsky.social
R.R. Menon
@roopamenon.bsky.social
Seeker of stories | Collector of fine sentences| CHANDU AND THE SUPER SET OF PARENTS (@Fitzroy_Books) https://linktr.ee/roopamenon10?utm_source=linktree_profile_share&ltsid=7f795f1f-0daf-46bd-975c-a530d5e4df5c
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Woohoo! So thrilled to see my piece in the flood! Do give it a read if you can…Thank you @natflashfictionday.bsky.social
FlashFlood: 'Fruit Flies' by Roopa Raveendra #nffd2025
'Fruit Flies' by Roopa Raveendra
Fruit flies live on my window sill but do not flock to my kitchen. I am cautiously happy but cannot understand why they do not come into the kitchen where I have pellets set, as they swarm my neighbors' kitchens. Although I am cautiously happy, I am also flustered because the fruit flies behave as though it is not a kitchen but a sacred temple. What’s even more confusing is that my house is no temple; it is easily messier than my neighbors' houses—especially the one with a cat, a dog, and a baby. Here, there are more cups with shriveled tea bags lying around the counters, more peanut shells and bits of chapati scattered on the floor, and peels of onions and garlic pods stuck to the sides of the drawers. In fact, there is so much food spilling around the kitchen creating little hills of more food I can only think the fruit flies themselves feel beaten. Or perhaps they are embarrassed for me and don’t want to compound my humiliation with their presence. Or perhaps they are faced with a task so beyond their extensive experience that they rather not wrap their fruit fly heads around it, killing whatever joy that remained of their short lives. The best they think they can do is wait on their window sill home, where they can give me withering looks, transferring their shame and annoyance onto me hoping that I tidy the kitchen just enough for them to scavenge calmly without any pressure. --- Roopa lives in Dubai, U.A.E. Some of her short stories have been published in Bending Genres, Tiny Molecules, Bath Flash Fiction Anthology (forthcoming). Her middle-grade fiction, Chandu and the Super Set of Parents has been published by Fitzroy Books.
dlvr.it
Thanks, Tori, for giving my story such a lovely home!
@roopamenon.bsky.social Roopa Menon shares a tale in an operating room that will make you laugh, it will make you hungry (and we have the recipe you'll be searching for), and it will give you a new fear the next time you need surgery!😳

Stay hungry read:
Rogan Josh
tinyurl.com/RRMenonRogan...
December 9, 2025 at 4:40 PM
This arrived today.. can’t wait to read it!
September 30, 2025 at 2:20 AM
This is #notareview of Arundhati Roy’s #MotherMaryComesToMe. Just some impressions… substack.com/@roopa834887... l@penguinrandomhouse.bsky.social
September 13, 2025 at 2:26 PM
Grateful for every rejection that comes with a submit more request
August 10, 2025 at 5:51 PM
Reposted by R.R. Menon
Grateful to be featured on this kick-ass list with my Flash Flood piece about chickens. @mynachang.bsky.social 's lists are always 🔥
New Speculative Flash Roundup!

Featuring stories in:

Small Wonders
MoonPark Review
Radon Journal
Hex Literary
Flash Flood
Molotov Cocktail
Lightspeed
Strange Horizons
X-Ray
Penumbric
Gaia Lit
Beaver Magazine
Flash Roundup * June 2025
A gathering of recent speculative flash & micro fiction, each presenting a tiny-yet-powerful universe. How tiny? About one-thousand words for flash; four-hundred words for micro. The word count…
mynachang.com
July 7, 2025 at 12:35 AM
“Grandma gets her episodes at least once a month. She’ll grow out her jaws and if it happens on a rainy day..”

