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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Pet Shop Boys by Tim Craig

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

Gallows Pole by Kathy Hoyle

In the dead of summer, while the whiptails hide in sagebrush shadows, and everything blisters in the amber heat and there ain’t nothin but buzzards hummin for miles around, a hanged man dances on a gallows pole.

The Subtle Light by Hetty Mosforth

Word of mouth gets him the job and gets him past the gatehouse. He tramps towards the house like a stray dog, turrets and crenelations coming into focus.

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

After by Claudia Monpere

and after and after and nothing changes, just the names of the children. This one drew birds wearing hats. That one had an orange juice popsicle for an imaginary friend.