CREATIVE NONFICTION
The Word Disorder by Allison Field Bell
I insist I need a corset for under my dress. A wedding. My cousin’s. A purple strapless with a layer of chiffon. My mother is outside the dressing room. She asks if anything fits. I stare down the mirror.…
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Here and There at the Lake by Janice Vis
Content Warning—sexual assault Along the western shores of Lake Ontario, the water splits the land and pools into a marshy inlet webbed with bike trails and bridges. I walk these paths every day, just wandering about, here and…
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The Art of Crafting a Dating App Profile by Anna Chotlos
Do I “heart” this? My finger hovers over the outline of a heart beside a photo of a curly-haired woman grinning, her arms wrapped around two tan dogs. It’s a Friday night, a few months after I moved to…
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The Catalog of Human Memories by Celia Cummiskey
When I was in college, a lover came to visit me in London. He’d been traveling through the Balkans and staying in hostels where he’d needed to furnish his own towel and toiletries. When he arrived at my cubelike…
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The Lighthouse Keepers by Jen Colclough
“You’re a highly intelligent individual, and I’m sorry, but you probably know already that intellect and depression often run together.” The school counsellor raises her hand up and down to simulate a wave. “Your thoughts and your moods move…
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“Pretend We’re Dead” by Melissa Ragsly
My first job was at a farmstand with a twenty-five-foot papier-mâché witch named Winnie towering over the parking lot. Eyes like a lizard’s with vaginal slit pupils and a boulder of a nose. She enchanted people. Drivers would pull…
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Little Boy Ghost by Ira Sukrungruang
Since we’ve moved to England for the year, my son Bodhi fears being alone. He can’t verbalize what it is he fears. Everywhere we go he follows, hand linked into an arm or fingers pinching the fabric of a…
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Walking the Iowa River with My Grandmother after the Floods by Grace Morse
I told you it wouldn’t take long to get to the river. No, I don’t come here alone at night. Yes, I do come here when night is impatiently waiting to arrive, streaking the sky with pink and cobalt…
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Orchid, Excerpt from Orchid: A Memoir by Chaya Bhuvaneswar
“Today I believe in the possibility of love; that is why I endeavor to trace its imperfections, its perversions.” ―Frantz Fanon, Black Skin, White Masks Chapter One: Orchid Tattoo 1. …granulation tissue Granulation tissue is cell growth, after…
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Bus Stop by Gabe Montesanti
The nurse processing my intake at the psychiatric hospital looked like the kind of person with whom I would strike up a conversation while waiting for a drag show. Everything about her seemed to match, down to the color…
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