@smokelong.bsky.social
#archivechallwnge

This one in #nffr is very Angela carter with a twist of Ben Loory( two of my favorites!) newflashfiction.com/katerina-kis...
Little Red Riding Hood by Katerina Kishchynska
Grandma gets her episodes at least once a month. She’ll grow out her jaws and if it happens on a rainy day, claws will tear out of her fingers.
newflashfiction.com
July 5, 2025 at 3:50 PM
“The sugar is white and Jessie’s in black. There’s a black wreath on the door and a deep black hole opening up under Jessie’s feet…”

@smokelong.bsky.social #archivechallenge

This lovely triptych by Kathryn Kulpa in #NFFR made me want to write…

newflashfiction.com/special-feat...
Jessie’s Life in Three Surnames: A Triptych by Kathryn Kulpa
Jessie wakes to the smell of manure being spread. Every day. Or maybe only growing season, but it feels like every day. When her father and brothers come in from the fields and Ma has one of her sick ...
newflashfiction.com
July 5, 2025 at 2:48 PM
Reposted by R.R. Menon
Day 9 (?) of the @smokelong.bsky.social #ArchiveChallenge, let's go to Jellyfish Review...

And 🤪😍🥳😁 !!! I've been looking for this piece for AGES!!!

A piece from that hermit-crabs around a game of Guess Who:

jellyfishreview.wordpress.com/2020/12/14/a...
Alfred Untold by Neil Clark
Alfred Untold – Am I a woman? – It’s Guess Who? Of course not. – Are we twins, separated at birth? Do we sometimes feel a pang, like the tug of an invisible chord? We’re not sure what it …
jellyfishreview.wordpress.com
July 3, 2025 at 6:43 PM
So excited to have my teeny tiny poem in The Daily Drunk Magazine! This one is a Shel Silverstein Meets Kafka in a bar! Hope you enjoy the read! dailydrunkmag.com/2025/07/03/t...
The Weekend is Officinal!
One day, the Dee Man checked into a hotel with his wife and his one big black bag. They checked in and walked into the hotel bar, one big black bag under his arm. The Dee Man ordered hims…
dailydrunkmag.com
July 4, 2025 at 9:10 AM
Reposted by R.R. Menon
Thanks @bendinggenres.bsky.social fiction editors @amymarques.bsky.social and David O'Connor. We have no less than 7 selected stories on the @wigleaf.bsky.social Top 50/ LongList annual series. Truly honored. wigleaf.com
w i g l e a f :  (very) short fiction
An online journal of very short fictions -- under 1000 words.
wigleaf.com
June 29, 2025 at 10:41 AM
Reposted by R.R. Menon
Last chance to sign up for anyone who wants to join me on Saturday

