“Your mother is afraid of lizards. This is a constant. In the present or the past, she is always afraid of lizards. When you were a child, one crept in the house when your father was out, probably getting high––though you cannot blame everything on addiction. He might have been working.”
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Tractor Town by SJ Sindu
My cousin is late. And handsome. And very late. And, technically, not my cousin. But sex would be complicated, and he’s probably a virgin, and his English is not so good, so I let it go.
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Orchid Children by Becky Hagenston
They sprouted leafy tufts around their necks, their feet took on a moldy sheen, their toenails were atrocious. You couldn’t keep these children inside.
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Hema and Kathy by Anita Felicelli
“Hema immediately wanted to please him. Theo was black-haired, handsome in a vulpine way, stocky and muscular, yet agile, and a little older than Kai. He was French, and played professionally in London for ten years before coming to the United States. He’d played for France’s soccer team in 1998 when they won the World Cup. He wanted the girls he coached—girls like Hema—to be tough and fierce, to be consummate sportswomen.”
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Foreign Objects by Lexi Pandell
A horse can grow a stone in its stomach the size of a grapefruit.
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A Woman Without Origin by Elaine Hsieh Chou
The woman went abroad and began to lose her grip on things.
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Lodestone and Weathervane by Jae Towle
“One never changes the past, Roshelle says. Fundamental misunderstanding. Each incarnation of reality must be internally consistent—that is, if one goes backward in time, it’s not a disruption of the plan; it’s what always happened.”
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Goldilocks by Susan Holcomb
Sometimes my daughter and I become wolves, just the way we were when she was born.
Read MoreHouse Calls by James Sullivan
That look in her eyes. That look she’d gotten in church after Dad. Eyes like before a stormy wave crashes on a sailboat, when you know you’ve tried it all and you’re done done done.
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Mermaids by Emily Lowe
They cut the tongues out quickly, cleanly, like a wire through wet clay.
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Limes by Alexander Lumans
He sticks his hand in his pocket for a brush but pulls out melted gray taffy instead. He thinks, can only think, of that painted tree in the rain.
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Taking Your Formerly Human Lover on a Road Trip to Nowhere by Angela Liu
I break eye contact and focus on the road. There is nothing but asphalt and leveled plains. Something scrapes behind me, and I know you’ve hit bone.
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Greater than Gold by Areej Quraishi
You won’t believe me, but an angel visits me in my dreams.
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Vertebrae by Jess Masterton
Her bones had been bleached, stripped of all muscles and tendons, and you called me to your side as though I were your own.
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Wheat Simulator By Alexander Metz
But, if you didn’t think about that, didn’t think about the unreality of everything, it was great. I couldn’t have said how long I played Steer Rope, or how many steers I managed to rack up. For me, the whole point was not to think.
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Transmissions from the Baby Monitor by Sarah Gerkensmeyer
“You tell us death, and you tell us pain, and you tell us there are good things, too.”
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Before I Stop by Katie Kalahan
I see a woman running towards me at the farthest edge of the path between Jimi Hendrix and Sam Smith parks. She's light on her feet, but tense, taut, and I feel that she's familiar.
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Eagle Beach by Maxwell Suzuki
There are echoes of a childhood and a boy I can just barely remember. There has been an ache in my stomach for me to return.
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Fairy Tale by Sharmila Voorakkara
“The children stare into space. No one here knows what too much means.”
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Geography by Tita Ramirez
None of this was ever a problem before, but sitting there looking at that pee stick, it hit me: if I was going to have to explain the world to someone else, it was a huge problem. I had nine months to learn everything. More like eight, really.
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