Not Today

…coffee is nearly at its end, fluttering against the sides of a copper cup embedded with the initials of ‘Faulkner’ and crossed swords pointing down. Our Young Lady packs this cup with her on all the weekend country-scape ventures. Expended into the woods, along old gravel roads, mostly forgotten by modern life; the sights remain untampered as it leads up into the mountain side, where she resides perched…

By Justin Robinson

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Small Heaven In A Suitcase

This story traces a foreign national who comes in the country pretending to be a pastor while abusing young boys. It is a story about homophobia.

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…lies on a burning pyre, a heap of sweltering petrol-doused tyres, logs, two litres bottles, and plastic rubbles beneath his back. White sparks float in his vision but the mercy of unconsciousness doesn’t come. Not even the mercy of an abrupt death comes to save him from the torment. His throat…

By Keketso Mashigo

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The Distance Between Objects

…my running away from home in October 1991, when I was thirty-three years old. I’d been planning my escape for years, first as a child with an active imagination in rural Pennsylvania, then with a brief marriage the summer of my sophomore year of college in Crete, Nebraska. I collected my degree in art and education the weekend Mount Saint Helens erupted. It was the same weekend that I climbed into…

By Mimm Patterson

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Pasture Statues

…continued to pet the cow's cheek. Cate stroked the other, looking for signs of impatience in the otherwise stoic animal, searching its blank yet somehow knowing eyes for knowledge of her charade. What made her want to release the scream that had been lodged in her throat for inconceivable minutes was how Millie, sitting comfortably in her numb arms, was so far away from screaming; Millie, who had…

By Alfredo Salvatore Arcilesi

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Destiny Lines Rhetoric

…often been accused, among other things wholly unprintable, of being too liberal with rhetoric in my writing, as if I were a party politician sitting in opposition. My ideas have been attacked as mere rhetoric. While I do understand, having associated itself with politicians has given rhetoric a bad reputation - in truth, however, it makes the most of a thought; dressing it for effectiveness on occasion. For who would…

By PritiJ

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