Category: Prose
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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.
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Circling the Drain
After brushing the side walls, skimming the surface, and running the vacuum up and down the shallow end of the pool, Dana kicked off her Birkenstocks and plopped into the deep end.
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Seven-Year Love
Is it crazy to fall in love with a girl because of the way she said no? Fall of 2010, our last year at Calvin College, I was keeping N company while she worked the student apartment desk, and I started talking about depression.
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Now You See Me
A girl goes missing sometime in August. She is on a road trip with her fiancé, driving across the country in a van, documenting her journey on Instagram—#vanlife. She uploads her last post in August. She smiles, holding a crocheted pumpkin. Her milky white teeth betray innocence; her fine blonde hair frames a delicate face.…
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Black Gold
This story is complicit in destroying an ecosystem, our solar system, and the social structure of indigenous communities.
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Ice Is A Rock That Flows*
You and Tom have been together for three months when, meeting him for dinner, you’re taken aback to see that he has the remnants of a shiner, a fading plum-colored crescent on his cheekbone and a scarlet patch in the white of his eye.