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Debt to Bees
Bee Girl, Kate Mitchell I am the woman bending on a busy sidewalk to scoop up the pests, the one pulling her car over on the 101 freeway to help one off of the windshield wiper and into some nearby bushes. I am the first to pry them from the shirts of panicked friends…
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Sloppy
Tiny Bust, Jordan Sommer My mom made Manwiches the night I came out. It was a coincidence, probably, and not because she contemplated the image of her fifteen-year-old son nuzzled between two other men when she was deciding what to make for dinner. Her cookbook had a little over seven entries, and three of them…
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The Elder Law Attorney
Overloading, Qintong Li When the old man brought his payment in dimes and hard candies, she hesitated. Peering into his mackerel-blue eyes, she suggested an installment plan. The firm’s policy was to collect up front. It was the nature of her business: taking what little was left of her clients—like this man,…
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Satin
Girlhood, Adira Bennett Today, on an especially beautiful Saturday morning, you run through a list of errands. First grocery shopping, then laundromat, license renewal, and a gift for your sister’s birthday. It has been a long week, but it does not matter as you tend to live with a…
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A Family
The Not-So Virgin Mary, Julia Broeker [Trigger Warning: Depictions of animal death] Cain Somewhere in the suburban-rural divide of New York, a family of four moved into a small house offset from the rest of town next to a set of train tracks. When a freight train came by in the first night, the entire…
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A Constellation is a Group of Stars That Forms a Pattern
Still Air, Shareefah Pereira Me It was the summer between jump ropes and lip gloss and Dad was a rarity and a giant, often asleep during the day or loud in the night, often not around without much explanation at all, and Lex was busy taking care of the…
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Appalachia Heartache
Suffocating Nature, Camelia Rojas For a time I believed in the longevity of a dew-swept skyscape, how the sun-drop suspended itself over hazy blue hills like in my dream of catching fireflies on thistles, of cupping the laurel-webbed fragrance of orchards into a spoon, lilt and scatter, fingertips dripping with the memory of return,…
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Somewhere in Mississippi
nuns still teach abstinence in school, written on the blackboard in thick block letters. “Kissing is bad, too,” they tell the sixth graders, who like neither themselves nor each other. On the first day of summer, the kids run nude through the sprinklers escaping heat and God, together. Somewhere, nuns fan themselves with pages from…
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Virgin Heart
Beach, Jacob Roosa I fear the swell and push of crowds; the incoherent chatter closing in from all sides. I fear looking up from my book and finding someone there or worse, someone won’t be there. I fear this fear will prevent our meeting. I fear the day we meet. That it will…
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Melting
Blue, Linnea Shurig The car stops in front of the worn fence, headlights reaching for the little blue building that waits ahead. A sign flickers in the faint light of the window, the neon blue and red of ‘OPEN’ dancing on a wooden ice cream cone planted outside. I recognize the writing in…
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Foxglove
Captive, Cynthia Lee Esther watched as her mother poured gin into a martini glass. It was a morbid curiosity that fueled her, a morbid curiosity that pushed her gently on the back, urged her to examine this dark, mechanical dance. She focused hard on the glass bottle perched on the antique…
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Numbers
Lost Time, Erica Lee 2697815320. I dialed it one day in late October, waiting for her to answer, the croaky “Hello” crackling through the receiver after a few dial tones. “The funeral was yesterday,” I said. “I played my flute during the service and Brendan turned my pages and it sounded good but I…
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Reincarnation
2, Julia Broeker His parents hold him over his brother’s grave, explain how he is his brother born again. It is the miracle of rebirth, renaming, reclamation. The day of his birth the mother is taken in distress, gazing at her newborn child. The mother has named the son in the guise…
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Self-Portrait: Chinese American
Still Air, Shareefah Pereira From the high plains of heaven rises the mighty Heaven Shining. The stretch of her cheeks comes ten red suns, and yet the three-legged crow – a mutation, an erection, and yet Robin Hood before bed – a white warrior, and yet bibles on bedsides mute the generations. I stuff…
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Jumping Fences
Fruit Basket Part II, Jordan Sommer Five white, shiny, naked behinds streaked from the barbed wire fence where their clothes hung to the murky tank fifty feet away. The light from the moon made the dingy water seem smooth and glassy. It was a nearly perfectly rounded body of water surrounded by a soft…
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Hourglass
Lettuce Hug, Christina Guzman Burt Landers was an old curmudgeon who lived in a run down, Victorian style home, in the middle of a crowded, run down, urban neighborhood. He was born a cranky old man, a trait made worse from aging. I swear his first word must have been “GetoffmylawnYAHdamnkids!” I should know…
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Corpus Christi
Baptism, Mia Silvan-Grau god is just another old man laying claim to my body, with that divine right. he poses on my pale altar, anointing me with the knowledge that no matter where I touch myself he was there first. About the Author Alyssa Russell · Wheaton College Alyssa Russell is a…
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Testimony
Untitled (athlete), Katie Burleson [Trigger Warning: Brief mention of r*pe] The best way to remember is to be born again completely, slick with red and heat, til the cord is cut and the body stilled into awe. At trial, the mind re-buries itself, memories stacked like silver fish. One last drink for every hurt to carry.…
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In the North Room
Waiting, Shiya Wu You are sleeping on 400-count sheets colored fitfully red, your mattress flipped soft, your shades unworried, your lilies unanswered. The window is silent, as you are silent: it is September and you are in love with a dream of arrival. This year — you can smell it! — you know it…
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Childhood Sketch
Beach, Jacob Roosa Two bicycles, one twisted and its back wheel spinning crazily; one boy limps, the right half of his body supported by the other’s hip; we grow up separately and unavoidably flawed, in the way a tomato plant will bend in the rain until the main stalk snaps and small black ants emerge…
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Hollow Ground
Lagomorph Greetings, Natasha Change Everyonehere has a scarecrow smile, dried up and useless as the land. Makes my skin prickle, how these dead stalks like to hiss at closed windows. Bent and forked like devils’ tails, they scratch this hot itch behind my eyelids. Brand me with blistered hands. I know southwest summers, that…
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Body Project
BODIES!, Serena Hocharoen He told me my Body wasn’t his preference. Said it was: too big too loud too feminist and I could feel the slice of his tongue open up trenches in my flesh and skim over fault lines where past meets fat. I tried to change for him. Meet his preference.…