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

Sentry Duty

It’s 1969, somewhere in Alaska, my first time on sentry duty for the United States Air Force; the middle of a December night, thirty degrees below zero, a guard shack in front of a nuclear weapons dump site. The Sergeant tells me, “You’ll be relieving Airman Buboltz. He’ll break you in, show you the ropes, tell you everything you have to know.” I nod and sling my M-16 over my shivering shoulder, stomp my booted feet, clap my mittened hands together. With the Sergeant gone, Buboltz asks, “You ever stand inside a phone booth?” “Yeah.” “That’s it,” and he leaves.

Jim DeFilippi’s latest book is The Third History of America: 100 Chapters in 100 Words. Find all of Jim’s books, mostly crime fiction and humor, at his Amazon Author Page: Jim DeFilippi.

In Good Hands

Reprieve