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Healthy Habits: Interdependence
by Valerie Peralta When my doctor’s phone number flashed on my caller ID a month after my biannual blood work I wasn’t worried. “I’m sorry it took so long to call you with this information,” the nurse said. “I’m glad you didn’t call sooner,” I responded. She would have called immediately if the results had…
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Frost Tender
Fiction by Amanda Baldeneaux Autumn loosens everything. The cattails come uncorseted by late September. Hard wind unties the binding of seedpods for spreading. But just before the wind chill dips below freezing and the killing frosts come, the flowers in Crystal’s garden still bloom. Crystal only leased the lot of land from a neighbor, but…
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Altered Earths: Beyond Dystopia
Tackling the Narrative Challenges of Climate Change, On and Off the Page By S.E. Hartz This past weekend, I coped with a particularly bad bout of climate anxiety by watching seven straight hours of Stranger Things. Something about witnessing a group of young kids repeatedly face down various iterations of the same catastrophe, beating back…
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The Ghost of Buxahatchee Creek
Fiction by Bobby Mathews Caleb White has been dragging around behind me ever since I chained his body to an anvil and dropped the whole mess into the deep water near the base of the railroad trestle that spans Buxahatchee Creek. Ain’t no telling where the little bastard will show up. Last week, he was…
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10 Steps to Getting Rid of the Ghost in Your House
Nonfiction by Maureen O’Leary Give away the twelve boxes of your dad’s clothes your mom packed for their move to assisted living where he only survives nine days after finally, painfully dying in hospice care which is nothing like the blissfully drugged good-bye you swear he was promised. His last night in the hospital before…
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Soundscapes: Radio Lessons
by Erin Calabria The first time I heard the world through a field recorder, it was like falling into a parallel dimension. Here was another universe rubbing shoulders with ours, where everything looked the same but sounded completely different. Ears cocooned in heavy foam headphones, I slowly rotated the levels to pull this alternate reality…
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Refinished
Fiction by Brian McVety The can of tile refinisher smells like the shame of gasoline. Zoë was nine when her father let her pump gas for the first time. He remained in their rusted station wagon to argue with the radio. The powerful gush forced the nozzle from her hands and drenched her denim cutoffs.…
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The Fractured Mirror
Results will Vary: The Disruptive Necessity of Story by Edward Karshner Folklore is the rawest, most subversive type of literature. It adheres to no genre. It belongs to the people, the folk, not institutions or mass media conglomerates. As David Southwell writes “any folk culture that could not be regarded as heretical is short-changing the…
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The Forever Project
Fiction by BettyJoyce Nash The bike chain slips. Vee dismounts and inspects the rusted metal, noticing her lumpy leg veins. Poor circulation, big deal. Her blood’s run around her body long enough. “Lemme have a look.” Finn, from Island Mowing, leaves his machine and ambles over in his ridiculous Hawaiian shorts, jumping with birds of…
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The Nitty Gritty
An Interview with Lannie Stabile Interview by Charlotte Hamrick I first met Lannie Stabile about four years ago when we both volunteered for the same litmag. I knew her as a poet who wrote transcendent, heart-stopping poetry. I was (am) a huge fan. Her book Strange Furniture is a favorite of mine. When she branched…