Issue #30
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.

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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.

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Magic Fingers by Elizabeth Fletcher

By the fourth motel, I knew to hold my breath for the exhale of mildew when mom unlocked the door. In the shadows of the blackout curtains, we spied the coin box between the two doubles.

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Stranger in the Bright Light by Jennifer Lai

I heard about the abductions from Lisa. First, it was a Doberman. Next, a Ball Python. Then, just yesterday, someone’s Maine Coon. Why they were out in Gladstone Field in the first place is anyone’s guess.

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No Chocolate For You by Lynn Powers

The café hostess hesitates about giving away a prized outdoor seat, but Christine’s raised “don’t-fuck-with-me-right-now” eyebrow gets her a patio table. A harried waiter slaps down a menu. Christine scans it for anything fitting her doctor’s recommendation.

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Love Lies Bleeding by JP Relph

I can’t stop staring at her mouth. Lipstick feathering into the strained sympathy lines there. Like the lines on flower petals, to tempt the bee. Her cheap pink words – nothing medically wrong, just keep trying – aren’t exactly sweet, more like slogans on sad tee-shirts.

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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.

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Carry On by Lucinda Kempe

Once there was a man who loved his donkey, but his donkey didn’t love him back. The donkey loved an eggshell, but the eggshell didn’t love it back.

You, Visitor by Jane O’Sullivan

You don’t like her much, not that you can tell her that. Slugging along behind you, hands in pockets. Sullen as a fish despite the fucking dawn rising over the city, the glory of it.

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.

Grief Sandwiches by Lucas Flatt and Travis Flatt

I’m in the elevator with the angel.
“I’m hungry,” I say.
“You can eat peanut butter again.”
My mother hated the smell of peanut butter. As kids, my brother and I got it all over everything. Mom said it smelled to her like dogshit.

The Bronze Medal by Vincent James Perrone

She wants to meet the pig—snout down, paraded through the town square of sodden earth and
stump dimples, now trailed by serpentine line of freshly showered farmer with tomato noses and
breath prematurely soured from all that auctioneer talk.