Tag: NLR fiction
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Wear Your Seatbelt / X and Y Squared / Husk and Core
I practice the front crawl. I push. I breathe. I sturdy myself. I blow out when my head’s in. See and hear the gurgle. In order to keep myself aligned. Flash Fiction by Kim Chinquee
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The Man from the Egg
I had been just as surprised as one might expect when, at the age of ten, while making breakfast one morning, I cracked open what I thought was a normal chicken egg and found, covered in egg white, a tiny naked man—full head of hair, a Roman nose, strong tightly-muscled arms. So statuesque, lying prone…
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The Places You Go When You’re Alive
I walked into the kitchen and peered through the sliding door. Brad stood on the deck. The night had sucked him into a time machine that spit him back out looking more worn and tired than ever before. He rubbed his face and held a jack knife in his right hand. The kind my father…
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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…