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That Bottle Green Phone Call, 2006
Fiction by Elissa Field It’s expensive to get the phone activated for international roaming but, late after midnight – so late that I have to ask the hotel clerk to unlock the door with the distinct risk I might not be let in again before dawn – I’d got desperate with waiting for news and…
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Something About Unconditional Love
Fiction by Steve Passey Can you give Bevan a ride, she asks me? Sure, why not, I say. It’s the July long weekend, and hot even in the early evening shade. It’s the first holiday I have spent with her and her family and in the heat of the day, and over a few beers…
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BlackHawk Blues
Fiction by Damon McKinney Ayâpami(Back roads) I worked my way through the crowded dance floor, passed the old high school heroes, forgotten football stars, and homecoming queens now strapped down to dead-end jobs, house payments, and different baby daddies. The country music, full of twang, grit, and red-blooded patriotism, blared across the bar and rattled…
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Boy and Cave and Man and Night
Fiction by Chloe N. Clark At eight o’ clock on a Saturday night, the sky opens up so subtly that no one will notice for a few more hours. It’s just a splash of extra-dark across the night, some stars excised, but they’d been dead for years anyway. When Alex notices it, he thinks it…
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When You Get Her Pregnant
Fiction by Kate Arden McMullen When you get her pregnant, the girl, your neighbor Rhoda, something in you feels relieved. Relief’s not the word, but you won’t know the word for how it feels to know how the rest of your life will be. Not because you want it, her, the baby, but because you’re…
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How I Cured My Depression
Fiction by Bethany Browning The school nurse suggested I might have clinical depression, so naturally the first thing Momma did was take me to see her psychic [1]. “It’s a demon,” Miss Charlene said, too bluntly for my taste. “It lives in the upper right-hand corner of your bedroom,” She sucked a deep drag on…
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Amen: The End of Men
Fiction by Owolusi Lucky I was born during harmattan, when sky in stinginess withheld its blessing, before first rain of the second year kissed earths dust, I was crawling about. They said the rain scared me. A lot scares me back then, like the man that wear shadows, and stayed in the dark, waiting for…
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Spy Head
Fiction by M.E. Proctor When we started meeting in the pavilion on top of the dune, Billy was nine years old. Billy’s mom had called the office to tell me he wanted to talk to me. In private, in that place. It struck me as morbid, an unnecessary revisiting of a nightmare. But I’m a…
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Plain People
Fiction by James Cato It wasn’t about her looks. She had lovely skin and a sugary smile and nice clothes. In fact, when she hired me to breed shrimp on her aquaponics farm half the boys in the town stopped speaking to me. Nobody knew her origins and myths circulated on where she was sleeping,…
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A Most Violent Heritage
Fiction by Matt Starr Growing up, I knew violence by the voice it used to holler. A mangled, deep thing, like the wet howl of a bluetick. That’s how it always started, with people barking and carrying on. It ended in a similar fashion but with more whimpering than anything else. Mama and Deddy learned…