Cover image of Stardust Motel sign in Marfa, Texas by Mobilus
in Mobili, on Flickr. Appears here under CC BY-SA 2.0 license.

I love the large in the small.
Worlds that fit in a pocket.
—Daryl Scroggins
On writing microfiction (10 June 2024)

The Light I Want to Keep, flash literature by Daryl Scroggins, is a full-length collection of 141 written works of multiple genres and forms, including 11 CNF, six flash fictions, 73 microfictions, 34 prose poems, 11 free verse poems, and six poetic hybrids (cheribun, haibun, and photo-poem). Plus color photographs by Cindy Scroggins and by Daryl Scroggins.

Book design and formatting as well as content selections are by yours truly, Clare MacQueen.

Publisher: MacQ (25 December 2024) 
ISBN-13: 979-8-3304-7904-7 
Paperback: 250 pages 

Available at Amazon and Barnes & Noble 

An excerpt follows, which just might be my all-time favorite micro!

Writer Boy

“Nasturtiums,” his mama said, and he threw up at the edge of the garden she was planting.

“Lord have mercy—because of a word?” she asked.

“It got in me,” the boy said. “Behind my tongue. And then I saw the orange color on the paper that holds the seeds.”

She held the garden hose so he could rinse his mouth. “I declare,” she said, “you are headed for a hard row to hoe.”

—First published in MacQueen’s Quinterly (Issue 4, July 2020)

Daryl Scroggins

has taught creative writing and literature at The University of Texas at Dallas, The University of North Texas, and the Writer’s Garret, in Dallas. He now lives in Marfa, Texas with his wife, Cindy, whom he met 45 years ago.

Daryl is the author of The Scold’s Romance: A Story in Prose Poems (No. 3 in The Ravenna Triple Series; Ravenna Press, 2012); This Is Not the Way We Came In, a collection of flash fiction and a flash novel (Ravenna Press, 2008); Winter Investments: Stories (Trilobite Press, 2003); and Prairie Shapes: A Flash Novel (winner of the 2004 Robert J. DeMott Prose Contest).

His fictions, poems, and creative nonfictions have appeared in magazines and anthologies around the country and abroad, including *82 Review, Alaska Quarterly Review, Blink-Ink, Carolina Quarterly, Chiron Review, Cutbank, Dime Show Review, Eastern Iowa Review, Egress, elimae, Fiction Southeast, Green Mountains Review, Hayden’s Ferry Review, MacQueen’s Quinterly, New Flash Fiction Review, New York Tyrant, Northwest Review, Portland Review, Quarter After Eight, The Quarterly, Quick Fiction, and Third Wednesday, among others.

More on the Web: By, About, and Beyond

⚡ Vigilance, microfiction by Daryl Scroggins in MacQueen’s Quinterly, aka MacQ (Issue 25, September 2024); nominated by MacQ for The Pushcart Prize L

⚡ Suitcase Full of Clay: An Ekphrastic e-Collection by Scroggins in MacQ (Issue 18, April 2023)

⚡ Roadshow, microfiction in MacQ (Issue 15, September 2022); one of three pieces by Scroggins selected as Finalists in “The Question of Questions” Ekphrastic Writing Challenge

⚡ Spring, microfiction in MacQ (Issue 12, March 2022)

⚡ Field Trips, flash fiction in KYSO Flash (Issue 12, Summer 2019)

⚡ New to School, microfiction in Eclectica (Jan/Feb 2018)

⚡ Two Fictions: “Almost Baptized” and “Against the Current” in New Flash Fiction Review (Issue 10, January 2018)

⚡ Eight Stories: A Mini-Chapbook by Daryl Scroggins at Web del Sol