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

Mother Drives

Father motions her behind the steering wheel. We’re on the field he graded with a landing strip in mind, so where’s the harm? She backs away and when I look up from the back seat, her black curly head is unbelievably in charge. And doesn’t she fly! Floors our cranky Morris Oxford, skids switchbacks, screeches tires — a cloudburst of laughter. Pinball in her power, I shriek glee and terror as brush leaps forward and streaks by. Father stamps on the brake, voice an iron bar crashing onto concrete. I tumble to the floor. And nothing like it ever happens again.

Susan Smith writes mostly poetry in St. Catharines, Ontario, Canada. MOTHER DRIVES happened 63 years ago. Mother never drove. 

The Nurturer

The Arrival