by Jeff Friedman
There’s a gnome hidden in my home. He leaves scraps of paper with wise sayings neatly printed on them on pillows and shelves, in lower drawers and in the pockets of coats and shirts. He also leaves dirt on the floor, and sometimes I hear him singing softly in a foreign language. I’ve caught a glimpse of him several times and tried to catch him, but he’s fast and elusive and before I can get anywhere near him, he’s disappeared. Maybe he has the power to become invisible. Who knows? I’ve heard that gnomes guard a treasure, and I’ve also searched my home for a treasure chest, but I’ve yet to find it. Sometimes, I attempt to lure the gnome out with a plate of sugar cookies, but hours go by without the gnome appearing; the minute I doze off, one or two cookies vanish from the plate. I find a trail of crumbs, but they don’t lead me to the gnome. It’s as though he dropped them to mislead me. I talk to the gnome, reason with it. “We can live together, share the space, happily—just come out.” But the gnome says nothing; he only laughs, as though he thinks I can’t be trusted or believes one day, I’ll be gone.
Jeff Friedman’s eleventh collection of poetry and prose, Broken Signals, was published by Bamboo Dart Press in August 2024. His poems, mini stories and tales, and translations have appeared in Poetry International, Fiction International, Poetry, Agni Online, New England Review, American Poetry Review, New World Writing, Ilanot Review, Hotel Amerika, Antioch Review,100-Word Story, Hole in the Head Review, Flash Fiction Funny, Emerge Literary Journal, The Cast Iron Airplane That Can Actually Fly: Contemporary Poets Comment on their Prose Poems, Dreaming Awake: New Contemporary Prose Poetry from the United States, Australia and the United Kingdom, Smokelong Quarterly, 100-Word Story, Best Microfiction 2012, 2022, 2023, 2024, 2025, and 2026, and The New Republic. He has received numerous awards and prizes including a National Endowment Literature Translation Fellowship in 2016 and two individual Artist Grants from New Hampshire Arts Council.
Emerge Literary Journal 