Issue #26
Snow and Peaches by Gordon Mennenga

Everybody in the Wink-Mart was talking about snow, how the snow was poised on the edge of the state, how Nebraska had to close I-80 west of Kearney, how last year a woman in South Dakota froze to death in a blizzard when she tried to make it to the barn to find her husband.

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An Octopus with a Narwhal Tusk by Tanya Cliff

Fridays, we rarely see patients. After transcribing therapists’ notes, learning all the details of our clients’ messed-up lives—details that I will later pretend not to know as I offer people coffee, schedule appointments, collect co-pays—I spend a few hours tending to the 1000-piece puzzle in the corner.

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The Tour by Marina Vaysberg

The ceilings are all over. Floors don’t seem to matter. As if we could walk in the air and band our heads under the arches from room to room.

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Malignant by Kate Gehan

They were early for the first tour of the cave and waited outside at a picnic table, where her son ate granola bars and her stomach roiled from weak hotel coffee.

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Amelia Earhart Knew Seven Latin Words for Fire by Joe Kapitan

Ignis, the flaming wreckage, bubbling rubber, liquified cloth, her skin charred and blistering, acrid smoke, the tiny thunders of survival’s kicks

I’ll Show You Mine If You Show Me Yours by Eliot Li

I tell you I’ve only ever shown it to a girl who I met on a tour bus in Moscow, where I was traveling with my parents. She had bad acne, and she really liked Duran Duran.

Fulfilling by Fiona McKay

Kate is not ‘imagining it’. There are small tufts of pale fluff on her neck, and no, it’s not ‘just a tissue in the washing machine’ as John suggests. There’s nothing drifting off his shirts, nothing clinging to Ella’s favourite black top, Josh’s Minecraft t-shirts. It’s more solid than tissue, just on her clothes. And only she can see it.

Bog Iron by Shane Larkin

We make stops on the way to our bog plot to look at the little skeletons. Dad tells me about them. Curlews and skylarks in dancing poses. Tiny skulls.

The Storyteller of Aleppo by Donna Obeid

In the barren cold camp, you wear a dusty cape and top hat, wave my cane as if it were a wand and tell me your dream-stories, one after the next, your words spun and tossed like tethers into the air.