Category: Prose
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An Existential Question
By Robert McGuill His cousin was what to me? Exactly? An ex-niece…in-law? I was her mother’s brother-in-law until I divorced her mother’s little sister, my ex-wife, Marie…plus, I worked for her dad in his body shop one summer when I was twenty, so that made me something too, I suppose— I don’t know. You think…
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Heat Visions
By Damieka Thomas That summer, we were living in Grandma’s old run-down trailer in Olivehurst, California, which Mama deemed Meth Capital, U.S.A. It was painted an ugly off-white with sky blue trim. For months, there was no shower because the trailer was under construction that never seemed to end since our uncle from the Bay…
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Ithaca
By Bryan Price [] As the interview was winding down, she ran her hand through her hair distractedly and asked if I’d ever met him—Jean Dagault. I said, once, in Ithaca. She asked me what it was like and I said what was what like? Meeting him or what was he like? She said both or…
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Body Doubles
By Katie R McKay I’ve always hated the spring, but it’s the time of year I’m most prone to falling in love. When I think back to that spring, I think about so many things, things like the balmy weather, the day drinking, the rolling nature of the days, one blurring into another in a…
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Indio, California
By Britt Astrid Alphson There is a viciousness about it, Indio. Bark scorpions and the collapsing of breath, of time, of anything besides a careening sort of heat. The Morongo Casino Resort juts from the soil like some beckoning reptilian creature: the older patrons with their rotting teeth, acres folded upon acres of fuck-you-green putting…
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The Elsewhere or: On Reading A Brief History of Time
By Jacob Simmons In less than half a century, man’s view of the universe has been transformed. In less than a year, I’ll be forty. Jesus. Forty years old. When I was in my twenties, I moved to the middle of a blackberry field, into a farmhouse that roasts me like a chicken when Fresno…
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Sarvisberry
Nita sits in the recliner in her dim bedroom, though it’s nearly noon. She parts the drapes to look for Peg’s car, but it doesn’t come, and it doesn’t come, and there’s that thump in Nita’s chest whenever her daughter is far from her.
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A Good Host
We bought the house privately. That was why we got lucky, because it wasn’t listed on any of the realty websites. There was just a sign in the road, pointing to a windy drive that ended at a detached garage.