We Have Commandeered Our Bodies to Science
By Jacob Guajardo
We are confined to a room day and night while the doctor runs tests, while we run out of stories to tell each other. We do not remember arriving. We remember only our lives before and not this room. Today the doctor hammers a bottle of lotion against his palm until it hisses, then gives up….
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Brother’s Keeper
By Sandra Hunter
He is walking. He is about to turn the corner. She is at the window waiting since noon, since last year’s announcement on the church noticeboard, last month’s update, last week’s email, waiting for her temporary Sudanese, temporarily in her living room, her kitchen, her guest room, temporarily so grateful to her American family…
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Get Gregory Out
By Genevieve Plunkett
Patty met Gloria through one of those little paper tabs that you have to try to tear upward, so that you don’t lose part of the phone number. She had never liked introductions by phone—all those disembodied shifts in tone, the liftoff of questions that never seemed to settle—but she had taken the number…
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Say Uncle
by Robert Earle
As my father parked at the strip mall on Germantown Pike, a man walked in front of our car toward Filbert’s pharmacy. He was shorter and heavier and his hairline had receded more, but he looked like my father…
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The Tale of How I. I. Settled the Quarrel with I. N.
by Srđan Srdić
I wished to be left alone, I felt the need to add and subtract, to perform these operations. I felt I could no longer bear it, I packed and left, they didn’t make any trouble. They seemed not to care, one left, another came, as elsewhere….
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Persistence Hunting
by Dave Essinger
My running shoes have hardened into new shapes since the last time I wore them, and they’re stiff on my feet. The half mile to Andrew’s house loosens them a little, but they don’t stop sliding on my heels. Maybe it’s my feet that have changed, though; maybe my shoes are the same….
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Butchering
by Amanda Pauley
Mom is as stunned as a hog after the first bullet when I tell her that Ray won’t be over until after Thanksgiving dinner. I say it to her in between the scraping sounds she makes sharpening her knife. She doesn’t put down knife number five but turns around with it in her hand to stare at my large belly I’ve draped a pink cotton babydoll blouse over…
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In the Bodies of Beautiful Fish
by Michael Minchin
When Quinn Meyers looks up from his cutting board, there are more fish moving along the conveyor: fat salmon, already gutted, or half-gutted, messy from the machines that cannot slice the fins neatly enough or strip the pink membrane from the cavity with the delicate swipe of a blade.
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The Goddamn Caped Canaveral
by Hubert Vigilla
Dylan Cape emerged from the marquee tent to Strauss’ “Also Sprach Zarathustra.” The horns blared and the timpani thundered like daybreak and creation. Through the shimmering, rising heat Dylan surveyed the crowd gathered along the security barricades. Ten thousand strong, he was told, and all eyes on him…Read more
The Buddhists
by Shannon Reed
“The Buddhists have a saying,” Tim said, “that when something breaks, it is to distract us from the beautiful new thing that is being born.” His hands draped loosely, calmly, over the steering wheel. He smiled slightly, the wrinkles at the corners of his eyes deepening, but did not look at his wife…Read more