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

Newborn Resolve

I knew that I was destined to fail my daughter in some profound way, so when she turned away from my nipple, stiffening in my arms, her soft lips tightly pursed, I was not surprised. My trying to nudge her back to the nipple only intensified her resolve. As she resisted, the strength of her will, the strength in her neck and jaw, astonished me. Hungry and underweight, she lay rigid in my arms. I knew what she wanted. Knew I was out of time, so I did the only thing left to do. I gave her the damned bottle.

Margaret MacInnis lives and writes in Iowa City. Her work has been published widely in literary reviews, most recently in Brevity, DIAGRAM, and Ghost Parachute.

The Seedkeeper

Pandemic Spree