| |
 PALINDROME
By Kelle Groom
He was long divorced from a tiny, blond ballerina and was having
a secret affair with a student, another tiny, blond ballerina.
|
 I
JUST LATELY STARTED BUYING WINGS
By Kim Dana Kupperman
“I ain’t ever told nobody how I makes chicken. I
tell people how I makes cakes,” she says. |
 TLOCALULA
By Donald Morrill
Its tongue dangles, hoping to reclaim the taste
of the moon or touch the truth present in the shade of the moment.
|
 HOLES
By Leslie Ann Salley
He
winked at me and said she’d forget. “It’ll be like a hole in her
memory, and she’ll have you to fill in the gap.” |
 FULL
GOSPEL
By J.D. Schraffenberger
When my brother Jonathan has a psychotic break,
Grandma believes it’s the devil inside him, demons in the rap music
he listens to. |
 CRIME
SCENE PHOTO
By Bob Cowser Jr.
I
remember hearing news of her murder and running to find my first
grade yearbook, hoping to fix her school days photo in my mind.
|
 POCKETFUL
OF MUMBLES
By Nicole Walton
"She found your little purple pills," he said, about a
minute later. "Are they what she thinks?"
|
 DAILY
CONSTITUTIONALS
By
Nance Van Winckel
There’s such a warmth and charm about the cracked
gnome, and surely, I think, there’re not nearly enough gnomes in
this world. |
 MY
FOURTH BOYFRIEND
By Tim Doody
There was that night when everything changed: him
and a cab driver fighting outside and then me and our trashed apartment
and then the screaming. |
 ROB
ME AGAIN
By
Katherine Jamieson
My first impression of the man lingered, and I could not separate
my subsequent disillusionment from the romantic circumstances under
which we had met. |
 THE
VISIT
By Candance Greene
“Mama,” my grandmother says in a childlike voice.
I stare into her eyes, not knowing what to say. This woman, the
very core of our family, grabs my forearm and says, “Mama, I’m so
happy to see you.”
|
 DISPLACEMENT
By Jennifer Henderson
Kansas
is not merely flat; it is not the Heartland; it is not the place
where twisters whisk off young girls, sweeping them through air,
across space, out into a vast Technicolor dream. Kansas is here.
Right through that door.
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