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

Tout Va Bien

We burst out my front door like freed inmates, like the guys in Cuckoo’s Nest. We’re both a little fat to be running this much. There are cigarette burns on my arms that glow in the sodium lights over West Central; we do not think we will ever have health insurance. We lie in the street, drunk and laughing, like we're already waiting for the coroner. You say something in French and I say “what’s that mean?” “So far, so good.” “So far, so good.” We do not think we will ever quit any of it, neither one of us.

J. Caleb Duarte is a Massachusetts-based poet and short fiction writer. Instagram: @jcalebduartepoet

After Midnight