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fiction issue 32

The Donor

by Tom Houseman                                                                                      The Donor The girl’s name was Della. She sat across from them in a soft gray chair in the room the agency had set up for them, her black ballet flats pressed firmly into the carpet. She wore dark blue jeans and a maroon, three-quarter sleeve shirt. Her eyes were light […]

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fiction issue 32

How to Make a Rainbow

by Molly Bashaw                                                                                      How to Make a Rainbow Begin to imagine that your life is fantastic, no matter what happens next. Light a candle and let it burn until it goes out by itself.  Give away the clothes and the mobile. Take the changing table extension off the drawers. You are not replacing anything, […]

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fiction issue 32

Cartography

by Alan Ackmann                                                                                      Cartography “The science of mapmaking, in the end, is the science of separating what is known from what has yet to be discovered.” — Fromner’s Comprehensive Atlas, 1978 It’s eleven-thirty at night in mid-November. Arthur and his wife Deb are staring each other down in a rest stop lobby somewhere in […]

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fiction issue 32

The Very Absence of Connection

by Shya Scanlon The Very Absence of Connection Glen couldn’t help thinking that if their roles were reversed, he’d be kicking Bob’s teeth in. Or at least failing at it. Bob wasn’t a big man but he looked strong, and besides he’d seen action in Vietnam. Not much you could do to a man who’d […]

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fiction issue 31

The Sighting

by James Ulmer The Sighting             On a bright fall morning in September, Austin Waller stepped across the parking lot toward the dry cleaner on Jackson Street.  Pulling open the heavy glass door, he entered to find a black girl, eight or nine years old, seated on a stool behind the counter.  Head down, the […]

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fiction

Clef by Melissa Goode

The bus runs down Broadway, from the Bronx through Harlem out to Bowling Green. I listen to Miles Davis’ Kind of Blue, beginning with “So What” and I will reach, “All Blues”. A man boards the bus, carries a little girl, about three years old, and he takes the steps one-two-three, sure. His height, his […]

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fiction

The Testament of Achilles Petrakakis by David Pratt

I, Achilles Petrakakis, knowing death to be not far distant, take up my pen to write this account in the 79th year of my life, at my house in the village of Galatas on the island of Crete on the 17th day of May, 2007. For days, that May of 1941, the sky had been […]

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Contests

Summer Contest Issue Now Live

Summer’s growth…Autumn’s harvest! We’re happy to announce the winners of our summer contest – check them out below and click on the links to read their work. This was a special summer for us, as we tapped into our South Florida roots a little more and accepted poems written in English as well as Spanish. […]

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Contests

She the Apple

Kaylie Saidin After school ends at two-thirty and the bells ring out a long flat sound, stay-at-home mothers congregate in the parking lot outside the campus buildings. The mothers sign clipboards and collect their children, who pull their shirts and beg to stop for fast food on the way home. I watch out of the […]

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Contests

Street Parking

Ashley Hand               I’m waitressing in the Adirondacks for the summer, at an A-frame lodge on the lake in Saint George. We seat guests on the wraparound porch in the afternoons, once the rainstorms make their promenade across the water and gust over the village. My shift starts at […]