The girls were odd. by Katie Antonsson

The girls were odd. They didn’t make friends, we realized too late, they collected people. A cab driver who barely spoke English, a barista with a middling art career and infected lip piercing, the neighborhood dog-walker-cum-psychedelics-dealer. We decorated their lives, and we wanted to. We were ravenous to. Every text message, every invitation to the graveyard or the beach, we simply couldn’t say no. Their magnetism was a thing to behold, a gift to feel. They ate little, like birds, claiming assorted food allergies none of us had heard of and none of us questioned. They went to a loosely…

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TRANSITIONAL WORDS by Reza Jabrani

I’m dating her for her looks but she’s ugly. And she’s ugly. Plus, she’s ugly. Ok, I’m not sure how these two relate, complement, contradict, combine. She has lice. The lice are nice. Alive. On me, on her, raucous nibbling on our heads, in my bed. The most action I’ve seen all century. Maybe. I’m only twelve. Or thirty. I don’t know what the last century was like. For me. For anyone. What my past lives were like. She asks me to comb her hair. Not for lice, or any sort of grooming, but because it gets her off. Despite…

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CROWN MOLDING by Elijah Sparkman

There was a hippopotamus that lived in the middle of a shark tank. And when the sharks were concerned about the health of the hippopotamus, they called a doctor who was a penguin. The penguin liked a girl named Cindy and every night they played hide-and-go-seek out in the barn. I know this because I am the hospital bed that the hippopotamus died on. While dying, the hippopotamus grasped me tight. There is an indent the size of him still inside me. It was unfortunate, because he couldn’t have a peaceful death. The secretary dropped something on the button that…

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HOW I SPROUTED WINGS by Beth Kanter

A moth grayer than I knocked on my apartment door this morning demanding that I bake her a three-tiered Meyer lemon birthday cake topped with aster, mint, rose, milkweed, and vervain. I agreed for I know what it is to crave flowers and frosting on the anniversary of one’s own arrival. So I went to the alley behind my building and whipped, blended, and folded handfuls of dirt and dandelion stems as my grandmother taught me to do long ago. Water from a rusting hose nozzle the recipe’s only binding agent. At the stroke of midnight, I presented the birthday…

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TRANSMISSIONS: Books of Some Substance

Welcome to Transmissions, an interview feature in which X-R-A-Y profiles podcasts. Books Of Some Substance can be found at the website, Apple podcasts and YouTube. David Southard reads. He’s written a book or two. Maybe he’ll write another someday. He co-hosts the Books Of Some Substance podcast from his home in South Korea. Nathan Sharp is a graphic designer, an amateur motorcycle mechanic, an explorer of sounds, a reader of fictions, a collector of cameras, and a fixer of discarded things. He co-hosts the Books of Some Substance podcast and lives with his partner and his cat in California.   Rebecca…

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THE SECRET AGENT by David Hansen

After many years of covert development the CIA perfects a method of creating ghosts. It’s a huge breakthrough. The CIA feels ghosts will be the ultimate spies: invisible, non-physical, and totally disinterested, as in, not vying for personal advantage, the way living spies sometimes do. One day the department heads circulate an internal call for volunteers for “a very important mission.” All the star agents show up. Guys who are at the absolute peaks of their careers. Guys who have done it all. Wet work, PsyOps, dark ops, other stuff no one has even heard of. Company men to the…

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TRYING TO FIND SOMETHING BETTER: An Interview with Steve Gergley

Since 2022’s A Quick Primer on Wallowing in Despair: Stories (LEFTOVER Books) Steve Gergley has been steadily and consistently adding to an impressive body of work. The Great Atlantic Highway & Other Stories (Malarkey, 2024) is a showcase for Gergley’s specialties, and reflects the ache at the center of modern existence. Contemporary fables grounded in grit follow tales of high weirdness, and the mundane frequently threatens to be undone. A fuzz pedal is just as likely to be encountered as a strange angel. I spoke to Steve about the collection.       Rebecca Gransden: Like it always felt like…

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WORK FROM HOME by Jenn Salcido

It’s not looking good for us, Jeremy thinks, as he opens the fridge and peers inside. A small, desiccated head of broccoli, provenance unknown, stinks up the whole place like farts. A pickle jar sits inert, nary a pickle floating inside. A sprig of grapes wilts on its vine.  Jeremy shuts the door. “We don’t have any food,” he calls out to Dog, the dog.  Dog barks. Jeremy makes a motion with his hands like what is he supposed to do about this, moves to the living room, and commences with his morning fretting routine. First, he backs his body…

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THE SENTIENT, BUDDHIST TOMATO GREETS ITS DESTINY by Christy Tending

We have 100 words for green, none of which they are privy to, and all of which are an essential part of this process. We reach our way toward the sun, our skin stretching to accommodate the water in our bellies, surrounding next year’s seeds for next year’s tomatoes. It is not insignificant to remember that we hold infinite life. That there is our finite purpose, and there is the part of us that, invincibly, will live on in every year to come, so long as this land exists, so long as someone is willing to accept volunteers. She runs…

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A FINAL AND PERSONAL PRINCIPLE by Sean Cavanaugh

Connor’s room had big windows and blinds with strings that touched the floor, and which were always drifting unevenly, a little to the left or to the right, halfway up or basically closed, but always open slightly because of an interceding object or a crease in the PVC, so the sunlight was partial and unfulfilled. There were a few old trophies on his dresser and a fishbowl, forever bubbling, with two statuettes and a little red beta. In front of the bed was a large TV, and to the side was a small leather couch where he’d sit with his…

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