I remember, for my first 18 years, I couldn’t fathom kissing. It was disgusting—a slimy tongue, germed-up spit, faces pointlessly plastered. But somewhere in that 19th year, I sat in the back of his car watching the ocean eat the sun. He leaned his head on my shoulder. And feeling his temple chew his gum against it, and against my head leaning back against his, I couldn’t help but imagine what his tongue was doing to it. How was it moving it around his mouth? Was it slow or steadfast? Roughly, or politely? What did it taste like?
Fall Contest 2024 WINNER Jalen Giovanni Jones is a Black and Filipino writer from Los Angeles. His work has been supported by the Tin House Summer Workshop, the Lambda Literary Retreat, and the Kenyon Review Winter Workshop. A winner of the David Madden MFA Award for Fiction, his writing can be found/is forthcoming in The Offing, Electric Literature, Foglifter, and elsewhere. He is the Assistant Editor of the New Delta Review, an MFA candidate in Louisiana State University’s Creative Writing Program, and served as Director for the 2024 Delta Mouth Literary Festival. Find him on Instagram @jalen_g_jones, or Twitter @jalengjwrites.
The best flash, in my opinion, gestures at the experience of a lifetime with a microcosm of words. The premise of 'Gum' is a simple inquiry into the act of kissing, but toes the line beautifully between wonder and disgust, akin to a flirtatious dance with danger. With an image as simple as "watching the ocean eat the sun", the speaker looks outward to demonstrate both their desire and the impossibility of knowing what the kiss would feel like. I especially loved how this piece ended, with a child-like wonder, to ask not what the experience of kissing would feel like, but what the kisser's mouth would taste like. This flash piece's word choices, though small, construct a rich world for us readers to wade through. I felt every part of this work in my mouth, and I loved it.—Contest Judge Max Pasakorn