Tag: fall 2025
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Eternal Life
by John Schellhase I remember going into a voting booth, the bluetruncated curtains rustling by my hair, my hand on my father’s jeans, the shoes of the other votersvisible around us. When we left, the sky was dark – the night falls early in November – and the cloudswere moving across the face of the…
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Breaking Camp
by Michael Lauchlan Young parents caught in the hot,improbable grappling of marriage,we heaved into a dumpster a largemisshapen chair, filling our lungswith what remained of the week’s trashand years of curdled grease.We turned toward each other,toward a beach we’d all but forgotten,toward what we couldn’t hope to recognize–a footpath leading here. Your fatherhad taken some…
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A Family Portrait
by Cecil Morris We poured our only daughter in the seawhere we’d left my father three years before.My wife held to me, I held to our son,and he upended the bag, her cremains,the grit and gosh of her, there where the seaseethed against the rocks, the waves in turmoilof coming, going, coming, rush and suckand…
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On the Bridge After the Flood
by Deron Eckert A rubber duck floats down the riveralong with baby clothes and toys,a left behind walker since there is nowalking on water, and God knows what elsesince you can’t bear to see people’s livesrushed away in the flash of a floodthat you’ll never understand if you haven’tlived though one or did what you…
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Bike Route, Minneapolis
by Joanne Esser Below street level I look up at familiar buildings that have grown Four stories, windows dark, cool inside, concealing business of the city. Along the edges, patches of red, orange, yellow with secret black hearts. Painted blossoms rise enormous above real ones as if they’re sisters. Sparrows hop…
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Abridged
by Maggie Carter A thick layer of fog clung to the surface of Crater Lake that morning. The ends of her ponytail curled as she trudged through the blue haze, kicking up sand with every step. She was only halfway to her destination, and this strange pilgrimage was made even stranger by the January cold.…
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Intrusions
by Scott Garriott I come upon a familiar scene. New York, or an approximation that my mind can conjure. Leaves fall from the trees that surround me, their bones crunch underneath my boots. The air is crisp and clean, making itself known by the clouds that erupt from my lungs. A towering stone bridge lays…