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Bone on Bone

Bone on Bone

My son starts grinding his teeth in the Fall of 3rd grade. As he sleeps. The scraping, the pressure - I hear it through the thin walls of our shoebox in the Tenderloin. Our third apartment this year. He in the bedroom, me on the couch. It keeps me up all night. Just...

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Play Money

Play Money

At eight I was rich and powerful, controlled railroads and electric companies. A banker, I embezzled rainbows of cash that I flashed at the twins while our parents slept in. Let’s play restaurant, I’d say. Jacob, you’re the chef. I’ll be the customer who leaves a big...

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On Sewing and the Anatomy of Lips

On Sewing and the Anatomy of Lips

On Sewing and the Anatomy of Lips Cupid's bow: The contour line of the upper vermilion. I am drawn tight, nocked with pretty words and flattering susurrations, pulled close like the fletch of a hapless arrow trembling in that heartbeat of before—then released, flung...

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Cow Town Carnival

Cow Town Carnival

Mom was pushing 80 past a semi on the wrong side of Madison, and it was one of them numbers with the cows in it, and you could see the faces peering out through the slats. She must have caught them on the periphery, or maybe she got a glimpse of me in the mirror, and...

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SINFUL TANGO

SINFUL TANGO

Like a toddler lost in a laundry basket full of dirty towels, the Argentine music dances. Cuts through the candlelit fog by the lake. Hip-checks the couple swinging in the hammockfrom making out—still in their bathing suits from earlier that afternoon.They fall. The...

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A Diptych at the Seaside

A Diptych at the Seaside

1. She collects seashells, three in a row. One domed, a Buddhist stupa; another hugs the ground, an earthworm after spring rain, seeking damp earth to nuzzle. The third is halved, amputated, an orange tongue searching a mate. A shell on land is life made nomad,...

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Wedding in Acapulco, 1983

Wedding in Acapulco, 1983

Notice how they stand in the background of an old family photograph. How they all wear white. How they cloak their bodies in the pallor, fade like a troupe of ghosts. Remember how they started disappearing. How your tío went first, drank himself to death. How he was...

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Pose

Pose

His boots lay down a path through the Timothy and Queen Anne’s lace. This tall, tall boy, with his long boy-legs, muscular basketball player’s legs, strides through the meadow as warblers alight on stalks of ironweed, then lift again and call out. The dog sniffs the...

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Fractured Lit 2021 Micro Contest Winners and Shortlist

Fractured Lit 2021 Micro Contest Longlist

I'm so proud of our team for reading so many micros! We're so impressed by the sense of place, the knowledge of character, the use of compression to create resonance in these 52 longlisted micros! Writers please celebrate loudly and proudly, but anonymously as the...

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