Mud Season Review
How I Found God in the Laundromat
By Sam Gridley
Actually He was a little white-haired Jewish lady. But therein lies the tale. As a twelve-year-old I scorned the ritual of becoming a man. The religious part of it, I mean, which included meeting each Thursday with the assistant rabbi to study my Haftarah portion, the verses from the Prophets that I would chant at my Bar Mitzvah….
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Perigee
By Marie Curran
The beauty catches in my throat as we pull onto the road to Asher and Moira’s farm, my husband beside me and our daughter in the backseat. It’s thirty minutes from our home in town, but we have not visited in months. Asher’s zinnias and onions, ripening pumpkins, and Moira’s pecking hens in a meadow of goldenrod meet us on the narrow dirt road up to the old farmhouse…
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Visiting Sarah
By Rebecca Fishow
My sister Sarah meets me at the San Diego Airport. I am transit-tired, unwashed. I smell my sweat mixing with the thick hibiscus air. She pulls up in her pimped-out Altima, its rims shiny, windows tinted opaque, luring people into caring who is inside. She steps out of the car and onto the curb…
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The Minister
By Eric Barnes
When someone dies in the North End, there is a funeral. Many people attend. It is our only communal act. There are really no other reasons for a crowd to gather. There is a church downtown that still has a minister, an older man I see sometimes near the corner store or near the church itself, where he sweeps the wide steps leading up to the entrance…
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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
Somewhere in That Space
by Warren Read
The first time I heard the story of Rodney’s mother I was with Eddie DeMint and Marcus Wallen in the gazebo at Douglas Park, picking off a half rack of malt liquor that Marcus had swiped from his dad’s store. We’d ditched the dance before the last song, ducking the chaperones and sprinting…Read more
Making Weight
by Edward Boyle
My final year of high school wrestling starts today and this will be the last time I eat bacon and eggs until the season ends. I have to cut sixteen pounds to get to one hundred and forty, and I’ve been at it long enough to know that the wrestler who starts cutting weight early ends the season right…Read more
Beanie’s Island
by Alan E. Kennedy
She had flown up from Houston, unannounced, because there was something she had to tell me, she said. She put down her shoulder bag and gave me a quick hug, then walked over to Richie who had been dozing in his chair in front of the TV and gave him a kiss. There were gifts as usual: another fishing vest for Richie…Read more
Remnants
by Barbara Harroun
We noticed first about Percy not his bubble butt or magnified goldfish eyes looming behind thick glasses, nor his crooked, wide-spaced teeth, but the exquisite beauty of his mother. We noticed how she crouched down to straighten his maroon tie (those the days of Catholic uniforms) and gaze…Read more