"Old Girls and Palm Trees" by Meg Pokrass

Old Girls and Palm Trees is an illustrated collection about iconoclasts, perpetual dreamers, tightrope walkers, living room magicians, cat lovers, and female friendship. The "old girls" in these linked hybrid pieces are women of a certain age who, in an alternate reality, refuse to accept the stereotypes of aging. The collection is conjured from dreamscapes of what just may be true. The poems, prose poems and micros in this collection invite us into an alternate reality where joy and love for same sex friends become a magical force to be reckoned with.

A wild and charming romp into old age that also examines who or what we belong to. Whether a friend who had become ‘a shadow that needed to be sewn back on,’ or the yearning for sunnier climes where childhood friends on their bikes ‘wobbled like palm trees,’ these small marvels are tender, surreal and astonish with their verve and capacity for surprise.

—Frankie McMillan, author of Eddie Sparkle's Bridal Taxi

Old Girls and Palm Trees by acclaimed flash fiction writer Meg Pokrass is so full of wit, whimsy, and wonder, so full of startlingly fresh images and tender emotion, so full of life, love and loss I found myself reading the book through in one sitting and then reading it again. This amazing hybrid collection of linked mini stories and prose poems—reminiscent of the great Israel Writer Yoel Hoffman’s The Shunra and the Schmetterling—tells the story of the friendship of two old girls reunited in imagination after many years, who kiss the rims of their wine glasses, who glow in the dark, who ride their bicycles all over creation, who propose to their cat and hold each other up while skating on ice. Pokrass reinvents old age as a joyous, lovely ride under the palm trees. Old Girls and Palm Trees shimmers with wisdom and aged beauty.

—Jeff Friedman, author of Broken Signals

Meg Pokrass

Meg Pokrass, series editor, is the author of 7 flash fiction collections, an award-winning collection of prose poetry, 2 flash-novellas and 2 new co-written collections of flash, The House of Grana Padano, co-written with Jeff Friedman (Pelekinesis, 2022) and Disappearing Debutantes, co-written with Aimee Parkison (Outpost 19, 2023). Her work has appeared in hundreds of literary magazines and international anthologies including Electric Literature, Wigleaf, Washington Square Review, American Journal of Poetry, McSweeney's has appeared in 2 Norton anthologies of the flash fiction form: New Micro (W.W. Norton & Co., 2018), Flash Fiction International (W.W. Norton & Co., 2015). Meg is the Founding Editor of New Flash Fiction Review, Flash Challenge Columnist for Mslexia Magazine, and teaches private microfiction workshops.