9am BST / 18pm AEST / 17pm JST / 20pm NZST

www.mattkendrick.co.uk/live-worksho...
July 3, 2025 at 5:55 AM
Congrats to all the writers! And to the Wigleaf team, @laughingyeti.bsky.social for curating it! What a wonderful treasure trove of stories! Such great references for newbies like me!
June 29, 2025 at 4:33 AM
Nice to see my name in the June long list. This one was a blast to write #furiousfiction
June 25, 2025 at 11:52 AM
Started this snowman story while writing for Meg Pokrass' Prompts of Resilience. Glad I got an opportunity to build it. Thanks @natflashfictionday.bsky.social for giving it a home!
June 20, 2025 at 2:16 AM
Reposted by R.R. Menon
I'm so happy to hear this! Thanks for reading and sharing! 💙
June 16, 2025 at 8:10 PM
Kathy Fish’s newsletter is a wonderful resource for new writers like me. Through one of her editions I found Mary Robison who has gone on to become one of my absolute favorites ! Can’t wait to immerse myself in these flashes she has recommended!
June 16, 2025 at 6:27 PM
“When it turned to me, its eyes were unmistakably my mother’s. Not in color or shape, but in a way I can’t describe without sounding ridiculous. You’d just have to have known her.”
FlashFlood: 'The Fox' by Cate McGowan #nffd2025
'The Fox' by Cate McGowan
In the last weeks before my mother died, a fox began appearing on our front porch. Always at twilight. Always facing the door. It didn’t scratch or howl. It didn’t pace or flee. It sat there, still, eyes fixed on the brass doorknob as if waiting to be let in. Its coat was too clean, too red. Its presence too deliberate.  But we watched it from the kitchen window, my mother and I. She in her robe, flowers faded from the wash. Me with a hand on her shoulder, though I never knew what comfort felt like to her. “It’s not a real fox,” she said once. “It’s a message. You just don’t know how to read it. Yet.” That night, I dreamed it stepped through the door, walked the house like it remembered the rooms. Its paws made no sound, and its breath fogged the mirror above the sink as it stood on its haunches. When it turned to me, its eyes were unmistakably my mother’s. Not in color or shape, but in a way I can’t describe without sounding ridiculous. You’d just have to have known her. After she passed, the fox stopped coming to the porch. I left a saucer of milk out for a week, then a piece of bread, then nothing. Seasons turned. The ivy swallowed the stoop’s railing. The door swelled in its frame. I tried to move on. While clearing out the attic, I found a sketch she’d drawn, pencil on yellowing paper. A fox was seated neatly in front of a door, and above it, in her handwriting: If I forget how to find you, leave the light on. That night I lit a candle in the hall. And when I woke, there were paw prints along the corridor. Small. Clean. --- Cate McGowan’s the author of four books. Her collection of poems, Sacrificial Steel, is forthcoming from Driftwood Press in 2025. Brill published McGowan’s collection of memoir essays, Writing is Revision, in 2024. Her short story collection, True Places Never Are, won the Moon City Press Short Fiction Award.
dlvr.it
June 15, 2025 at 3:26 PM
“The muscle leaps onto Mother's plate. In two breaths, she places the tines of her fork on Father's tongue, holds her knife poised over the flesh.”
FlashFlood: 'Tongue' by Sudha Balagopal #nffd2025
'Tongue' by Sudha Balagopal
Father's tongue falls out of his mouth during Sunday dinner. One moment he is spewing a hail-storm of hateful, hurtful words, next moment, the muscle lands from his mouth onto a half-eaten bun.   Mother crushes the napkin in her fists, quakes in her chair. My fork and knife clang-clatter onto the tiled floor. Father's vast, toothy mouth drops wide open, revealing bits of food stuck in his molars. He lunges after the slimy pink organ with his meaty fingers, scattering the bread and tipping the soup tureen. The quick tongue, moist with a coating of spittle, slip-slithers away from him. Father is particular about taking care of his sinful tongue. He scrapes the three-inch length with a stainless steel, U-shaped tongue cleaner every morning and every night, over and over. He has grated, and grated, and flattened his taste buds. Now, he cannot taste the tomato sauce in a lasagna or the brown sugar mother adds to the apple pie. Today, he screamed at Mother for her muddy soup, for the chalky bread, for the salt-less vegetables. His tongue, that soft body part, hit her harder than a baseball bat. She's learned to tuck the injuries under a soft voice, inside her soundless movements, behind her lowered gaze. Father swings across the table making guttural sounds, gasping, grasping for his tongue which has flipped upside down in the oven-roasted vegetables. Faint blue lines mark the organ, veins maybe. The muscle leaps onto Mother's plate. In two breaths, she places the tines of her fork on Father's tongue, holds her knife poised over the flesh. He waves his arms up and down, up and down, stamps his feet, thud-thud-thud. Mother pins her gaze on him. It's as steady as her fork on his passive tongue.   --- First published in Stanchion Zine, October, 2022.  Sudha Balagopal work appears or is forthcoming in Banshee, Doric Literary and Fictive Dream among other journals. Her novella-in-flash, Nose Ornaments, was published by Ad Hoc Fiction, UK, in 2024. She has had stories included in Best Microfiction, Best Small Fictions and the Wigleaf Top50.
