Issue #22
Protrusions by Misty Urban

They’re called mandibular tori, and yes, since you’re asking, they do hurt, a little, often, not in a take-me-to-the-dentist-immediately way but in an ongoing, low-grade, what-can-you-do-but-learn-to-live-with-it kind of way.

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Trip-trapping by Sara Hills

The autumn I turn ten, we leave my dad and the crusted expanse of Arizona desert, hard-packed sand dotted with dried grass and shriveled cacti, for the suburbs of Chicago.

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Pigs Die by Constance Malloy

I envied the pigs their voice. They weren’t silenced. Well, not before the electrocution or before the Hog Sticker with his 18-inch blade sliced the swine’s throats as they hung upside down.

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Homecoming by Lucy Zhang

When the girl and her grandfather climb the seven flights of stairs to reach the rooftop, they hear the pigeons coo at their footsteps in anticipation.

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Fyodor by Daniel Roy Connelly

Fyodor won a frying pan. Nothing had ever come to him for free but out-of-the-blue he received a letter informing him that he had won a frying pan in a supermarket lottery and would he be available to attend a ceremony with the mayor on such and such a date.

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Uncle by Anthony Varallo

Uncle says we are not to disturb him when he is in the basement.  Because the basement is his place.  His.  Got it?

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Last Day by Briana Maley

You wake up thinking not about dying, but about Trina DeMartini and the inside of her warm mouth and all the places you want her to put it, and maybe if you’re being honest a little bit about your Algebra teacher.

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Café Mozart Dreamin’ by Tracey Meloni

Judie bangs on my hotel door. “The dressmaker is here! Hurry! You have Christmas lunch with Noah at Café Mozart at 1PM!” 

Lady Gaga Considers the Shrimp Scampi by Steve Almond

There were fifty thousand little monsters screaming for an encore, Spaniards, Germans, skinny little French boys, Italians making wet sounds with their tongues.

Fun House by Robert Scotellaro

She’d gotten the fun house mirrors at an auction and had them put up in the spare bedroom.

Little Red Riding Hood by Katerina Kishchynska

Grandma gets her episodes at least once a month. She’ll grow out her jaws and if it happens on a rainy day, claws will tear out of her fingers.

Conversation in Hotel Lounge by Lydia Davis

Two women sit together on the sofa in the hotel lounge, bent over and deep in conversation.  I am walking through, on my way to my room.