Issue #31
Swamp Thing Works through the Third Skandha by Jack B. Bedell

My first week living in this swamp I had a hard time admitting I was what I was. The growth formula, the fire, all the violence and loss—these things caused me to be the thing I am, and what was left of the scientist in me made me want to find an antidote of some kind to fix the problem I had become.

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Snapshots from our Family Trip to Arizona by Courtney Clute

I’m in a sweaty, swaying Dodge Caravan coasting down I-10, squished between Jill and Jacob in the backseat, their elbows jabbed sharp into my gut. My father’s hot dog fingers reach across the middle console, tight around my mother’s cookie dough roll thin thigh.

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Somewhere, Somewhere by Giselle Gerbrecht

Somewhere a young wife is taking a photograph of the full moon through her husband’s telescope. Somewhere across the border, that husband is struggling to purchase ecstasy, his English-to-French dictionary wrinkling in his grasp.

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Clearly Defined Clouds by Jude Higgins

We had pasta for lunch. Linguini with lemon and curls of courgette. I made it because it was your favorite and I picked a bunch of rust-red chrysanthemums from my garden and placed them on the table.

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The Contortionist by Imogen Rae

After every show, when the crowds shuffle home with the stage lights still winking in their eyes and buttery popcorn kernels refusing to digest in their stomachs, you crawl into your trailer, the one where the freaks sleep.

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Belmont Station and it’s 2 a.m. by Max Steiner

Belmont station and it’s 2 a.m. and the father’s stranded out here somewhere in who the hell knows on his way back home, when it should have been a straight shot but has somehow taken him a good two hours to just end up getting lost like the sad-eyed dogs you’ll see tied up side of the highway sometimes and plus he’s starving, so bad it feels like pennies in his guts.

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Salt by Cecilia Wright

Though it is ill-advised, she looks back. How can she not? She looks back and sees the place of her life and her inside of it. Her and her brother rescuing the worms after rain. Moon shining in her dark wet hair, head leaning out the window, smelling the rosemary, smiling, saying goodnight.

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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

Ernst Is Coming Home by Jack Morris

The rumours arrive on the dawn wind and by mid-afternoon the village ladies have landed in Leonora’s kitchen to disembowel the news.

Rosetta Post-its by Guy Biederman

Los Gatos Tienen Hambre, says the post-it on the fridge. Since when did the cats learn Spanish, since when did they learn to write? The same could be asked of you, says another post-it.

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.

The Truths Behind a Pumpjack Dare, Northern Alberta, 3rd July, 1991 by Kate Axeford

I’d hauled myself skywards on steep metal rungs. You were safe below, hurling taunts like stones. We’re two brothers, poles apart, but I’d climbed the ladder. I’d had to. You’d dared me to rodeo the Donkey.