“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.”

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. He is the author of This Is Not the Way We Came In, a collection of flash fiction and a flash novel (Ravenna Press), Winter Investments: Stories (Trilobite Press), and Prairie Shapes: A Flash Novel (winner of the 2004 Robert J. DeMott Prose Contest). His poems, short stories, and creative nonfictions have appeared in magazines and anthologies across the country, including Blink Ink, Cutbank, Eastern Iowa Review, New Flash Fiction Review, Star 82 Review, and Third Wednesday, among others.

More on the Web: By, About, and Beyond

⚡ Face of the Deep, ekphrastic prose poem by Daryl Scroggins in MacQueen’s Quinterly (Issue 3, May 2020)

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

⚡ New to School, micro-fiction in Eclectica (Jan/Feb 2018)

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