WHAT I REALLY MEAN WHEN I SAY I’VE BEEN DOOMSCROLLING by Benjamin Ray Allee

We presumed the forbidden knowledge would be some eldritch thing. The death-in-thought, a word for God. A space at the universal end we could not reach. An unthinkable color. A demon in our brother. Horror of all horrors, it is none of these. The secret that obliterates the mind, the antidivinity, it is not great, it is not God, it is not ultimate. Instead, swiping up the cosmic edge, I find: A momma making breakfast. Using more eggs than I would’ve thought, apron on, divulging drama from the clothing store and I do not want to know— An athlete dancing….

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3 MICRO PIECES by Amy DeBellis

Yakutsk Temperature dropping like a dive off a cliff. My lungs full of winter air, clear and sharp as ice. After the airplane and its stale box of other people’s exhalations, each breath is like mainlining oxygen. When I rub my lips together their skin is as dry as the snow beneath my boots. The salt of this morning still furs my tongue. My hands tremble brittle in my coat pockets, and my fingers rub the edge of a ticket, a mint, an obsolete coin.  In only a few moments I will put my memories behind me and walk into…

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THREE MICROS by Sarp Sozdinler

BUTTHOLE PROBLEMS What’s it, what’s it, I can hear you saying, what’s even a butthole problem, or what’s a butthole other than being a problem in itself, of itself, that sounds to me like a butthole problem, butthole, a butthole that rashes like hell after a hot date, that itches like a motherfucker after a night well spent at Taco Bell’s, unlike some other buttholes that smell like proper buttholes, buttholes that smell like years of regret and day-old butter, buttholes that gossip about other buttholes in family functions, about Steve Bannon, about Santa Claus, buttholes that dream of traveling…

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LITTLE CLOUD by Magda Phili

Wouldn’t it be good if I could for a moment close my eyes and find myself in a new scenery where nature plots towards a personal renaissance, a scenery in which I would be able to switch off this painful backlog of asymmetry in my life; lack of funds and lack of kindness, and lack of this and lack of that, lack of that mesmerizing color of the sky like in a Vermeer painting, or any sky of any painting or any sky on earth under which I can walk free from tormenting clouds of thought that make me a…

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STUMP REMOVAL by Andrew Graham Martin

I saw a sign for stump removal and found myself wishing I had a stump that needed removing. Or, more exactly, I wished that should I ever have a stump that needed removing I’d see a sign like that one.  Or, put yet another way, I wished that in my life I could see the things I need to see right when I need to see them. Not before, and not after.

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DAD FIGHTS by Matt Rowan

“Sometimes dads fight,” Dad says. “It’s just a thing we have to do sometimes.”  That’s how Dad explained it to me the first time, and he hasn’t bothered explaining it in any greater depth since.  Every spring my dad starts preparing to fight again. He spends long hours in the garage with his misshapen Everlast heavy bag he bought from DICK’S Sporting Goods many years ago. “It does the trick,” he says, bareknuckling it with even more gusto.  He’s fighting the same fight he’s been fighting since I was born, something about some kind of disagreement that nobody really remembers…

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2000s MOVIES ARE AS OLD NOW AS 80s MOVIES WERE IN THE 2000s by Tanner Armatis

Dallas Jones tweeted.  The fear washed my wrinkles in goosebumps. I Know What You Did Last Summer now as predictable as rain. I am my brother maxing out his credit card. American Psycho is being remade. I am my father wondering about the vote. Idiocracy now a prophetic tale. I am my mother cleaning dishes for different reasons. Lord of the Rings lives on forever. I am the door to other lives.  I scrolled. 

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WE DIDN’T EVEN NOTICE THE ASTRONAUT by daniel joseph

we didn’t even know we were in a rickshaw-type town, but it was a good thing we were, being out of time & money & the rickshaw seeming quicker than walking & like a pay-what-you-can type operation. we were already confused on so many levels – in a real uncertain bind, our heads bouncing along the ground behind us. we didn’t even notice the astronaut when we climbed aboard & about sat on him – as little as he was. but he said he didn’t mind the company, that he was just riding around for the ride of it &…

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TIGER NIGHTS by David Schuman

On tiger nights she wants sex as soon as she gets home. Even if you’re right in the middle of making dinner, no matter if the sauce is just setting up or the souffle must come out of the oven.  “Who makes souffles anymore?” she asks.  What can you say? This is a woman who’s been tending big cats all day, mucking out their habitat while they pace back and forth in their holding cells, running dry tongues over four-inch incisors as they ogle a pallet of deer-legs thawing in the sun.  On the days when she’s on capybara duty,…

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