Five Minutes explores five minutes of a life in one hundred words. Five minutes is edited by Susanna Baird, with editorial support from managing editor Maria s. picone, newsletter editor kate meen, and founding reader bobbi lerman, plus our rotating team of guest readers, who you can meet in the latest newsletteR. Five Minutes was founded in October 2020, with the Salem (Mass.)-based writing group Carrot Cake Writers supplying the journal’s first pieces. We’d love to read your five. Submit here

A Dying Art

I inherited my mother’s arthritic fingers and, for a time, stopped writing by hand altogether, convinced that my script was illegible and no one would bother to try to decipher it. But yesterday, when I was writing a birthday card, I was fascinated to see how my cursive letters leaped and bounded on the page. I looped a lariat around the “g” and “y,” added a curlicue like an Arthurian pennant to capital letters, and insisted on a u-turn to cross the “ts” in my signature with a final flourish. Mine is not a modest hand when given its head.

Angela Patten is author of four poetry collections and a prose memoir. Born and raised in Dublin, Ireland, she now lives in Burlington, Vermont. Find Angela at www.carraigbinn.com.

Escapade

City Snow