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TV Time: Revision as Time Travel
by Sonia Alejandra Rodriguez My favorite type of time travel shows and films are about changing the past. I’m obsessed with the “what-ifs” of what my life could have been: what if I had grown up with citizenship, with money? Would that have prevented the domestic violence and emotional abuse? I long to know more…
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Squirrel Hunting
Fiction by Francois Bereaud On an October morning in the last fall of his life, Art sits on his porch, a cup of coffee fortified with a half shot of whiskey in one hand – fuck you cancer – and his pellet gun in the other. Art’s not a stoic about his condition. He’s angry,…
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Intoxicated by Stories
by Nick Rees Gardner While at a residency last month, I sat with a group of artists and writers circled on adirondack chairs sharing some of Vermont’s finest IPAs. At my feet was a fresh four-pack of The Alchemist’s iconic Heady Topper and in my hand I held a Lawson’s Sip of Sunshine. I had…
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Cleaning House
Fiction by Kim Steutermann Rogers Across town, a large hole is being dug to contain your grief, the headline read. Come by at dawn, dump your troubles, start a new day. The first day, Jen offloaded her ex’s favorite coffee mug, the stained one with a big blue “M,” the logo of his college alma…
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Outsider Perspectives: Insider Narratives
by Mandira Pattnaik At daytime, as I sit at my desk to write, there’s an arresting distraction: a narrative flowing within the metal frames of the window pane in front of me. It’s a scene in flux, or multiples thereof. A tragi-comedy as a middle-aged couple argue, shopping bags in hand, on the street below;…
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Orphans
Fiction by Jamy Bond On clear nights we snuck through the window of the bunk house and made our way to the creek to skip rocks and soak our feet. There was something about the cool air, the sable sky, the moon’s vibrant bloom that made our crime worth its potential punishment. If Mr. Brody…
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Artful Academics: On Methods
by Brandy Renee McCann Among other hobbies, my stepdad, a teacher in our small community in West Virginia, had a side gig as a flea market entrepreneur—think Billy Ray Cyrus t-shirts and clip-on fans. For a number of years flea market paraphernalia was stored in the Book Room. When it was not needed as a…
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Every Which Way, the Wind
Fiction by Pat Foran My Dear Frontal Passage Friend, We’re having trouble hearing each other. Is it windy where you are? Is it raining, Gene Kelly raining, where you are? Is there a fire in the back of your head, burning from the back to the front, perpetually? Is it like falling falling falling without…
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The Pie Was a Final Draft: On Baking a Bad Cake
by Michaella Thornton “Words are my magic, antiproverbial cake. I eat it, and I still have it.” — Ursula K. Le Guin For my daughter’s fifth birthday this spring, I didn’t special order her birthday cake but rather baked her cake from-scratch. I’ve fallen into an unplanned rhythm of baking her cakes on odd-numbered years…
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Three Deer Yesterday While Driving
Fiction by Donald Ryan Headlights interrupted the young buck’s breakfast. With his head alert and body frozen, his close-cropped, sprouting points were as clear as a positive afterimage on the first blink. As the road veered, the beams, straight with the car’s speed of light, yielded the trance. He thawed. Another blink. He was gone,…