Category: Prose
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Fire Escape
Somewhere in the middle of my tasks I heard the bell above the door ding. Before I saw who it was I dashed back behind the counter, where I felt a rush of air and heard a buzzing noise, almost as loud as a lawnmower. A fly about the size of a large cat landed…
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Someone Simple and Kind
Gurney Norman Prize for Fiction: 1st Place I almost felt grateful for the experience of being somebody’s mistress, Sylvia rolling off of me and springing up from my mattress around 5:30p.m. the afternoons I got to see her, the working day over. It made me feel great kinship with Mrs. Wilson from Gatsby, and I…
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Heliographs
Gurney Norman Prize for Fiction: 2nd Place By then you had already moved on, eager to go out into the sun-spilled city, to see all the spaces across which we’d moved. Trace a psychic map that would make sense to no one but us. Tracking our ghosts here, to this moment of July. Fiction by…
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Debut
Gurney Norman Prize for Fiction: 3rd Place There was an inscription near the front. Perfect cursive, a date from a long time ago. “To Opal. I’m sorry I’m so repulsive. Love, Archie.” Not all of them had inscriptions but they all had the name, “Opal Atwood” on the back cover in thick permanent marker. Opal…
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Cursed
She fixed her attention on that twitching dime-sized bit of skin, and shut everything else out. A large volcano she had not even known was active was right now erupting north of Manila, sending harshly blinding ash-fall over the capital. Fiction by Noelle Q. de Jesus
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Dear Francine du Plessix Gray
“I’m said to be a very gifted analysand,” you humble-bragged in your interview, quite elegantly. I used to be so efficient with my therapist’s time, but the older I get, the more agile I become at skirting the stuff that makes me ugly-cry. Creative Nonfiction by Candace Walsh