dlvr.it
June 15, 2025 at 1:50 PM
“Hiding that I was white underneath all my brown only to be continually exposed, bisected, transected, chopped to pieces like that sliver of almond perched precariously atop my Amma’s carrot halwa.”
FlashFlood: 'Almond Skin' by Nina Miller #nffd2025
'Almond Skin' by Nina Miller
Amma told me not to eat almonds whole lest my skin got browner. She blanched them perfectly so that the white oval nut popped easily from its brown skin to be tossed away as she slivered the innards for cooking. Thankfully, she didn’t know I rubbed in tanning oil, whose bottles were as dark as I hoped to become. Didn’t know I soaked in the New England summer sun like my friends, showing skin that was supposed to be covered. Poolside, girls compared tans, and I was told how lucky I was that I didn’t burn. Yet I secretly envied the joy of peeling off sunburned skin and the warmth that emanated from their bright red skin all slathered with aloe. My aunt, visiting from India, wondered why we tried so hard to get dark when they advertised lightening creams there. India, a country I imagined, kept girls so sheltered that their skin blanched ghostly white. Here, I worked hard to forget my roots, though my skin became darker daily, an inheritance skin deep. A child of the Americas whose cultural identity teetered on the balance beam of Marvel Comics and Amar Chitra Katha. Never understanding who people wanted me to be. Never knowing the real me and not sure who I was becoming. Hiding that I was white underneath all my brown only to be continually exposed, bisected, transected, chopped to pieces like that sliver of almond perched precariously atop my Amma’s carrot halwa.   --- Nina Miller is an Indian-American physician, epee fencer, and creative. She loves writing competitions and nursing cups of chai. Wigleaf Top 50 for 2024. She is a contributor for The Pride Roars blog and author for Sci-Fi Shorts. Find her @NinaMD1 or ninamiller.bsky.social. Read more at ninamillerwrites.com.
dlvr.it
June 15, 2025 at 8:41 AM
“It quivers when he cuts a slice, digs in a spoon and lifts it to his mouth. You can taste it, all that creaminess. Nearly.”
June 15, 2025 at 8:38 AM
“We never see them coming. Until their whiskey breath runs hot down our necks. Until their arms slip around us, familiar as locks.”
FlashFlood: 'Locks' by Kelli Short Borges #nffd2025
'Locks' by Kelli Short Borges
We never walk alone at night. Never. Only stupid girls ignore that rule and we know what happens to them. If we need reminding, all we need to do is watch Dateline and listen to Keith Morrison, watch breaking news in any state any city any day. We never forget the girls’ faces. Their Bambi eyes, their yearbook grins, hair shiny as rearview mirrors. We click deadbolts, check them twice. We lock our bedroom doors at night—a lock inside of locks. We never take cocktails from strange men. We travel in packs, never leave a girl alone, never drink more than two martinis. We remember the girl who went missing last month, the ghosts of her eyes, her Chiclet smile stapled to a Starbucks bulletin board. A girl who broke the rules. It won’t be us, we say. We never walk to our cars without our keys in hand, nails flashing Kick Ass Red, metal splayed through our fingers like weapons. We are cortisol-flushed, animal eyes alert. We are ready. We never forget the rules. Until our keys are hung, our pajamas on. Until we’ve turned locks upon locks upon locks. We never see them coming. Until their whiskey breath runs hot down our necks. Until their arms slip around us, familiar as locks. Until we remember Keith Morrison, his baritone warning, it’s always the friend, the boyfriend, the husband, it’s always someone you know.   --- Kelli Short Borges writes from her home in Phoenix, Arizona. Her fiction has appeared in Peatsmoke, Moon City Review, Lost Balloon, and elsewhere. Recently, Kelli's work was chosen for the Wigleaf Top 50 longlist and the 2024 and 2025 editions of Best Microfiction. She’s currently working on her first novel.
dlvr.it
June 15, 2025 at 8:36 AM
Reposted by R.R. Menon
FlashFlood: 'Locks' by Kelli Short Borges #nffd2025
'Locks' by Kelli Short Borges
