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Miles Waggener SOUP               “…and those messages (God would not damn them) do not even know they are champions”                                                 --Jack Spicer   At baggage claim in Mexico City in 1991 a grade schooler approached me with her parents…

John Schneider   SO AS NOT TO DO MORE HARM   Evenings, he downs one then the other brandy Manhattan, swallowing the cherry   from her emptied cocktail glass. The spectral ice cubes remind him how cold summer has become.…

Kevin McLellan IRON The 4:00. Provincetown-to-Boston carries less than 20 of us. No one else here, stern & starboard: the 2nd floor. I think, Dignity directly corresponds to a face—my face & persona just dismissed by a fellow fellow—& I…

Jonathan Bennett COLORS MADE MANIFEST For the friend I couldn’t see   THERE was a fog that morning. Wisps of wild whispers—rolling, light, barely visible—lapped against our neon-pink house. It had become apparent at dinner the night before.  Something seemed…

THE PARADE By Mary Birnbaum   THIS was a long time ago, almost twenty years, and it seems like just a little thing, but I’m going to tell you now because maybe it accounts for a lot. Or more than…

Lynn Gordon THE SURVIVOR   The man on the line was growing impatient, I could tell. “If you could just give me the address, Lucy.” He was going slowly, trying to sound coaxing. “If you’d give me the information, I…

Philip Jason MONSTER               First it was the nose, which fell off while I was ordering a coffee. It landed on the counter. The attendant picked it up with the thin paper he normally used to pluck baked goods…

Andrew Furman CRAWLING   She wasn’t a strong swimmer at first. She had learned how to swim as a child, but this amounted mostly to learning how not to drown, which wasn’t the same thing as swimming. It took her…

Rachel Aimee THE TOGA PARTY The summer I turned fifteen, I resolved to become a real teenager. All of a sudden I couldn’t bear to be a kid for one day longer. I still had posters of baby animals on…

Dennis McFadden OVER THE GARDEN WALL   Two days after Christmas, two weeks after his son, Harry, had barged squalling into the world, the house was teeming with guests, drinks in their hands, teeth shining out of their gobs, there…