TWO MICROS by JP Vallières

T BALL There’s a tee ball league for grownups. You have to be thirty-five to participate. Thirty-five is the cutoff. If you’re younger you’re not old enough. Joe hit a homer his first time at bat. We cheered and gave him back and butt slaps while he rounded the bases. We hoped to do the same. There was real glory to be had. Trisha hit a double, which is pretty respectable. Donny bunted, we think it was a joke, but Donny seemed ill-humored. Perhaps it was strategy? In the bottom of the seventh, the last inning, I came up to…

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GHOST STORY by Shae Sennett

Being a girl inside Blue Park is insanely humiliating, but I am prepared to weather the storm. I am cased in my androgynous armor of enormous jorts from the early aughts and a baggy N-Sync shirt that subtly signals irony in an overtly post-ironic way — the mustache finger tattoo of my generation. God bless me, I am positively swimming in a sea of cute boys. I feel like I am in a fanfiction, but I am way too ugly to be Y/N and no one here even cares that I am reading Nietzsche’s Collected Works. Nonetheless, I am doing…

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THE OLD WOMEN AND THE SEA by Kate Faigen

Sybil unsticks her thigh from the side of the banana boat. She’s been lost at sea with Celeste for sixty-one days now. Sixty-one salty-aired days of morning dips and back floats at sunset. Stolen sandwiches dropped by seagulls into their laps, lunches and dinners enjoyed over chats about everything and nothing. Don’t feel badly for Sybil and Celeste—the old women are coasting.  In the sun, they spread their arms and tan their skin, speaking like sailors. They laugh so loud and deep they make waves. At nighttime, Sybil and Celeste lie down and hug the banana boat—Cary Grant, they call…

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THE QUIET SHORE by Belinda Rowe

Everything has an end — even stars, but still, when I caressed your face that morning, my fingers panicked at the cold of you. Steadfast for thirty years. Every Friday night we dined at our favourite restaurant, ordered spaghetti aglio e olio and a glass of Chablis. You sat opposite the fish tank where the blue groper circled, I sat overlooking the ocean. Remember you whispered, that’s no life. I didn’t think I could go on; cloven heart, heft of silence, but I kept up Friday nights for as long as it took, sat opposite the fish tank, declined the…

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BEACH LAND by Lucas Flatt

Bushels of sargassum had washed up among the rental chairs. They clogged the beach. And so, fittingly, the day began with disappointment. Marjorie hated it, done up in strawberry print and pale as the moon with sunblock on her little face, thick like cream cheese. She scooped and hurled the stuff away from the chairs, scowling, haranguing the clods of seaweed. Gracie, implacable behind her sunglasses, rummaging through something on her phone, wouldn’t look Paul in the face. Paul toed the pile before his chair. “It’s got berries. We’ll make wine out of it.”  Gracie frowned. “I have our tagline:…

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POTENTIAL DOWNSIDE OF REPLACING YOUR EYEBALLS WITH CORN ON THE COB by Tyler Plofker

Me and Johnny replaced our eyeballs with corn on the cob. One cob stickin’ out of each socket. Buttered. Went in easy. Johnny’s aunt, Joann, said, “Stop that, you boys need your eyes!” We said, “Shut your trap, ya old hag!” We ran into the backyard. Could see just fine. The cobs fell into our skulls and bumped around as we climbed into Johnny’s treehouse. He dared me to dare him to jump from the treehouse to the grass, which was uncharacteristic. I dared him to jump from the treehouse to the grass. Johnny jumped from the treehouse to the…

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LADIES OF THE PRIVY CHAMBER by Mark Iosifescu

“There was a russet-coloured moon of ominous size too low above the whispering bushes; he danced exuberantly for five minutes beneath it after the click when his neck broke. His bowels opened. What a mess!” —Angela Carter, “Elegy for a Freelance”   It was on the basis of his sorry reputation that we arranged for Puccio the ex-valet to desecrate the chapel. When we first arrived in town, we were told by villagers of every description—the lordlings and plainclothesmen, the monastics and innkeepers, the stewards and eelbaiters and whores—that he was a timid man and a coward. Puccio was, they…

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LOST HAM OF VIRGINIA by Joseph Young

That’s a dog, he said, thumbing a pink eyebrow. No, she answered, that’s a bear. Muzzle’s too long. That’s how they come around here. The creature climbed the far hill, cleaving the dew grass in two halves. It got to the door and pushed in, a clattering of end tables. Bears don’t act that way, he said. Dogs who act that way get taken off. He grabbed her by a hip, turned her around. Her nose was burnt so he kissed it. Like aloe jelly, she said. She pressed his dimple. Bzzt, she said. The bear or dog came out…

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ZOO DRINKING IN AMERICA by Avee Chaudhuri

Dutta placed a map of the zoo on the wall and reviewed the group’s itinerary. First they would shotgun beers in the parking lot, then visit the reptile house. There, they would shoot rum (hip flask left pocket) and handle the sloughed snake skin on display very delicately so everyone else would think they were respectable patrons of the Lincoln Children’s Zoo. Next they would watch the giant apes and pull bourbon (right pocket). It was rumored that the lowland gorillas were in a lustful and shameless mood of late. At this point they would purchase concessions to reduce the…

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DEAR PHONE MAN by Karris Rae

Hello. I am Roy Whitaker. I have mailed you before, or maybe not you but someone else at your office, because my phone has been disconnected. I think this is because you think I am dead, but I am not dead, so I would like you to please reconnect my phone. I am waiting on a call from my daughter and if I have no phone I will never get it. And I would shimmy up that pole and see if I could reattach it myself only I am pretty old anymore and I do not have a little neighbor…

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