Matt Kendrick
Writer | Editor | Teacher
Published Online
February 2019
Altercation
Fictive Dream (Biffy 50 Nominated)
"From its cutting edge, the shards of an onion dribble onto the worktop; sliced like rose petals; like tear drops; like acid rain."
READ
September 2021
Black Annis
New Flash Fiction Review (Included in Best Small Fictions 2022)
"The woodcutter’s son cowers in a corner like a pheasant caught within a net. She was in the woods, he says. Her hair was wild, her fingers clawed around a knife."
READ
February 2019
Constellations
The Drabble
"The inner cavern is a spiral galaxy of planets and stars. It pulses like a bullfrog’s throat – alive but dying."
READ
May 2020
End of the Line
Splonk (Best of the Net and Pushcart Nominated)
"She was a green thing. Fell for a fisherman with seaweed in his beard. They planted an acorn together."
READ
March 2021
Everything They are Running From
Cheap Pop (Wigleaf Top 50)
"From their childhoods they are running. From mothers that precision-cut boiled-egg soldiers, golden yolks running. "
READ
May 2020
How to Refill an Invisible Balloon
Green Stories (3rd Place)
"His mum’s red balloon has shrivelled like a sun-dried tomato and is hanging limply by her left ankle."
READ
February 2020
Important to Us
Potato Soup Journal
"P is a dynamo. Kneeling. Arms like a sprint canoeist. She opens a packing box and scrabbles through the contents."
READ
May 2020
It was the Horse that Killed Her
Retreat West (Quarterly FF Winner and Pushcart Nominated)
"Ambulance outside Old Lady’s house. Its blue light whirligigs round."
READ
December 2019
Life at the Colliery
FlashBack Fiction (Included on Biffy 50 2019-2020)
"It’s dark. Darker than coal. Darker than Ma’s eyes when I came home caked in mud after football."
READ
February 2020
a list of things that are white
Fictive Dream (Included in Best Microfiction 2021)
"in the chapel, the chaplain’s cassock; her teeth, enamelled gravestones that bite words in half."
READ
May 2020
The Long Road
Lunate Fiction
"We’re on the long road, you and me. Dirt not tarmac. Potholes and pebbles. The trees either side weave their boughs into an almost-arch."
READ
November 2020
People Present on Carnaby Street
Reflex Fiction (Long List and Best Small Fictions Nominated)
"Four murderers, one of them with horn-rimmed glasses. "
READ
June 2019
Punctuation Marks in an Unknown Key
Reflex Fiction (Long List)
"Morning. Post-wake-up kiss. Stretch. Shower. Dress. Lingering gaze in your direction as I leave the bedroom."
READ
March 2022
The Salt Trick
Oxford Flash Fiction (2nd Place)
"He was inside a game of Tetris and he was broken into shapes. His left leg was an orange L. His stomach was a yellow square."
READ
February 2020
Stepping Out
Bending Genres
"My second first steps are like a walrus in stilettos. Quick, slow, quick, quick, slow. Jelly legs buckling at the knees."
READ
August 2020
Surreal Portraits of the Future Us
Craft Literary
"In five years, on Space Mountain, we’ll blast asteroids to clear a path through the Milky Way."
READ
June 2021
Wittgenstein Sits at the Piano After the Long Cacophony of the War
Reflex Fiction (2nd Place)
"The notes sound in his head. Five of them. The first ones he played as a boy"
READ
Published in Print
Bath Flash Fiction Volume 4
Casanova's Mistress
"He is afraid of slithering things. She has chosen her snake necklace specially. "
Rag-doll and Puppet-man
"Pouring beer is difficult with her felt hands; her unbending, stuck-together fingers. "
Bath Flash Fiction Volume 5
Conchie Faces the Squad
"I chew through commandments as we’re mustered from the dales. No other gods, no idols, thou shalt not kill. Sergeant barks. The others fall in line. I fix his stare. He pins me down, digs in the shears till he draws blood."
BUY
Best Microfiction 2021
a list of things that are white
"fluffy clouds; fluffy sheep; clowns’ faces both happy and sad; the light before it spills into fickle rainbows in the water in the plastic cup on your bedside table"
BUY
Leicester Writes Anthology 20
Bottled Up
"I collected seashells with a thought to doing something creative with them. My best find was a message in a bottle. Blue, frosted glass – I guess it was a gin bottle before it was requisitioned as a love note’s reliquary."
BUY
Reflex Fiction Volume 3
Punctuation Marks in an Unknown Key
"Morning. Post-wake-up kiss. Stretch. Shower. Dress. Lingering gaze in your direction as I leave the bedroom. Downstairs, mechanically munching cornflakes. Brush, spit, toothpaste on collar."
BUY
Reflex Fiction Volume 4
People Present on Carnaby Street on a Saturday Afternoon in Early May
"Four murderers, one of them with horn-rimmed glasses. A steady flow of pushchair mothers who divert to left or right around the woman handing out homemade fliers."
BUY
Reflex Fiction Volume 5
Wittgenstein Sits at the Piano After the Long Cacophony of the War
"The second try, he rests his fingers on the keys and is shocked by the veil of dust, the cold, unfamiliar feel of the wood, the black keys’ hard edges. When his legs were finally long enough to reach the pedals, he told Mutti the piano was as much a part of him as an arm or a lung.."
BUY
Ten Ways The Animals Will Save Us (Retreat West)
Mrs Carmichael won't be happy...
"But in this moment, in the clearing by the large oak where we’ve been practising survival skills, the spectre of Mrs Carmichael hasn’t yet entered our collective psyche, us three teachers, in the flustered post-register phase of trying to realign a basic construct of mathematical thought."