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

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If I squint my imaginoscope just right, the garden shed morphs into the writing shack of my dreams, with ventilation (one of the kids put their foot through the plastic corrugated roof), vegetation (the passion fruit vine has snaked inside) and a bespoke desk (step-tread balanced across paint tins). My laptop battery flashes. Five percent for five snatched minutes. I had my own charger once but I sacrificed it on the altar of teenage crisis. “Mom!” The youngest must have found the pom-pom his sister superglued to his Lego astronaut. One hundred new words, as long as I remember to-

Anthea Jones is based in Brisbane, Australia, and scrounges time minute by minute to write whimsical stories of color, excitement, joy, and revenge. Coverfly: Anthea Jones Medium: @anthealjones Threads: @writer_anthea X: @WriterAnthea

Butterfinger

Darkest Night