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Since The Moon Went Away

By Kathryn Silver-Hajo

When Corinne feels on top of her game, she’s a tangerine-stripe cat strutting around the neighborhood, taking in the scents.

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Tumbling

By Kathryn Silver-Hajo

When Norm started to tumble, one by one his friends fell away. Mister Storm Cloud, some said.

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Permanence

By Phebe Jewell

For once, the company of young men delights Dorothy. JB nods as Dorothy describes what she wants: the outline of a heron just taking flight, wings raised, beak pointing toward its destination.

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When They Find Him

By Andrea Damic

Full Moon beacons above a silhouette hiding in the dark. She welcomes the silence. Ineffable relief.

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Sundog at My Window on a Midwestern Winter’s Afternoon

By Jay Summer

Glistening white sunlight bounds through my window, bouncing across the wooden floor like a pristine and puffed up Bichon Frise parading across the room with such pomp, you’re tempted to believe they understand the concept of “best in show.”

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So Many

By Ben Roth

We’re sitting on the stoop late one afternoon when a guy walks by with a dog. “Look at this asshole,” my friend says to me.

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Cleaning House

By Bill Merklee

Months after the accident, we’re clearing out your house. It’s a daunting task for such a small place. Books everywhere. Endless vinyl but no turntable. Shelves of souvenirs from the same places as the stickers on the back of your charred and crumpled Jetta.

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Hive

By Kelli Short Borges

Mandy says she’s queen of seventh grade and we’re her workers and she “ha ha ha’s,” but her eyes flash venom and it’s annoying because Mandy’s the new girl and already thinks she’s royalty but she’s so pretty that we whirr around her…

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If It Is Ever Summertime Again

By Thomas O’Connell

It is the raft that you inflated for our daughter to float upon, drifting around the clubhouse pool. The raft is the last place where your breath remains.

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Candy Loving

By Len Kuntz

We were trailer park kids who stole things. Middling shit. Squirt guns. Bazooka Joe. Saltwater taffy. Licorice. Playboy magazine. Gordie was always sore. His dad tooled belts. Used them on Gordie. Buckle end to the back and shoulders. My dad was still doing years in Walla Walla. DWI. Vehicular Homicide.

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Seeds of Stars

By Richard Stimac

Willa’s older brother set a blanket out in the backyard. His name was William, but people called him Billy. Willa’s full name was Willamina.

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Listening

By Diane Payne

You waken to the sound of an owl hooting, two cats screeching, and the sound of humans crying, their grief whirling into the eternity of nocturnal voices reaching out…

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Pit Stop

By Mikki Aronoff

She cuts the engine and swings down from the cab like a spider monkey flying through rainforest. She thrives on heights, but she’s running out of diesel and there’s that hot date with a trapezist seven exits away.

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Things That Have Fallen

By Mikki Aronoff

The wind blew and the door splintered. She squeezed you out fresh as a lemon, just in time for Jeopardy. The only time they took your picture, it was a cold day in December.

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Dear Mathilde

By Mikki Aronoff

At dusk on the last day of second grade, we stopped doing wheelies in the empty lot down the street to watch Mathilde, rigid on the sidewalk as her mother shoved a suitcase into the trunk of someone’s car. Her mother never turned around. Never waved goodbye.

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Tijuana

By Victoria Ballesteros

“In dreams, I glide past borders and through concrete doors to reach places I have never left. I fly over green picket fences and bougainvillea trees adorned with slivers of the past.”

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A Growing Collection of Oddities

By Meg Pokrass

At the Japanese lantern festival, the Spinster and I hip-bump in, psyched about whatever people think of us, two zaps of purple in life’s crazy shuffle, licking wasabi from our lips, ignoring each other’s hair, unpedicured or manicured, candid about our hard-earned frumpiness.

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Bind yourself to us with your impossible voice, your voice! sole soother of this vile despair.

—Arthur Rimbaud, “Phrases

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