Lies I Tell My Children, by Ruth Joffre

Prose poetry, chapbook, 24 pages, from Bottlecap Features.

Almost a decade in the making, Lies I Tell My Children is a collection of surreal and fanciful falsehoods dreamed up by a single mom just doing her best. Originally inspired by the things parents say to get kids to do their homework or clean their rooms, this series of flash fictions expanded into an intimate portrait of one woman’s mind: her fears, her desires, and the secrets she keeps from her children.

Built around a series of hypotheticals (e.g. “if they don’t stop growing up so fast…”), the stories in this chapbook often veer into fantasy and fabulism, depicting a world where nightmares come to life, ghosts haunt the backyard, and slime molds creep out of the air conditioner. Everything in this chapbook is a lie, and yet every word of it is true.

Ruth Joffre is a Bolivian American writer and the author of the story collection Night Beast. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in more than 100 publications, including Wigleaf, SmokeLong Quarterly, TriQuarterly, Fractured Lit, Pleiades, hex literary, and the anthologies Best Microfiction and Best Small Fictions. She does not have children.