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EVERYTHING IS JUST ABOUT THE SAME | Fiction by John Bovio
Amsterdam lights the shadow. That dark part of your soul. The winds off the North Sea cut to the bone. Can eat you alive. This city rages like a destructive and unpredictable fire. The people who come to Amsterdam and lack the good sense to leave usually are sent home. Sometimes breathing. After I killed…
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FROM THE OUTSIDE LOOKING IN | by John Brantingham
a review of Grey Wolfe LaJoie’s Little Ones Grey Wolfe LaJoie’s Little Ones explores the idea of outsider status in its both style and content. Reading this collection, I was confronted again and again by the concept of difference, feeling outside of the mainstream. LaJoie’s style, which is often non-narrative and often defies classification in…
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Buried Nitrogen: A Disquisition on Sticky Rosinweed
By Sandra K. Barnidge Recently, an English professor at my alma mater, the University of Wisconsin-Madison, invited me to Zoom into her “Writing for Money” class to talk about my unusual career. I’m a rare creature in this field, apparently, as someone who has written both corporate messages for large institutions and a genre-bending novel…
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MARKED | Creative Nonfiction by Summer Hammond
“Out of all the boys, Summer, he’s the one you set your heart on?” Sliding down her sunglasses, my mother eyed me in the rearview mirror as we left for Luke Michael’s graduation party, a blue paisley gift bag perched on my lap. What my mother was really saying was, listen kid, you don’t stand…
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The Pie Was a Final Draft: The End
By Michaella Thornton A friend tells me it’s not uncommon for librarians to visit other libraries on their travels. I smile at the thought. Whenever I travel, I visit cemeteries. Dvořák’s tomb in Prague. Keats’ grave in Rome. Mother Jones’ monument in Mt. Olive, Illinois. Stonehenge. My profession isn’t one that necessitates an interest in…
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I GUESS I BETTER NOT | Fiction by Tom Andes
The instructions from the hospital and the nurse both had stressed that he wasn’t supposed to drive or operate heavy machinery after the procedure, but Hank knew the damn doctors just said stuff like that to cover their asses, which was how he happened to be driving his ex-wife’s Honda Accord up Gentilly Boulevard two…
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IT’S FUNNY IF YOU THINK ABOUT IT | By Rob. D. Smith
Sequential Art was my gateway into reading. And I loved to read. Nothing brought me more joy than exploring a fictional world that seemed more glorious than my own world. Comic books and comic strips just helped my already blossoming imagination with the art accompanying the words. Woeful Charlie Brown trying to get through childhood…
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Country Craft: Sometimes they die. Sometimes they come back again.
By Stuart Phillips Two years ago, as the leaves on the sumacs began to blaze and my morning walks began calling for a sweatshirt, I dug up the dozen Chinese peonies from the shaded front of my house. They were easily ten years old, so it was a task, even with soft dirt full of…
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The Community Cash Ghost: Fiction by Katy Goforth
Mama had parked the car a good while ago. We had been sitting here sealed up inside, marinating in the heat. I peeled my thighs off of the plastic seat cover. My sweat like glue making my skin feel as if it was left on the seat cover instead of my thigh. Mama’s Slim 100…
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Artful Academics: About Time
By Brandy Renee McCann I found myself on the front porch of my mom’s house, watching her do laundry in a wringer washer circa 1993. We had rusty water from a bad well. So as not to stain our clothes, my mom caught rainwater in great big barrels and heated it on the stove top,…