– Alice Walsh My phone ribbits on my bedside locker. I pick it up. ‘Colin’ flashes on the screen. I think Colon. I’ve been calling him Colon since I swiped a like over his Tinder head three weeks ago. There’s a photo flashing too. It’s of Colon smiling proudly with his hand on my shoulder. I’m…
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– Emma Murray She was perfectly average and perfectly plain. That’s what I liked most about her: nondescript light brown hair falling just below her shoulders, a touch of frizz around the frame of her face, brown eyes flanking a smallish nose with small patches of acne that never quite went away after puberty. She did…
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Daddy was a bank manager, a small local branch, just Daddy and four uniformed girls in our little town, the kind that raiders in the mid-seventies hit for an easy rob. Whenever another bank robbery came on the news it terrified us, I‘d have nightmares and my young sister would wet the bed. The fear…
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‘Come on, you can’t blame me for getting upset when you use the f-word.’ ‘I didn’t –’ ‘You know what I mean. Friend.’ Jamie crossed her legs and sat back on the metal bench, observing the school courtyard. ‘Huge insult.’ Cole grappled for words, and didn’t find any before Jamie ploughed on. ‘Friend is a…
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– Claire Hennessy The boy who gives me the second leaflet reminds me of Jack, how soft his hair is without the gel in it, and I want to touch it but don’t. All the way down O’Connell Street and across town I collect boy-impressions along with the paper, and when I go into HMV on Grafton…
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– Lauren Kelly At times my grandparents’ home felt like a museum, or a tomb.  Other times, it flickered to life and filled with familiar sounds and smells – grandmother’s perfume, soft voices rushing to re-tell favorite stories, the smoke of scent-free candles, or a roast cooked to perfection.  It was one of those potent nights….
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– Tucker Chet Markus My name is Jeremiah C. Austin. I was working night shift at The Farm back summer of 2000 when it happened. That’s what we call the Louisiana State Penitentiary, The Farm. Looking back now, there was something brown, like a brown hue, over the whole place, the whole time. Like watching…
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– S.J. Coules There was an old record player there. He had never made the transition from vinyl. The turntable rested on an ugly sepia sideboard by the window. The curtains hadn’t been opened for months. The drawer sideboard had chunks taken from it – probably from when the grandchildren had been over; but he didn’t…
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– Jahla Seppanen When the dream man comes to steal kisses it means the morning has passed. It happens somewhere near ten, after the landscape workers have cleared leaves from the concrete paths outside my apartment. I expect that is what they are doing, but in all honesty cannot say for sure. I have never looked…
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– Mitchell Krockmalnik Grabois 1. Her shoulders smolder but never ignite, unlike chaparral in Los Angeles foothills. 2. I awake. Nurses surround me, slap me, command me to breathe. 3, Her shoulders smolder, her energy always potential, never kinetic. 4. Before I realize anything else, I understand that this is the ultimate payoff of nursing school,…
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