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The wind? I seen it alright
Fiction by Sheldon Birnie The wind, the wind, the goddamn wind off the big lake has been roaring over us for days and nights on end; sending wave after countless wave crashing into the rocky shore; howling over the roof, slapping hard at the windows, and cutting in under the eaves and through the cracks…
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Looking Skyward
Creative Nonfiction by Blake Johnson It was a blameless summer afternoon, and perhaps overhead faint cloud wisps intertwined like phantasmal fingers, drifted like angels at play. This was the day your mother gave you a few dollars to spend at the ice cream truck, to buy whatever you wanted. You sprint up the street as…
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Birds of Prey
Fiction by Kelle Schillaci Clarke Three bees come in on his sleeve. They start small but quickly transform in her mind into the size of calliope hummingbirds, thrashing around in the tent’s thick, humid air, slamming their fuzzy bodies against the canvas walls while she ducks and hides. “Hey little fella,” he says, gently cupping…
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Reincarnation
Creative Nonfiction by Rae Theodore Mom found this little mutt in the street with tan and white fur that stuck out this way and that Ziggy Stardust all lightning bolts who we called Max. Mom swore Max was her old beagle Peaches reincarnated as if god didn’t have more important things to do than take…
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Sugar
Fiction by Marvin Shackelford Mama loved that tree, but Dad wanted it gone. Afternoons when thunderheads rolled in from the north he’d stand on the porch and pray, or I thought he was praying, for a storm to come in hard and drop a bolt of lightning right on its top, splinter it straight into…
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Water Viper
Creative Nonfiction by Kaitlyn Crow Tromping around together in the creek, Granddad told me stories about cottonmouths and water moccasins. Twice a year, he drove in from Ravenswood with something new – retellings of “The Seven Wives of Blue Beard;” news clippings featuring bears eating out of suburban trashcans – but snakes came up every…
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The Screech Owl
Fiction by Chris McGinley 1901, Black Boar Mountain, Eastern Kentucky Lydia stood under the old oak tree, close enough to see the vibration in the breast of the screech owl that sat in a hollow up the trunk. She tried to predict the timing of the bird’s eerie call, to sing out just as the…
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Coke Bottle / A Burro’s Tale / Fried
A Small Town Triptych Creative Nonfiction by Charlotte Hamrick Coke Bottle One day Mamma walked in my room and said A body could balance a coke bottle on your butt. She didn’t say if that was good or bad and I didn’t ask. I remember this because Mamma didn’t talk to me directly too much.…
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Vultures Are Everywhere
Fiction by Dave Gregory Lucas relaxes on his front porch, reading, and is jarred by a sudden pulse and buzz from his phone. An Amber Alert glows on his screen. Every working cellphone, across the province, simultaneously receives the same urgent text message. Twelve million people read together: an eight-year-old boy is missing. The suspect…
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Imaginary Deaths
Creative Nonfiction by Stephanie Parent Here is what I remember: The little orphan Heidi separated from her grandfather in Heidi, the Shirley Temple version. I watched the movie one morning before preschool, and then refused to go. My mother let me stay home. Littlefoot’s mother, victim of both a Tyrannosaurus rex and an earthquake in…