Tommy and Bobby. Geometry class. Def Leopard tee shirts and gelled-up hair. They were like the fruit our mothers taught us to put back. Apples with bruises, berries gone squish. They weren’t much, but then, neither were we. Fleshbelt under our crop
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Francine Witte ~ Leftover Boys
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Gail Louise Siegel ~ Mouth
As a child, my front teeth dangled over my lower lip like escapees from dental prison. Braces fixed my overbite, but not my diastema—the space between my front teeth—which men found alluring although I did not. Cosmetics aside, they were serviceable
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Mary Lynn Reed ~ Sway
They stand in the middle of a hollowed-out 7‑Eleven, searching for food or water or some artificially-sweetened salvation, but all of it is gone. Not even a pack of cinnamon Trident or a spicy Slim Jim to be found, and they’ve looked in every corner,
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Alexandra Grabbe ~ Buried Treasure
I kneel beside a bag of mulch, digging with a trowel between two stone-encased flowerbeds, when the thought of our future holiday in Russia makes me hum “Vacation” by the Go-Gos. I added the trip to my bucket list after Aunt Masha’s funeral.
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Doug Ross ~ Proud Flesh
Dad says, “In the little cartridge, you mean.”
“Right,” I say, “but also one inside?”
He leaves the bathroom. Goes downstairs. I wait there with his red-gold piss still steaming in the bowl. The barrel should be pointed roughly where my feet
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Valerie Fox ~ An episode between houses and jobs
Maybe still in the recovery room, I hear my Nana say, it’s okay honey, there are plenty of other fish in the sea.
Later, not in the recovery room, I’m feeling formal, a little hungry. So Swoon and I decide to go out for a fancy oyster dinner. We
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Meredith Wadley ~ Mr. Allen’s Long Visit
Mom made us wait at the top of the boarding stairs for Dad. A pilot and former pilot trainer, he’d popped into the cockpit to compliment the CAT crew on a smooth landing. The C‑119’s shrieks still rang in my ears as soldiers in flared jeans and
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Gary Fincke ~ During the Epidemic
We brought a dime every Friday to slide into a slot inside a card featuring a smiling girl on crutches. I loved seeing my card fill up. When there were ten dimes, we would start again on a card with a crippled boy. Miss Klein, our fourth-grade teacher,
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Brett Biebel ~ Lighthouse Inn #6
Days I spent at the Surf Ballroom, waiting around for girls. Sometimes I read books about war or football or how to succeed in business, and sometimes I just sat. I’d find some booth in the corner or else off to the side, and it was always sponsored
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Pavle Radonic ~ ‘Tis the Season
1.
Crossing from the fruit by the sushi aisles there was a S — L — O — W slow amble through something about a Christmas tree. (Not the old up-tempo fave.) Almonds had not been tasted two full months in Jogja, they were unavailable at Hero supermarket
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Kim Chinquee ~ Wildcat
They’re going to the mountain. He let his ex-wife borrow his GPS, so the three of them just wing it: Elle and Jim and the dog named Doodle. Jim says he knows the way, driving through Viroqua, Westby, Cashton, places where he has to drive for work,
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Sofiul Azam ~ Poems
When Species Are Becoming Extinct in the Wild
Each of this planet’s daily spins on its axis matters for those
who face the trauma of being out there without the living green.On the outskirts of my hometown there was a knoll mythically formed
of clay shaken off spades – green grass and -
David Byron Queen ~ Mercy
Still half-drunk and driving west through the Idaho wilderness, a night creature threw itself in front of Paul’s car. His foot sunk into the brake before he knew what was happening. The car jerked and swerved. He was off the road and in a ditch with
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Schuyler Dickson ~ Regis, Can You Hear Me When I Call?
I am the voice in the woods calling, all night calling as the dogs, cowards mostly, footed up to the fence line and warned. I am warning, too. Go get a better job, I call. Buy a new car, I call.
You looked good in a blazer, etc.
During the day, I go
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Sara Siddiqui Chansarkar ~ Saffron
“Diwali Mubarak,” I pack sparklers and rockets in a newspaper bag for a customer sitting astride a motorcycle outside my shop. He gives me 100 rupees. My daughter, Anwari, a fifth-grader, unlatches the moneybox to fetch change. She’s
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Dan Crawley ~ Stray
The bed sheets stripped off, Mom climbed back on top of the bare mattress.
Dad told us, “We’ll get it later. Let her rest,” which caused Mom to say, “How can I ever rest again?” She shrieked, “I’m foreclosed,” like a curse word.
Her sobs
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Toshiya Kamei ~ Skyward
Flapping wings wake me. With a faint, musty scent, a warm Persian breeze caresses my face. Am I still alive? Only a faint groan comes from my parched throat. Another pain shoots through me, and I shut my eyes in agony. Drifting between wakefulness
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Karen Schauber ~ On the Outskirts
On the outskirts, follow the path a ways; the variegated cracks, verdant-grey and heliotrope, twist into a deep fissure, the opening still ahead. Pace yourself —one tiny step in front of the other —before the pungent stink assaults you; you’ll
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Bryan D. Price ~ Crania Americana
pray to nothing or maybe to the
video where the prime minister tells the
world that Franco’s finally dead where do
we go after fascism an american Golgotha
awaits I wish I had hung art on these
walls framed magazine -
Kathryn Mayer ~ Vestigial Twin
Peter, the man at the diner with the growth on his face, finally saves up enough to have it removed in October. Opioid painkillers. Face bandaged. Immobilized at first, a few days – pees in one water bottle, drinks from another, chews on saltines.
In