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Sweet Dreams

In Issue 17, September 2018, Issues Archive by Carey Cecelia Shook

“I can control my dreams,” Andrew, my oldest brother, told me as I drove him to work at 5:40 a.m. in 2014 because he didn’t have his own car. “That’s why I woke up a little later. I was dreaming, and I wanted to keep dreaming.”

“What do you mean you can control them?” I asked.

Andrew went on to tell me how he always knew he was dreaming, so he made his dream-self do anything he wanted to—fly, teleport, rescue people. That was the first time I heard about lucid dreaming.

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The Immortal Goldfish

In Issue 17, September 2018, Issues Archive by Sophie Austin

When I was nearly eleven years old, I stood up in front of my classmates and proudly announced that I had an immortal goldfish. My teacher, a stout, angry woman called Mrs. Gilbert wasn’t as impressed by this statement as I had hoped.

‘Immortal?’ She said, her tone scathing.

‘It means she’ll never die,’ I said. ‘Mum said so.’

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The Matterings of Molehills

In Issue 17, September 2018, Issues Archive by Anna Davis Abel

“I want to matter.”

You will say this, ten months removed from it all, clutching a pink frilled pillow under your elbows, picking at the fraying seam you pull a little looser each time you come to her office. Your therapist with the little feet will listen and then say what everyone always says. “You already matter. Everyone matters.”

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How a Boy Becomes a Mom

In Issue 16, August 2018, Issues Archive by Jeffrey Seitzer

When my wife Janet was expecting, she read everything she could get her hands on about pregnancy and child-rearing. She gave me regular executive summaries of her findings. While she spoke, I silently wondered about all the fussing. People had been doing this for ages. Surely, it was not that difficult?

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The Flight

In Issue 16, August 2018, Issues Archive by Ellen Gunnarsdottir

My father knew that March would be a long month this year so he died on the last day of February. Nobody expected it. My mother had said that he would outlive her and become a hundred. He was eighty, recently retired from his medical practice, and still indestructible, or so we thought.

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Time Breaks Sometimes

In Issue 16, August 2018, Issues Archive by Beatriz Seelaender

My grandparents shocked everyone at their Golden Anniversary when they informed us that they would be taking a break from their relationship. I for one did not know this was something grandparents were allowed to do. If you made it fifty years, you are expected to get all the way through the end

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View From The O-sento

In Issue 16, August 2018, Issues Archive by Ophelia Leong

Lying down underneath a cloudless sapphire blue sky, I felt the sun’s rays caress my naked body like warm fingers. I felt the blood thrumming through my veins, warmed by the baths and exhilarated by the fresh air. A small white towel lay between my legs, a mediocre curtain of modesty, but it didn’t matter.

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Tweets I Could Have Tweeted

In Issue 16, August 2018, Issues Archive by Kirkley Mehndiratta

Tweets I Could Have Tweeted While I was at the Leighton Artists Colony Writer at Banff Centre for the Arts & Creativity in Canada, Except That I Quit Social Media Cold Turkey for the Purpose of My Writing Residency (from a human with anger, anxiety, energy, solitude, loneliness, panic, and procrastination problems)

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Maidenhead Revisited

In Issue 16, August 2018, Issues Archive by Kailee Pedersen

I used to dream about a certain person nearly every night. It has been a long time since we last spoke. But in the dream, we have been talking forever, as long as it takes for the sun to rise in the east and set in the west.

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Jim

In Issue 16, August 2018, Issues Archive by Katie Coleman

They have buffalo lodge and they have ghost lodge and they have all these different styles of lodge. The Lakota. Originally from Minnesota but spent the last 200 years in the Dakotas and that’s where I… so in 1978, you know about the freedom of religion act?

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The Changing Forest

In Issue 16, August 2018, Issues Archive by Joey Salvo

My father wears baseball caps on our hikes to the beaver pond. The little hair he’s had has always been sparse and gray, and the hats are to protect his exposed head from the cold, the sun, or both. In old photos his hair is thick, like mine, a black storm cloud swirling around his head.

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For Einstein. (No, not that Einstein.)

