The Commuter’s Most Popular Flash Fiction, Poetry, and Graphic Narratives of 2023

The day Sinead O’Connor died, I was at the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, in the swimming pool, gossiping with poet Erika Meitner about our favorite writers. The next evening, Erika read her brand-new poem “The Shape of Progress” to a small group of us. It was a beautiful tribute to the Irish singer, songwriter, and activist, which she had written the previous night. 

2023 was the year things were supposed to go “back to normal.” Instead, it was the year we realized this was the new normal. 2023, the year ​​ “the ocean off the coast of Florida / reached 100 degrees Fahrenheit— / a toddler running a low fever, / the temperature of an average hot tub.” 2023 was the year the future became now. 

As soon as Erika finished reading, I asked her if I could have the poem for The Commuter. This isn’t usually how poetry comes to the magazine—we reviewed over 3,000 unsolicited submissions this year, and 92% of the issues we published came from those open and free submissions. But this situation was unique.

Not only did “The Shape of Progress” go on to be The Commuter’s most-read issue of the year, at 60,000 reads, it was one of the most-read posts across Electric Literature’s entire site. 

The editorial ethos of The Commuter embraces the strange, the absurd, the darkly comic. Hybrid forms, experiments, flow charts—if we love something, we do our best to find a way to overcome technical hurdles and make it work on the site. We are the home for work whose answer to “Is this too much?” is “It’s just enough.” We published 51 issues this year, including our 300th, featuring established writers like Lydia Davis, Mat Johnson, and Sam Sax—alongside not one, but four poetry and fiction debuts.

All 303 issues are available for free, and we pay all of our contributors. We’re skipping this week’s issue because of the holiday, but ask that you please consider making a donation before New Year’s to support The Commuter’s 2024 season, our sixth year of publication. 

Thank you for reading, and happy holidays!

Kelly Luce

Editor, The Commuter

“Sinéad O’Connor Was Right All Along” by Erika Meitner

This elegy by Erika Meitner was written shortly after the news of Sinéad O’Connor’s passing and is full of the pure emotion, resonance, and gratefulness many were feeling for the life and work of Sinéad O’Connor, combined with her music’s prescience in our modern time. It is the most popular piece on Electric Literature this year!

“My Mother Wrote Her Own Ending” by Arwen Donahue

In this graphic narrative, a daughter connects with her mother posthumously after finding an unpublished autobiography of her life in a cabinet of “tax records.”

God Has Definitely Forsaken Us by Madeline Cash

Madeline Cash’s short fiction is a satirical, hilariously brilliant, examination of a hopeless world and what happens in the aftermath of a society forgotten by God.

Literally Squeezed Out of the Market by Kim Samek

In this piece of flash fiction by Kim Samek, a list writer named Ant is squeezed out of the housing market—literally. After purchasing a skinny house in the city, he struggles to make room for himself in more ways than one. This humorous short story is a surreal and sardonic commentary on the struggles the property market poses to a new generation searching for housing security.

The Bluest Crab at Grandpa’s Funeral by Matthew Ryan Frankel

Chosen by Anthony Doerr as the winner of the 2023 Stella Kupferberg Memorial Short Story Prize, the flash fiction piece “Carapace” by Matthew Ryan Frankel dives into an intriguing event (and dinner plan) at a family funeral.