Issue #17
Homesteading by Gretchen VanWormer

In August, Sarah said she’d begin by preserving water. A test run. She’d placed an order online: Ball Pint Jar, Regular Mouth, Set of 12; The Canning Essentials Boxed Set; I Eat Local Because I Can Apron.

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Good Mood by Joanna Ruocco

I am in a good mood, but birds are in a bad mood. What’s up, birds? This morning I did the stretches I never do, the hamstring stretches.

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Downwinders by Sarah Blackman

Inside the body the baby is coiling, flexed, not on the way to becoming but already become. Mother is having a picnic with father and brother and sis.

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Temp by Rob Roensch

The van had no side windows, the driver’s-side mirror dangled like a hand from a broken wrist, the passenger-side mirror and half the windshield were blurry and blue with ice from the storm, and the view out the back windows was blocked by boxes.

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Yellow by Constance Squires

In the Oklahoma City bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building on April 19, 199,5 a Ryder truck rigged as a bomb went of at 9:02 AM, killing at least 168 people and injuring 680 others.

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Silver Bell by Evelyn Hampton

The trouble with the cow was the cow had an adumbrated esophagus, which caused a gastrointestinal incursion from its first stomach into its second, so that nothing from the first could flow into the second.

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Work Done on the Flesh by George Looney

A cave-in one county over keeps me up.  The late news has live cameras at the entrance where men come out, coughing up clouds of dust that shroud their faces and shimmer in the stark light of the video cameras.

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Monster by Aurelie Sheehan

I am lonely, so lonely that I go to the store to buy lemonade and when l see you at the register I say, hubba hubba, sweet lady, and you say [shriek]. This isn’t helping at all, this whole, other people thing.

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Husband by Sara Cappell Thomason

I want a house, a wife, a steak dinner and all my bills paid on time. I want to settle down in a house and get paid. Dinner from my wife served on time

Glass Flamingos by Catherine Roberts

I smash them all. Because who the fuck collects glass flamingos? Around me, pink shards sparkle in the carpet like pretty vomit.

On the Morning Dance Floor by Alex Juffer

Jakey, face pressed to the window and eyes cupped into makeshift binoculars, could see Mrs. Claddagh sitting perched on her couch, speaking to herself.

Prudence by Christy Stillwell

They put the shock collar on the boy and that was it for the nanny. First they put the collar on one another. They were professors in English and Philosophy, all of them smart people.

Pet Shop Boys by Tim Craig

Dayne’s on-off-off-on stepdad, Kel, says stay away from that new pet shop.