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by Lindz McLeod
This woman—walking alone, at night—is going to be killed. Here I go again. Watch my finger. See how the passive voice takes you by the hand? See how it leads you to understand the object and the verb? The trouble is, it leaves out the deliverer of the sentence.
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The landlord requires proof of the infestation, and proof—per clause twelve, subsection three of the lease—must come in the form of a living specimen, safely contained. A dead specimen is insufficient, he has repeatedly explained.
by Neal Auch
“Happy birthday, my love. You deserve this.” Bruce lifted the blindfold and waited, counting the heartbeats, as my eyes acclimated to the harsh lighting. Above us, bare fluorescent bulbs flickered and sputtered in their aluminum housing.
by Nuzo Onoh
My grandmother used to say that all fingers are unequal, yet equal. There are long fingers, short fingers, fat fingers, thin fingers, straight fingers and crooked fingers. She said that each finger has a function, and all the fingers work in harmony.
by Ana Hurtado
It hides from me deep below. Amidst bubbles and foam, a skull of gills and scales and spine stashes away under waves of blue. Do we share the same creases beneath our eyes, the ones that feel like gashes in the mornings? Is salt buried above its cheeks? When it swims and breathes does it choke like me, now? Like me, before? And when it cries and screams does the ocean swallow it all up, too?
They went to the island not to save the marriage—for the marriage hadn’t yet occurred—but to save the possibility of the marriage. It’d been a rough year, Carla knew. The details were banal. Stress at work and stress at home. The economy collapsing. The political system collapsing. The planet burning. Despite all this, when her fiancé, Anton, proposed a vacation, she balked.
by Kelsea Yu
Mother’s blade slides into the soft skin at the nape of my neck, sharp and eager. She doesn’t falter the way she does when it’s Maddy’s turn. No cooing or crying. No reassurances as she slices through the spot where—no matter how brief a time Mother lets me stay Awake—my skin fuses to our underbody.
by Dan Stintzi
Sam met Haley at a house party in the suburbs where everyone hung out in the basement, smoking inside and listening to a band called Belladonna play songs that lasted seven minutes. Sam was drunk and high on psychedelic mushrooms. To him, the basement had the quality of a bomb shelter; the world outside had been turned to ash. He didn’t mind this idea.
by Leyla Hamedi
Today his family comes to formally ask my parents—my father—for my hand. They will sit in our front room, the best room, and make small talk as his mother eyes me up and down. Her razor eyes will take in every detail and turn them into flaws and my mother will silently accept her disapproval by not saying a word.
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