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CREATIVE NONFICTION

Little Things I Hug Huge by Sudha Balagopal

January 26, 2022

  The way Appa held the sponge-tipped brush of white shoe polish. The way he ran the snowy viscosity over my scuffed canvas shoes, on top of the laces, around the eyelets. The way he placed my shoes under the…

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Blackbird Dreams by Meg LeDuc

January 12, 2022

Content Warnings—mental illness, suicidal ideation   Close to midnight, I approach the Michigan-Ohio border, headlights flashing around me like starry pinpricks in the vast, dark tunnel along southbound I-75. It’s November 2015—a cold, clear-heaven night—and I’m clocking ninety miles per…

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Choose Your Own Adventure For ’80s Kids by Paul Crenshaw

December 8, 2021

  You are walking home from school. The year is 1983 and you’re 9 or 11 or 13, some awkward age when even the air hurts your thin skin. Maybe it’s the hole in the ozone the news is just…

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This Century, the Last by Kristine Langley Mahler

November 17, 2021

  Everyone is coughing behind a mask. The papers warn that the only way to avoid the sweeping sickness is to limit contact, but kids are still playing together in the streets because October in Cloquet, Minnesota is rarely this…

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Gun Case by Charlie Geer

November 3, 2021

  Later, after my uncle’s suicide, the gun cabinet would be moved into the attic, but in the early eighties it still stood in the upstairs hall, just outside my bedroom door. An unassuming wooden display case with twin glass-paned…

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some things I knew by age seven by Shaina Phenix

October 20, 2021

In every story we are precocious, fast, little mothers, little women living in questionable child bodies. Men stalk the straps of our training bras sliding off our shoulders. Our mothers scold us for getting ruined or dirty—always reminding us of…

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Antediluvian Animals by Keely O’Connell

October 6, 2021

  The plane lands in the one hour of tilted midday light that January sees daily. I step down onto the icy runway, and my new principal throws my bag into the bed of a red pickup. I climb in…

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The Hierarchy of Soup by Amber Wong

September 22, 2021

  Fan Jou Suri Served at the end of a meal, fan jou suri isn’t a dessert. Or, technically, a soup. But for my brother and me, youngsters living in Boston in the early 1960s, parents pinching every penny, fan…

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Last Cut / No, No One Wins by DM O’Connor

September 8, 2021

  Last Cut   All firsts. You let me drive. You let me choose the radio station. You rested your huge head against the headrest, closed your eyes. Never a willing passenger. Seventy-five quiet kilometres to the London Regional Palliative…

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Father/Figure by Andrea Avery

August 25, 2021

  1. Ambigram In isolation, I mark time by the movement of sunlight across my walls and floors. I awake each morning to the desert sun blazing through the east-facing back door. The sun conspires with the automatic pool cleaner…

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