Writing – Jenny Hayes

Here are some of the fabulous places where you can find my writing.

Online fiction:

Caitlin put on a CD labeled “Cowboy Country Classics.” Frank had given it to her, so I wanted to be opposed, but I had to admit it made a good soundtrack for the desert highway drive….

Adelaide Literary Magazine: “Where the Spirals Lead”

I didn’t need convincing. Anything Allie’s mom was making would be better than the TV dinners I had at home. Even the Salisbury Steak that I’d stashed in the back of the freezer for a special occasion….

Geometry Literary Magazine: “Going to Lake Anza”

Lina and I are not the kind of sisters that tell each other everything. Sometimes I wish we were but I don’t know if the kind of sisters who tell each other everything are even real, or if they’re just in books….

Jenny Magazine: “Some Kind of Death”

At some point Billy always jumped up and pointed at one of the concert flyers he’d pinned onto the walls, telling us some wild story about what had happened at the show. He’d get on a roll and launch into one tale after another, full of fights and drunken stunts and jealous girlfriends and always laughter. All these bands and bars and people I’d never heard of. A whole world right around us that I’d never even known was there. I wanted to listen to those stories forever, but at some point I always got too tired and crawled off to the closet….

New Flash Fiction Review: “The Stories”

If the Brady Bunch comes up in conversation, Celeste will always mention how she and Anna wanted to form a band called the Bloody Bradies, with everyone dressed like the Brady kids after a massacre. If someone brings up clams, or sculptures, or beaches, she tells the story of Anna in Pismo Beach getting her leg stuck in a giant clam statue at two in the morning, only getting free when Celeste talked a gas station attendant into spraying her thigh down with WD-40. And when anyone says anything about metalheads….

LitroNY: “Mohawk”

Over the next four hours, Mark and I drank about a hundred cups of coffee and made a few discoveries: we liked a lot of the same bands, we could crack each other up over almost anything, and we both preferred the less popular candy bars, like Violet Crumble and Alpine White….

Spartan: “All Monsters Welcome”

After Ted stopped coming by and wouldn’t respond to my texts and emails, after he unfriended me on Facebook, that thing inside me developed its own instincts and I guess I didn’t have to listen but honestly it felt good when I decided to yield to its urges. It wanted to lash out and show itself. Even if I had to disguise myself in carpet to do it….

Eclectica: “Like I Was Waiting”

We would’ve played pool but they didn’t have a table so we were gonna hit the grocery store and get beer for the room but what we didn’t know was that in Canada you can only buy beer at special places and the one nearby was closed. So we got in bed and watched Canadian music videos and fooled around and went to sleep but I couldn’t sleep and I figured since it was a different country The X-Files wouldn’t be on but it turns out they got the same Seattle stations so it was. But it was the one with poison bees and I’m already scared of bees because I’ve never been stung and it seems like it would hurt and if you died that would obviously be worse so I turned off the TV….

Printer’s Devil Review: “Words in Black Marker”

The only other girl is hunched in the lap of a red-haired boy. It’s hard not to roll my eyes as I read their clasped-together hands: PRETTY and SPECIAL. The guys all look the same—dark hair, pale skin, band t-shirts, ragged jeans. My eyes land on the one who looks a bit like Jason. He seems like he could be sweet under that scowl, and his skin is smooth and glowing. I think about what my hand might feel beneath his shirt. “You,” I say, pointing….

The Northville Review: “Chasing the Ferret”

I brought my plastic-domed bowl back to my apartment and got a knife and fork out so I didn’t have to be completely pathetic and use the free spork. The food wasn’t good and I sort of wished I’d walked a little further, maybe up to Broadway where I could have gotten something decent, but it was too late now. Boston fucking Market, why did I even keep going there? When all I had left were a couple of bones and a few sorry globs I threw it away and wondered what I should do next….

Penduline Press: “The Goths”

The goths don’t have pets anymore, though one of them once had a lizard and one had a little brown rat named Albertine….

Penduline Press: “Saturday”

One Saturday afternoon I went to Top Market to buy some beer. I almost didn’t recognize him, but there he was in the dinky housewares section, where they have things like band-aids and mops and needles and toothpicks but never what you are actually hoping to find. My heart accelerated….

Significant Objects: “Dolphins Box”

The dolphins were my secret friends. I’d tell them things I could never tell anyone else. The big one could jump higher, but the small one was the prettiest….

Printed fiction:

“Dear Rosie AKA Ro-Ho-Zee AKA Rosarita Refried Beans”: An illustrated chapbook, part of the Shotgun Wedding series from alice blue books (now out of print)

Hold on I am going to put on a record, wait isn’t it funny that I just wrote “hold on” when you haven’t even gotten this letter yet? DUMB! I bought “CHANGESONEBOWIE” at Pellucidar and it’s hella raw. I am going to write you while the songs are playing and that way it will be like we are listening together!
(Text originally published in Unshod Quills and reprinted at Bust.)

A Six Pack of Stories (print/e-book anthology): “Damsel Drinks a Beer”

The guy, the one who was looking at me before, walks over to my table. He’s wearing a blue t-shirt covered in cryptic squiggles, faded jeans, and a frayed leather cord around his neck with a lone striped lumpy bead. He’s holding a full pitcher and an empty glass….