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Let Them Come, Tears!

In Issue 94, April 2025 by Marie Chen

It is 7 o’clock in the morning, as usual. On my desk, piles of books and notepads are scattered around the spot where my breakfast—a cup of coffee and a piece of toast topped with a sunny-side-up egg—sits. I’m reading a page from Haruki Murakami’s story “The Wind Cave” in The New Yorker, while Taiwanese pop songs play softly on the computer.

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The Summer of ’94

In Issue 94, April 2025 by Joseph Gulino

I fell in love for the first time during the summer of ‘94. It was the summer before my senior year of high school, the same summer Sammy Davis played baseball for the Vermont Expos. He wore Mickey Mantle’s old number seven and manned his old position, center field. The Mick was Dad’s favorite player. Dad grew up west of the Mississippi in the fifties, so he bled Cardinal red. Stan Musial, Bob Gibson, and Enos Slaughter were his Father, Son, and Holy Ghost.

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3 Words I Learned in Cairo

In Issue 94, April 2025 by Cara Burdon

When I received the news that I had received a scholarship to study on a year-long Arabic programme in Cairo, my initial excitement was misplaced. The promise of exploring this crazy city and building a new network of connections energised me. I bombarded friends with experience living in Cairo with requests for recommendations: historical sites, ruins, restaurants, hip neighbourhoods. I wanted to see it all. Immediately.

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Reparations

In Issue 94, April 2025 by William Cass

I was admitted through the ED to a step-down unit shortly before midnight on a rainy late July Thursday. My wife, Gwen, had driven me there because of increasing gut pain, but upon intake it was noted that I also had significantly low heart rate and blood pressure. Initial tests provided no immediate explanation for any of the conditions, but because the pain became sufficiently intense that they had to administer a low dose of morphine…

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Headwaters of the River Styx

In Issue 94, April 2025 by Chris Travis

I have not ferried a living soul across the straits since Orpheus and Eurydice. I think of her and how she clung to Orpheus and wept into his chest, and he crooned softly into her hair not daring to open his eyes. Orpheus smelled of sunshine and song. Eurydice smelled narcotic like a field of hyacinths, and smoke. Orpheus calmed her with his beautiful baritone warm as a patch of sunlight in the forest.

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On the Prowl

In Issue 94, April 2025 by Swetha Amit

I was just a tiny feral kitten when I lost my mother. She went to fetch food like she did every day. My siblings and I would wait on the porch of a house whose family was always traveling. It was freezing more than usual that evening. The loud noises from the roads made us crouch in fear. Then, I heard this screeching sound followed by a door opening and slamming in the street near the house’s porch. I listened to a woman’s cry of anguish.

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The Gobbo

In Issue 94, April 2025 by Mari Wittenbreer

Mr. Nicola hated our play. I knew because I heard him talking to the assistant director. He had wanted to do Jack in the Beanstalk, with a smaller cast—no little girls, just a boy—So much easier, he said, his hands rising up to his shoulders. The board of directors insisted he do Madeline instead because they could sell books and trinkets in the gift shop. The summer children’s show had to be popular for all the kids. Jack in the Beanstalk was only for the pre-K set. With Madeline it would be like Christmas in July and balance the budget for the entire season—more than pay for the live animals he had on stage when he directed Twelfth Night.

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The Family Fernandez

In Issue 94, April 2025 by Sara Fraser

The new priest dropped consonants from the ends of words, causing consternation and some mirth among the few who still attended mass. Juan, sitting with a group of women near the fountain, an empty plastic water jug by his feet, listened as they talked about him. They were waiting for the bread and making fun of the priest’s Argentinian accent.
“If he were serving coffee, not communion, it wouldn’t matter what he sounds like!” Laura complained. She unfolded a handkerchief and laid it on top of her gray hair against the sun.

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The Muse You Can Become

In Issue 94, April 2025 by Marianne Dalton

As I step through the library door, a soft, comforting scent drifts toward me, leaving me feeling calm. Dad whispers, “Have a look around. It is truly remarkable. I’ll be in this main room if you need me.” As I look around, I quickly realize Dad was right. This library is not like any other I’ve ever seen. It is special.

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Cinema, Painting, Literature

In Issue 93, March 2025 by Peter J. Dellolio

Much of my writing, in fiction and poetry, has been deeply influenced by the imagery of painting and cinema. I have always been very much attracted to the ways in which language can create visualizations of things, people, and events.

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Despair Paintings

In Issue 94, April 2025 by Owen Brown

The world seems to carry on as if there aren’t a million reasons to be shocked. But because I don’t want to go numb, I try to paint them, at least a few. For these, I paint figuratively, as I was trained, even though now, often, my desires, and my output, is abstract. Still, how can we ignore the drought in Afghanistan, the strife in Sudan, the war in Gaza, the invasion of Ukraine? Or even what goes on in our own lives?

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Death Beyond Innocence

In Issue 93, March 2025 by Baxter Mitchell-Knight

Exactly three weeks, six days, seven hours, and forty-two minutes before his sixth birthday, Nathan Front announced to his mother that he was going to die. They had ground to a halt on the road that overlooked the coastline.

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Ambuscade

In Issue 93, March 2025 by Karli Applestein

The clicking of my boots was the only thing keeping me sane. It acted as a metronome counting the steps until all of the anticipation flashed before me. The concrete had been freshly paved, and yet I felt bumps in my path. My shoulders ached and became full of anxiety as I approached the door. I held the book under my right arm; it was my dominant and lucky one.

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Golden Aphrodite

In Issue 93, March 2025 by Tamara Tovey

“Lion,” Artemis chokes out. She needs an excuse. “I want to check on Quill. My porcupine friend. He’s worried about me. Give me a moment to find him.”
Up she leaps, striding through the forest’s thickness, her pace accelerating as fast as her pounding heart, refusing memory with every panting breath.

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Demolishing Barriers, Building Bridges

In Issue 93, March 2025 by Toni Palombi

Father Maurice lives alone on a quiet street where early twentieth-century cottages sit tucked behind white picket fences. A statue of a Cambodian King sits on the living room windowsill, gazing towards us with an expression that is hard to read: it could be serenity, it could be aloofness.

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Make Eden Great Again: Wellness, Purity and Trump

In Issue 93, March 2025 by Mariah Geiger

Since Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s nomination to run the Department of Health and Human Services, many journalists have swiftly denounced his views, backing up their statements with scientific studies to combat his misinforming the public. The effect of these denouncements is that his ideas are so obviously false and dangerous.

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Side Effects

In Issue 93, March 2025 by Linda Heller

On April 26th, 1949, Selma Stern married the wrong man, a circumstance she compulsively complained about, as though Morris Wort, an otherwise infuriately passive individual had grabbed her by the arm, dragged to City Hall, and forced a judge to unite them before her fiancé, a demigod stuck in traffic, could intervene.

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The Kindness

In Issue 93, March 2025 by Henry Lewis

The wind was from the northeast. A cold wind blowing light and steady with the predictability of winter coming on. It was late October. You knew winter was coming hard and there was no escaping it. You just had to bear it.
The man was in his early fifties and needed a shave, the stubble just showing on his cheeks. His broad face and blinking eyes were set to the wind and had a curious look of detachment.