Dream of Veils
Microfiction by Meg Pokrass & Jeff Friedman
The circus arrived at midnight. I could hear the strange music as the caravan passed through our two-block downtown. I wanted to join them, even if I was embarrassed by my toy-checked pajama pants and floppy clown slippers. I knew there would be a pretty snake charmer and a languid belly dancer, and that my mother would be upset if she caught me there. The moon hung over the tents like a giant balloon filled with candy. I drifted over toward the big top, holding my stuffed elephant in my arms, only to come face to face with a real elephant. His face reminded me of my lost father, but it felt dangerous to stand close to him. I saw the sign on the belly-dancer’s tent and began edging my way past the elephant, who held out his trunk to stop me from going forward. “Hello,” I said, standing in the beaded entrance of the tent. “I want to watch your show.” The belly dancer, covered in veils, didn’t even take my money; she just began to roll her belly and gyrate, tossing off each of her veils slowly until I could make out her face. “Mom?” I asked.
JEFF FRIEDMAN’s tenth book, Ashes in Paradise, will be published by Madhat Press in Fall 2023. Friedman’s poems, mini stories and translations have appeared in American Poetry Review, Poetry, Poetry International, New England, Review, Flash Fiction Funny, American Journal of Poetry, Cast-Iron Aeroplanes That Can Actually Fly: Commentaries from 80 American Poets on their Prose Poetry, Flash Fiction Funny, Flash Nonfiction Funny, Hotel Amerika, Best Microfiction 2021 and 2022, and The New Republic. He has received an NEA Literature Translation Fellowship and numerous other awards. Meg Pokrass and Friedman’s co-written collection of fabulist microfiction, The House of Grana Padano, was published by Pelekinesis in spring 2022.
MEG POKRASS is a Scotland-based author of eight prose collections and two novellas-in-flash. Over the years, her work has been anthologized in 3 Norton Anthologies of flash fiction form including Flash Fiction America (W.W. Norton, 2023), Her work has appeared in hundreds of literary journals and anthologies, including Electric Literature, McSweeneys, Five Points, Smokelong Quarterly, and Wigleaf. Meg and Jeff Friedman co-authored the fabulist microfiction collection, The House of Grana Padano (Pelekinesis, 2022).Her new collection of flash fiction, "The First Law of Holes" will be published by Dzanc Books in 2025.