Citrus My friend often stops by at lunch to talk about our kids–how hard it is and how lovely. It usually happens, because I love them, that I’m eating an orange, or a mandarin, Sumo, blood orange, temple–one of that whole bodacious family of juicy mamas, and I separate a section or two bursting with […]
And The Oscar Goes to… 1994 – Cher Dorothy Chandler Pavilion Bathroom Attendant 3 strands black/curly/synthetic The hairs flash like a beacon on the bathroom’s white marble tiles. I wrap them in a square of toilet paper and slide them into my uniform pocket. While the who’s who celebrate at their glitzy after-parties, I limp
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A Real Stand-Up Guy Reading time: about 15 minutes The green room at LMAO is not really a room at all. It’s a 10 x 20 foot space sectioned off from backstage by musty drapery that often overlaps, making entry or escape a difficult endeavor. Yet, in either witty taste or cheapskate irony, the curtains
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In Technicolor Content advisory (highlight to see): sexual assault My cup— Runneth over, Psalm 23:5. But no, not in a bar. —sweats fat droplets of condensation onto the bartop. I run a fingernail along a scar in the wood, adjusting the cardboard coaster. A bear peers up through the amber liquid. I should google bears.
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Liquid Courage Rhonda finds the perfect purple ball on the rack that fits her slim fingers snugly, hefts it skyward with one hand, gel-lacquered nails disappearing into the drilled holes. “Remember this color,” she says. “I want my eyes to be this color.” I nod, pulling out the little wire-bound notebook I keep in my
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bird brains Anthea Jones Anthea Jones lives in Brisbane, Australia and writes quirky fiction and screenplays. This is much easier now she has annexed the kids’ cubby house and banished the spiders and geckoes. She is the recipient of a Fishbowl Residency from the Queensland Writers’ Centre and a scholarship to Stowe Story Labs at
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If We Were In Another Life If we were three-spined sticklebacks, you would light up crimson to warn off other males and I would be honoured and not annoyed, safe instead of smothered, because I’d know you could protect our patch in the stream, and I would follow your proud zig-zag dance through the water
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Guess Who Is your person wearing a hat? Mark asks, leaning his metal folding chair against the cabin wall with a creak, steepling his fingers behind his head. I’m looking at the sunbeams streaming through the open windows, the gauzy curtains flapping lazily in late July breeze, terns on the wing over the lake, my
the Choices We Make We are born. We die. In those events we have no say. We believe what happens between those two events is completely our doing, a result of the choices we make. But you cannot outrun fate. You’re 17 years old, living on a farm north of Philadelphia. One summer day, your
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1210 Days in eight minutes, with playlist This will take eight minutes if read slowly. Stephanie’s and Iz’s second time will take eight minutes. They will move quickly. Before that, another eight minutes to recognize each other. They sit across a round table at the Hyatt in Cleveland, where a small business association’s convention is
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