In Issue 16, August 2018, Issues Archive by Alex Pickens

My first encounter with a raccoon occurred one autumn morning when I looked out the window and saw something large and furry stuffed into our homemade box-like bird feeder. It appeared to be asleep. I turned off the sink, slipped on my sandals, picked out a good stick, and wandered over to inspect…

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A List

In Issue 15, July 2018, Issues Archive by Matan Gold

Brett invites me over after school to grind his rail, which is of little consequence to me, since I can barely ollie straight; but sometimes I can heelflip, which makes me believe in improvement and wards off the stomach-eating-reality that skateboarding, for me, cannot be sustained,

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Owl Feathers

In Issue 15, July 2018, Issues Archive by Ruby Holsenbeck

I walk down the highway today as cars rush by, travelers for the holiday hurrying to get to their destinations. It’s the day before Thanksgiving, and traffic is heavy. Across the road, I see a dead bird with distinctive feathers.

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First Moments

In Issue 15, July 2018, Issues Archive by Aaron Ratliff

I spent the first moments of my life not really in it. When most babies are born, the process is straightforward. They come out. They cry. The doctors and nurses check a few things to make sure everything is working.

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It Don’t Mean a Thing

In Issue 14, June 2018, Issues Archive by Christina Bloom

Muted jazz music bleeds from the walls of the dance studio. My sister and I stand outside and watch, through the glass windows, the varying figures of the dancing pairs: men of assorted heights in jeans and colored button-downs, women in heels and dresses and skirts of subtle hues of green and blue and black. Some of the couples, the more experienced ones, move like waves on a breezy spring day, undulating as a unit across the wooden floor. Other couples sputter like the animatronic creatures at Chuck E. Cheese. In the whole room, there is only one moving mouth. It belongs to a woman who appears to be the instructor, standing to the side, watching the dancers and counting the beats of the music for them.

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The Miracle of Childbirth

In Issue 14, June 2018, Issues Archive by Rebeka Fergusson-Lutz

When I was ten years old, I experienced the miracle of childbirth.

I was there when my sister was born – not in our living room at home, or in the back of the taxi, but in the hospital room with my parents and the labor coach and the obstetrician. As you might imagine, this experience has proven to be a pivotal one in my development as a daughter, a sister, and most importantly, a woman.

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The Art of Nothing

In Issue 14, June 2018, Issues Archive by Mollie Duvall

Dear,

It is Saturday and I am obsessed with the arc in a story.

Let me start over by saying the fickle obsession hasn’t grown into a so called “problem” yet and at every glance a person will find a way to say that humility comes in regular shapes and sizes. Perhaps, it bags its own groceries or even paints its very own toes. It does this to iconically display a varying right or degree of neutrality. Maybe, by staying in the middle ground, we never have to fall short of dancing a wild night in the background or the shadows.

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Kelly

In Issue 12, August 2018, Issues Archive by Andy Betz

Looking back, she was my first love. She had the strength of character and the courage of her convictions to endure any hardship life could throw her way. On my second day as a firefighter, my captain ordered me to accompany him across the street to the local gas station on a call about “a cat stuck in a tree.” I did as I was told, donned my gear, and walked to the tree to ponder how I could climb it without scaring the small feline to higher elevations or encouraging it to confront my face with its claws. These are the decisions for officers, not rookie firefighters.

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Parris Enflames

In Issue 12, August 2018, Issues Archive by Daniel Eastman

You are here. Darkness surrounds you now, both literal and figurative. You sit hunched over against the wall of the crowded bus, pantomiming meditation in a defecatory posture, eyes wide-open stealing glimpses of your crusted New Balance sneakers with the occasional passing of city lights. Maybe somehow there’ll be a reflection, a final glimpse of your thick brown hair. Instead, green edge of a road sign that passes too quickly. You know that you are somewhere in South Carolina. That’s where the plane landed.

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How to Be a Wall

In Issue 12, August 2018, Issues Archive by Hannah Rials

No. 1 – Already Be a Wall

Become a wall before it is necessary. I can’t instruct you on this because I was naïve. I thought, Let pain come; it’s a part of life. I thought being a wall was cold-hearted, and that I am not. But please learn from my mistakes. Being a wall isn’t being heartless. It’s just the smart thing to do.

No. 2 – Remember the Pain

This is the worst step—I’m sorry. But I have a feeling that if you’re reading this, you’re like me; you absorb words.

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Platform 5

In Issue 11, March 2018, Issues Archive by Leta Cunningham

Prague is cold. I stand on the train platform shivering in my wool coat, tighten my scarf around my neck, and close my eyes. I picture myself sitting on the front steps of my university library back in Texas, the feeling of the Texas sun in the summer, its angry heat. Despite living in Europe for four months, most of it spent in Northern England, I’m not used to the cold. I check the time on my phone, making sure I’m still on schedule for making my flight.