We never walk alone at night. Never. Only stupid girls ignore that rule and we know what happens to them. If we need reminding, all we need to do is watch Dateline and listen to Keith Morrison, watch breaking news in any state any city any day. We never forget the girls’ faces. Their Bambi eyes, their yearbook grins, hair shiny as rearview mirrors. We click deadbolts, check them twice. We lock our bedroom doors at night—a lock inside of locks. We never take cocktails from strange men. We travel in packs, never leave a girl alone, never drink more than two martinis. We remember the girl who went missing last month, the ghosts of her eyes, her Chiclet smile stapled to a Starbucks bulletin board. A girl who broke the rules. It won’t be us, we say. We never walk to our cars without our keys in hand, nails flashing Kick Ass Red, metal splayed through our fingers like weapons. We are cortisol-flushed, animal eyes alert. We are ready. We never forget the rules. Until our keys are hung, our pajamas on. Until we’ve turned locks upon locks upon locks. We never see them coming. Until their whiskey breath runs hot down our necks. Until their arms slip around us, familiar as locks. Until we remember Keith Morrison, his baritone warning, it’s always the friend, the boyfriend, the husband, it’s always someone you know.   --- Kelli Short Borges writes from her home in Phoenix, Arizona. Her fiction has appeared in Peatsmoke, Moon City Review, Lost Balloon, and elsewhere. Recently, Kelli's work was chosen for the Wigleaf Top 50 longlist and the 2024 and 2025 editions of Best Microfiction. She’s currently working on her first novel.
dlvr.it
June 14, 2025 at 9:21 PM
“Our babies see every withered promise, every muddy heart.” One super piece by Claudia Monpere!
FlashFlood: 'Blink' by Claudia Monpere #nffd2025
'Blink' by Claudia Monpere
The first unblinking baby is an anomaly. Facial nerve palsy, the doctors speculate, offering lubricating eye drops, soft tape for sleep. Soon all babies are born unblinking, their dark eyes gazing into their mother’s face, faces of doctors, families, neighbors. Our faces. Babies are supposed to be cute. But these wide eyes that never close, like snakes or sharks. We are glass. Our babies see every withered promise, every muddy heart. We scrutinize old pictures of sleeping babies, those half-moons of closed lids, thick dark lashes brushing their orbicularis oculi muscle. We watch old videos of awake babies: splashing and babbling and blinking in the tub; licking plates of mashed squash, orange goo on their blinking lashes; wailing into a kitten stuffie, blinking tears into its fur. We cradle babydolls that kick their chubby legs, that coo and laugh and cry. That blink spontaneously.  They are voiceless, our babies. No whimpers, cries, or giggles, just those huge dark eyes, peering at us. Their rare smiles luminous as a snow moon rising over Denali Peak. Congressional meetings, Supreme Court hearings, Presidential briefings: the babies are lined up in baby rockers, and their stares hold the future, our yesterdays trailing behind like a chain of rusty nails.    --- Claudia Monpere’s flash appears in SmokeLong Quarterly, Split Lip, Craft, and elsewhere. She won the 2024 New Flash Fiction Prize from New Flash Fiction Review, Genre Flash Fiction Prize from Uncharted Magazine, and 2023 Smokelong workshop prize. She has work in Best Small Fictions 2024, forthcoming in Best Microfictions 2025.
dlvr.it
June 15, 2025 at 8:35 AM
Woohoo! So thrilled to see my piece in the flood! Do give it a read if you can…Thank you @natflashfictionday.bsky.social
FlashFlood: 'Fruit Flies' by Roopa Raveendra #nffd2025
'Fruit Flies' by Roopa Raveendra
Fruit flies live on my window sill but do not flock to my kitchen. I am cautiously happy but cannot understand why they do not come into the kitchen where I have pellets set, as they swarm my neighbors' kitchens. Although I am cautiously happy, I am also flustered because the fruit flies behave as though it is not a kitchen but a sacred temple. What’s even more confusing is that my house is no temple; it is easily messier than my neighbors' houses—especially the one with a cat, a dog, and a baby. Here, there are more cups with shriveled tea bags lying around the counters, more peanut shells and bits of chapati scattered on the floor, and peels of onions and garlic pods stuck to the sides of the drawers. In fact, there is so much food spilling around the kitchen creating little hills of more food I can only think the fruit flies themselves feel beaten. Or perhaps they are embarrassed for me and don’t want to compound my humiliation with their presence. Or perhaps they are faced with a task so beyond their extensive experience that they rather not wrap their fruit fly heads around it, killing whatever joy that remained of their short lives. The best they think they can do is wait on their window sill home, where they can give me withering looks, transferring their shame and annoyance onto me hoping that I tidy the kitchen just enough for them to scavenge calmly without any pressure. --- Roopa lives in Dubai, U.A.E. Some of her short stories have been published in Bending Genres, Tiny Molecules, Bath Flash Fiction Anthology (forthcoming). Her middle-grade fiction, Chandu and the Super Set of Parents has been published by Fitzroy Books.
dlvr.it
June 14, 2025 at 7:08 AM