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

Dunce Cap

“A lion, a goat, and a bundle of grass,” said my teacher, her face like a shut gate. “A person has to ferry them across the river in a boat. As the boat is tiny, this person can only carry one thing at a time. If they leave the lion and goat alone together, the lion will eat the goat. If the goat and the grass are left together, the goat will eat the grass,” my teacher announced. At eight years of age, it took just this riddle and a few seconds to awaken me to the potent scent of life’s absurdity.

Chitra Gopalakrishnan, a New Delhi-based writer, uses her ardour for writing to break firewalls between nonfiction and fiction and marginalia and manuscript.

Knuckles

Bus Stop