Editor’s Note.
When I first dreamed up The Birdseed, I wanted something small: small pieces to be sampled between tasks or savored at the end of the day or devoured when you just need a moment to put your head in the clouds. And that’s what the inaugural issue of The Birdseed Magazine is: it’s a collection of 31 pieces of fiction, each 150 words or less. It’s bite-sized and quick-moving and dandelion-light, and you can read the whole thing in short order.
But we hope you don’t. We hope you savor and linger and share and come back for another taste. For what we found when curating these 31 gorgeous pieces is that they’ll move you.
These piece fly: they look to the sky and propel you up, or maybe let you fall.
And they sway like the sea, lulling and seducing and hiding treasure in their depths.
And they burrow: they’ll get under your skin and sprout something surreal.
And they burn: fire and spice and revenge and hate and other things that burn holes in the soul.
And they go beyond: beyond what you expect, beyond normal, beyond.
This is The Birdseed: odds and ends of whimsy and quirk that will surprise you and leave an after-image far outsized from the number of words on the page.
Welcome! And happy, happy reading.
– Kourtney Jai
Earth
Ground.
We start with green things and old things and sprouts and spring and the beauty and pain of things like love.
Sky
Fly into six pieces that take to the air. These pieces breathe, float, and pause, and they’ll make you want to look up and notice the color of the sky.
Sea
Changing, turbulent, salty, life-giving–those are our “sea” pieces. We have sea creatures, hauntings, and treasure, and each of these pieces will surprise like high tide.
Fire
Let these pieces surprise you like a struck match and settle in like dying embers. Here you’ll find emotion emotion emotion, tempered by quirk.
Beyond
We end with five pieces that whisper and murmur like cool wind through a chime on a summer-still day and that take us to worlds beyond.
The Birdseed 