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

Tethered Corn

“Which way do you eat your corn? Lines or circles?” The pale smoke drifted toward Erica. A delicate hand gesture shielded her face as she turned her eyes to her guests. The air was scented by wood smoke and brook-side dampness mixed with “cowgirl supper” of roasted hotdogs, BBQ pinto beans tender and split, and local yellow and white sweet corn with kernels so rich they juicily popped in the mouth. Two women ate their corn like inspired and rational typewriters; the other two, creative projects akimbo, ate in tight circles. Laughter. Each couple, in love, tethered as opposite eaters.

Julia Clebsch is a lesbian, feminist writer working with creative nonfiction memoir essays about family, interactions between humans and nature, flash nonfiction, and factual five-minute memoirs.

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