Special Issue: Place
Black Magic Woman by Mary Thompson

When I am 14, we skive school and go for chips, which we drown in vinegar and nosh on the swings overlooking the sea. A squally wind is blowing right in our faces but we keep eating the chips till they’re gone.

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Leaves by Caitlin Myer

You’ll never leave here, said the man at the bar. You’re going to meet a nice Norwegian man and get married—he squinted at me. No, not married. But you’ll move in together, to a cabin in the forest.

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Ebb’s Nook by Tim Craig

It’s a liminal place, this promontory. Existing at the point where the sky meets the land, the bay meets the open sea and — with the outline of the tiny 12th Century chapel walls still just visible under the soft turf — the past meets the present.

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What Remains by Jan Turk Petrie

Must be twenty or more out there on hands and knees digging up our once beautiful garden right down to the ochre subsoil; no stone is to be left unturned.

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Boy Things by Julia Strayer

I scuff through the woods waiting for hips that won’t come. Heel toe heel toe down the length of a fallen tree. Roll a rock—pill bugs, millipedes, the smell of earth.

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Weather-beaten by Andrew Stancek

On the road shoulder across from our church, our former church, our home, our former home, I am gathering courage to put my Rambler into drive, to step on the gas.

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Stitches Unravelling by Tommy Dean

We’re in his old hometown, where the buildings sag on their foundations, and the metal siding of the ‘70s is rusting, sun-scorched and dusty from cornfield weed killer.

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Marmoset, Raccoon, and Fox by Karen Schauber

My fingers grip and coil around slender shoots as I hoist myself up into the arboreal forest like a feral animal. Tackling the steep incline, I scramble to keep up with the older boys who sprint ahead like sound waves.

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Eternal by Hugh Behm-Steinberg

There’s a boarded up house with the word eternal painted on its side. It used to be a bridal shop: they made wedding dresses on that corner a hundred years ago.

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Eventide by Jayne Martin

Your face is the first to fade from memory; still your voice, a bow caressing the strings of a cello, holds me close. Your scent, evergreens dipping to the sea shore, calms me on days when I cannot locate your name.

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Nature Walk by Karen Jones

It was nature walk day and we were excited even though it’s just the path next to the school and the chapel and even though it only goes through two fields and even though we’ve done it loads of times it was still better than singing hymns or doing ‘rithmatic or sewing…

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Snuffed Candles by Michael Loveday

Samantha feared, in guilty moments, that she loved the lakes more than she loved her father. Today, on their usual monthly circuit, her father hobbled slowly, clutching his stick, and she looped her arm through his.

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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.

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.

Mom’s new boyfriend is a liver fluke by Cole Beauchamp

He attached quickly (can I buy you a drink, let’s hook up, sure I’ll meet your kid), slid into our house unnoticed (toothbrush here, pair of socks there) and two months on, here we are, host and Fasiola Herpatica.

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.

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.