Issue #29
The Good Prizes by Daniel Addercouth

Clare’s father gives her more coins for the claw machine. There’s a stuffed Pokemon she wants to win. “These things are designed so you can never get the good prizes,” her father says.

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Lullaby by Darlene Eliot

There’s an owl outside the window. He hoots at 1:00 a.m. The tenants toss, turn, and fume. 3B opens the window, aims a flashlight at the leaves. 2A stomps out with a tennis ball and hurls it at the tree.

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Nowhere Girl by Robert Herbst

You were one car over, all curls and eyes. I was just four wheels, an engine. This was at the stoplight – Western and Milwaukee. I pulled up, and it was like you’d been waiting for me in someone else’s backseat all night.

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Love® by Serena Jayne

Ask a doctor or pharmacist before use if you are taking tranquilizers or sedatives, it’s last call, one of your friends recently coupled, or you are approaching a milestone birthday and in danger of marrying your backup partner.

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Linguistics by Kelly Pedro

The word of the day is chartreuse, a variable color averaging a brilliant yellow green. Origin: Once Latin, now French. Used in a sentence: Elyse knew why the chartreuse sweater was on clearance—the threads were starting to fray, and it clearly wasn’t well made, but Elyse bought it anyway because she found something about it charming.

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God’s Gift by Audrey NIVEN

Hail Mary full of Grace, the Lord is with you as you stoat down the street, hungover, shoes not tied.
‘Ho, Mary!’ he shouts over the traffic.

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Gonna Be a Poet by Tom Vowler

Between hits we hang out at the beach, perched naked on salt-rimed stanchions, cocking a leg high like we’re the Karate Kid, before tumbling into the waves’ icy maw, where we bawl so hard even the gulls are offended.

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Morse Code by Elizabeth Cabrera

The old man fell asleep in his car, his nostrils pressed softly against the steering wheel, but the car kept going, because the old man’s foot was not asleep, was still pressing down hard, and later they would say, it’s not really his fault, he’s such an old man.

Get Your Authentic Stardust Here by JP Relph

The night the sky cracked, I was sprawled on the hood of my car beside that good-for-nothing boy, naming constellations, ignoring his fingers on my neck.

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.

Electric Storm by Kathryn Aldridge-Morris

It’s been twenty minutes since the first bolt of lightning ripped a scar through the purple night sky. Since my mother said to swim in the rain ― it’s fun. Since her boyfriend Colin said he’d join us― to check we’re ok.

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.