Pushcart 2026 L: Peter Hong, “Golgori” from Berkeley Fiction Review #44

Julie Lueken: ‘Forgiveness” (repositioned) Golgori was our god, and for as long as we could recall, we had been under his dominion. He was a proud god, a commanding god, and for millennia, we had lived each day under his guiding word. As we woke, he would write us his instructions into the sky above, and we would rise and work faithful to the night following his every sentence. Day by day, we rose and slept, breathed and died, worked and worked by his word. Each century went by the same as the last: his command, waking the morning skies of each and every generation. Then one day, we woke and looked to the sky, and found his word written in the clouds: giant letters spelling out an enormous “WHOOPS.” Most flash fiction writers at some point write a story about God, or at least a god. Hey, I even wrote one myself, back in the day. But few flash fiction writers, or writers of any prose, find their first published story featured in a Pushcart anthology. The story looks at communication…