Author: hollyevaallen

A Piece of Flash Fiction Published in Issue 1 of Livina Press, 2022             “Oh my God, Josh is in rehab,” Charlotte gasped histrionically with a wave, spilling a few drops of her French 75 onto her laptop below.             Marcie glanced over her shoulder from the kitchen where she stood emptying a bag of … Continue reading The Count

A Poem Published online with Hare's Paw Literary Journal, 2022 While sitting at the window,eager eyes treading thefaded bitumen and flattened-cola-cans-like-cobblestonesto see the passers-by,the parade of septuagenarian sights comes throughall clamoring cashmeres andstaggering smiles. Because there isa retirement home next doorand not the multicolor-mosaic-glory ofsome national park named fora long dead president,I watch the great … Continue reading Song

Flash Fiction Published online with On the Run, 2022 “Are you sure you wanna do this?” Maggie asked through a mouthful of greasy takeout. “Can’t you just tell her that I need to spend some quality time with my beautiful wife?” I shoved my foot into a tired sneaker. Flecks of house paint speckled the … Continue reading Sunday with an Old Friend

A poem Published with Tether's End Magazine, 2021 I tried not to let my father’s blazing,my father’s brilliance,blind me beyond belief. Keeping little trophies of average any-daysin my palms, I smiled when I could dolittle else. I listened to the lolling of lazy waterand the stubborn hum of insects in Juneand to your sweet harp playing. Even … Continue reading I, Eurydice

A Flash Fiction Published in Farside Review, 2021 Your grandfather could balance a checkbook for hours on end. For a man with skin like rice paper, he was indefatigable. When you told him that you had never done this, never balanced a checkbook before, he was incensed. So, you have to at least give it … Continue reading Forty-seven Forty-nine

A Flash Fiction Piece Published online with Storgy, 2021 Migraines– So, I’ve been dealing with this for quite a while now. The best thing to do is to get some quality ice packs. Not the hard-as-a-brick blue plastic Freezee King ones or whatever they’re called. Those things are for putting in lunch pails filled with … Continue reading A Guide to Handling your Illness without Insurance

A Poem Published online with Snarl, 2021 When men envision the future,polyester-clad chest over wrought-iron frame echoinglike the long, hollow hold of a wooden boat,they seelittle ray guns, shiny,all chrome and lime greenshooting itty-bitty fireflies into the open air. They see the Jetsons-pastiche ofa candy-apple red hovercar blazingthrough the sticky tar-black backdrop of night.A chorus … Continue reading 2098

A Poem Published in print with Saltfront: studies in human habit(at), 2021 They dared to force me, all sinew and mother-scent, into a plastic castle small enough to force the air from a pigeon-lung. When I was a god, I had castles of marigold-perfume and gilded walls with a gleam-and-glint brave enough to blind the … Continue reading A Calf for Veal

A Poem Published Online with Neuro Logical, 2021 You’re standing in the woods in North Carolina. Everything is sopping- the air, the timid trees that lean away from you with blushing bark, the shallow footprints with little oceans all their own. Your video is brief but charming. China teeth and pressed plaid, effortless elegance punctuated … Continue reading A Charming Video

Published online with Wild Roof Journal, 2021 Clamoring into your Buick, your Ford, your hunk of drab fiberglass and stained footing, you set a gleeful course for somewhere once-mentioned, somewhere once-photographed and pasted to the edge of your mother’s headboard with the foggy bloom of super glue and the lonely mauve of waxy lipstick leftovers. … Continue reading What Have You Done

By Holly Allen Published online with Obelus Journal, 2020 Doug patiently waited over forty minutes for them to make up their minds. He dragged Lawrence off to an old electronics store at the west end of the mall, leaving Louise and Ava hovering over a stale cinnamon roll and a medium diet soda in the … Continue reading Sweet Sixteen

Published in print in issue #44 of Sand Hills, 2020 There was no awards show for me, no posts of amber flesh squeezed into navy linen, navy spandex. No drunken hurrah! with a whiskey bite, no toppled stack of printed shirts- all fuzz and color. I was a no-toothbrush girl with all the other no-toothbrush … Continue reading Homeless/Gay/Lightless

Published online with Funicular, 2020 We pile onto the creaking couch, its skin splitting, its legs moaning, like young chicks in a feathered pile, huddling for warmth against the deep blue of the evening. We’ve piled two thousand times before it seems, it seems comfortable as old shoes, it seems flat as an old sole. … Continue reading Thoughts on a Holiday

Published online with Dewdrop, 2020 The waxy paper spouts of the sacred thorn-apples in the glen had fuzz-covered stalks the color of a frog’s underbelly without any thorns at all. There were no apples, either to better that foul-smelling bush that made no appearance in the tanglings of the vestibule garden of the lonely Saint … Continue reading Michigan Green

Published online with The Courtship of Winds, 2020 Cotton sometimes doesn’t feel like cotton against the bareness of your skin that conjoining of water balloons slopping against some scratchy inch. Cotton sometimes feels like dying or the things that have already been dead like a dog that wandered too far off, thirst radiating from that … Continue reading While Wearing Cotton

Published online with The Courtship of Winds, 2020 The children that run in the skeletal remains of what was once a great public pasture of ornamental grasses and trees decorating themselves with bulbous fruits, red and brown, alien jewels or swollen bellies or the freshly laid eggs of an imagined bird. Under the dried-out corpses … Continue reading It and Not It

Published online with From Whispers to Roars, 2020 I’ve begun to see my home for what it is- an apiary. The cold corner by the bathtub I sit, scrubbing. Scouring the dull, dead flakes of faux-porcelain and cheap linoleum that I outlived once again. Here I scrape out the bad brood, here I wait for … Continue reading After-Swarm

Published online with Rue Scribe, 2020 There is something wholly immutable in these simple auguries I will tell you- 1.Walking round the same two aisles though the breads are stagnant patches, same rye, indelible wheat, silent buttermilk, until my head floats above my body all proofs and prices meaningless. 2.Orbitting steady as planetary fiction from … Continue reading These Simple Auguries

Published online with Heartwood, 2020 Here is a head. It’s not the kind of head you can cut with some plastic sham-of-a knife, thinning out ribbons of lettuce that crackle like aluminum sheets, yearning, pouting for some crushing touch to put the water out.   It’s not the kind of head you can get for … Continue reading Migraine