Everything, Fiction, Issue 81, Prose

A Promising Student by Danielle Epting

He is a biology or criminal justice major. I don’t know if he thinks about me outside of class. He writes fiction that destroys me. “I really like your assignments,” he says to me the fourth class of the semester. “Thank you,” I say, cordially. “The semester has only just started.” He is 18, and […]

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Everything, Fiction, Issue 77, Prose, vagabond city

The Failure Gene by Chris Klassen

At precisely ten o’clock on the morning of March 23, the spokesperson of the World Health Organization entered the press room and walked up to the microphone. Assembled in front of him were reporters and bloggers from the international media community. The majority represented mainstream newspapers, television channels, podcasts and websites. A few were fringe […]

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Everything, Fiction, Issue 74, Prose, vagabond city

Sprout by Morgan Dick

There’s a look Dallas gets on his face when he’s about to lose his shit. His lip curls, his eyeballs shake inside their sockets, and it makes you wonder: is this really a four-year-old boy and not some Antichrist birthed from a jackal and hidden amongst human children with the aim of mankind’s eventual destruction?  […]

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Creative Nonfiction, Everything, Issue 73, Prose, vagabond city

Strangers: Cricket and the Passage of Time by Zaq Baker

Ever since Hu and Javed and I started making music together, I’ve been trying to tease apart whether Noor’s sense of humor is obligatory-host-dad, ingratiated-Midwestern-sarcastic, or something else entirely. It can’t possibly be Pakistani, can it? Late yesterday afternoon he greeted me with a stonefaced stare:  “You are not welcome here.” He didn’t crack a […]

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Everything, Fiction, Issue 72, Prose, vagabond city

Stonescript by Ryan Tan

I bought a fishing boat and sprinkled twelve life jackets around the deck. On the day of the tour, I wore a durian-patterned shirt with the Singapore Tourism Board logo on the breast pocket. Aaron, a bearded teenager with poop emoji earrings, shoved fifty dollars at me without asking for my license. “I study ancient […]

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Everything, Fiction, Issue 71, Prose, vagabond city

a grocery list by Kelly Stohr

pistachio milk a refrigerator in which to store the pistachio milk floorboards upon which to set the refrigerator in which to store the pistachio milk kitchen walls that house the floorboards upon which to set the refrigerator in which to store the pistachio milk apartment ceiling to support the kitchen walls that house the floorboards […]

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Everything, issue 39, Poetry, Prose

HOLLOWING OUT by ANOUSHKA SUBBAIAH

it is a bright orange sunday and my fists are unripening and i am still contemplating that baby albino turtle born with a wide open heart – so tender and exposed, a small pulsing blackberry abandoned by his own shell. i try to cup his breaths like running water with my two inconsolable hands; each […]

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Creative Nonfiction, Everything, issue 38, Prose

DREAMING MOTHER by ROBIN W.

where she sits on the front steps of the nyc townhouse i will own someday and spouts nonsense, says do your science homework, sweetie. says what matters more, what you say to yourself when you lose or what you say to yourself when you win? repeats c’est la vie. c’estlaviec’estlaviec’estlavie until my ears bleed so […]

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Creative Nonfiction, Everything, issue 25, Prose

MESSIER 83 by CHRISTINE NO

My Own Private Idaho: Tuesday night at the New Beverly Cinema. Five-dollar double feature, don’t remember the second one. Gummy seats, sticky floor and nobody there but us (and the) creeps. You, in love with the girl who stood you up: The thrift shop dress and vintage nickname. Me, last minute sub, extra ticket— Footwork […]

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Creative Nonfiction, Everything, issue 25, Prose

CATHEDRAL by CHRISTINE NO

The West Oakland train stop; defunct and tagged standing sentry between a collapsed overpass and a neighborhood gone to shit. You hopped the chain-link easily and breezed across the hill and dale of broken concrete, the stubborn flora crowding up and in between; moving earth like tiny fault lines, smashing plates together, splicing ground to […]

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Everything, Poetry, Prose

IT’S NOT GONNA KILL YOU by JESSE RICE-EVANS

Voices golden like my heart or wait actually my hands ready to swallow flames like hungry moths or wait actually more like a hawk, jagged insides, chemical-drift, the lisped roundness of your scoopneck soft shirt the one you wore on the roof as the moon licked your neck curled behind you like a small mammal […]

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Creative Nonfiction, Everything, Prose

SPECIAL VICTIMS by MEG STONE

TW for rape I was stuck in traffic on Route 16 when the interview came on the radio. Rachel Dissell, a newspaper reporter in Cleveland, described her investigation of Ohio’s failure to analyze DNA evidence collected from the bodies of women who’d been raped. Close to four thousand rape kits sat on shelves in police […]

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Creative Nonfiction, Everything, Prose

CITY OF STARS by SOFIA SEARS

In between the shatter world headaches and brain splinters and mildew and dry heat on Sundays and the gum-slathered concrete on third street and everything I hated I felt like I couldn’t find anything but picked apart bones and littered daffodils. I was born into the city the same year the Mars Polar Lander landed. […]

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Everything, Poetry, Prose

VAN GOGH AND VARSITY BASEBALL by SARA BARAC

You know what? I like you. I confess this to you in English, staring at the back of your dreadfully empty chair. Yes, I write you notes. Page 1: In art class you told me that watercolor painting was less painting and more making mistakes and being proud of them. You have hairy arms and […]

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Everything, Poetry, Prose

SAND CRAWLERS PT. 1 by DANI PLANER

figure 1: and you were talking about fucking on the beach (about having sex on the beach) and i was reading everything you said choking on sandwiches constantly choking on things going down the wrong way and coming up as something more filled with feelings than i meant to ever really feel and you were […]

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Everything, Poetry, Prose

NORTHWEST PASSAGE by NATASHA BURGE

Concertina clavicles, you shrug and knitting needles escape flesh. Much genuflecting will follow. Alight, we shuck oysters and lick pearls. This is making love. This is the Northwest Passage. This is the loose thread that preludes hallucination. Imprisoned in nomenclature, you are unbridled and scathing. I wait for the word. One word and the sea […]

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Creative Nonfiction, Everything, Prose

DIALTONE by AMANDA ROSE

Our mother named you after a lighthouse keeper from a book she read once and I always wondered, when she told me that, if she thought you would be her salvation because it certainly seemed that way with how she spent those hours secluded in her room talking to you on the phone while I […]

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