Category: NONFICTION
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“Have It Your Way” by Neil Connelly
A Depression-era mother, my Grandma Qualter brought me out to eat only on rare occasions.
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“THE STORIES WE TELL OURSELVES” by Sophie Mulgrew
Everything is a mirror— see how they play with the light? It is only a game, after all.
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“The Him Sim” by Aarron Sholar
But there’s no need for him now because that him is me, and I am more like him than I was before.
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“Lunchtime” by Laura Taylor
Every day at lunchtime, a group of children cut across the green expanse of the school’s front yard, and into the labyrinthian streets of Sherwood Forest.
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“Soul Blister” by K Anand Gall
Soul Blister Even though it has been swelling to a throbbing tightness, you decide not to pop the blister, the artifact of a day at the amusement park. You wore sandals, Keens, the ones composed of two cords and a sole. They weren’t new; you’d had them for years. They moved you between the entrance…
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“Water Works” by Dai Lin
Water works By 10 a.m., the African sun has baked me into the ground at 97 degrees. Like an overgrown, overripe mango, my body drops, collapses, puddles. The Ghanaian women around me are fasting from dawn ‘til dusk, without water, for Ramadan. At the dugout, they dunk and fill their water vessels with a blurring…
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“On Zumba” by Meg Petersen
My Zumba instructor is excited because Halloween falls on one of our class days, and even though this is more than a month away, she tells us to “Get your costumes ready, ladies!” and goes on to gush about every costume she’s ever worn in the who-knows-how-many years she has been teaching Zumba. She is,…
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“Box at the End of the Room” by William Vernon
Box at the End of the Room He is my Cousin Somebody, according to my father, who begins shaking hands and hugging people. I glance at the box at the other end of the big room and see inside it a forehead, nose and lips, hands piled, lying one on the other. “Who are they?”…
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Career Development Assessment by Dan Morey
Career Development Assessment SAID ABOUT SUBJECT: “Seems sort of contrarian.” “Fun to hang out with.” “Not really a team player.” “A bit on the eccentric side.” CHILDHOOD INCIDENTS: Dinner at subject’s father’s club. Subject, younger brother slip away from table. Discover box of coffee creamers in back room. Declare war. Battle rages until man (old,…
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Rocket Worship by Devin Thomas O’Shea
The drones over Yemen sound like lawnmowers in the sky. They are impossible to ignore, and algorithms determine strike targets based on unknown criteria and so the people beneath must wake every day and ask themselves if their behavior is suspiciously terroristic in the eyes of the power overhead. Would entering my cousin’s house be…
Thin Air Magazine 