Tag: Four Way Review
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COULD BE WORSE by Scott Nadelson
For a week in the middle of March, Paul Haberman felt increasingly out of sorts. Not much appetite, lousy sleep. In meetings he’d find himself absently chewing a knuckle. When the phone rang after nine at night, he braced for calamity. The wind blew hard against his bedroom window, and he imagined his neighbor’s oak…
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DEAN, ETC. by Laurie Stone
Dean The first time with Dean, I was on a couch and he knelt beside me on the floor. He parted my lips with two fingers and slid them into my mouth. Something moved inside, a snake in a basket. He ran his fingers along the edges of my teeth and pushed them open. His…
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RED MEAT AND BOOZE by Joseph D. Haske
With every mile Johnny drives, Lester Cronin is closer to dead. Nobody knows this yet but me. Nobody ever talks about what happened to Grandpa Eddie anymore, like the whole family just forgot all about it. But I never will. The last four years, my whole time in the Army, I’ve been planning and working…
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WHAT KEISHA DID by David Haynes
That Janet Williams hadn’t liked children all that much she blamed on the boy’s mother. Children annoyed her, frankly—all that incessant energy, the enthusiasm for obnoxious music and inedible food, their general and relentless neediness. When pressed, however, she would admit there was something special about this one, this Danny, her five-year-old grandson. On that…
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BLUE RIBBON by Mollie Ficek
Cecelia stole it. It was my Sour Cream Raspberry Ripple Cake recipe and she walked away with the win. I normally wouldn’t make such a fuss. I’m not one to complain or point fingers. But in this case, I can’t keep quiet. I just can’t shut my big mouth. That blue ribbon means my winning…
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PEOPLE OF NEW YORK by Sally Ball
I know you are dying as always, even you big ones from Queens, or from Nyack, and I’m in the habit of checking the clock, midnight again. Again no phone call, no lungs expanding and contracting
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LETTER TO PHIL FROM MANITOU SPRINGS by George Kalamaras
Did Darwin name the world, or did you, Phil, in creating him for us? I swear a Galápagos tortoise inhabits my sleep. A dream broth. A cup of Genmaicha tea containing roasted grains of brown rice. It lays its eggs across the coral reef of my brain. Blonde. Blind. Without fish-mouth or salt.
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LIE DOWN WHERE THEIR FACES ARE by James Allen Hall
The woman across the street on her knees again, shut out in the snow by her husband. Every week, this ritual: a man, a crying woman, the blue cold earth that marries them. When he lets her in, she lays in bed next to him.
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SPA CARE by Xenia Taiga
The spa was located in the hills, behind the town’s famous billboards. “The farthest spot on known earth,” her husband said, looking over the brochures. “No fast foods for miles.” Her husband helped her pack, while she stood to the side eating Dorito’s. The afternoon sun shone on her as she got in the car…
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ROSA by Anne Germanacos
Just a name Rosa, a girl in a story, a name I happen to like. She’s a girl with a father who follows her to the ends of the earth as she follows a story, a myth, an incantation. She is trying to be a virgin and a diplomat, like Gertrude Bell. She would also…
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PERSONAL AD #1 (Pairs Only Matter In Poker) by Michael Schmeltzer
I wear garish makeup and make faces in the mirror. Which reminds me…do you want to hear my favorite joke? Two clowns walk into a bar: one with a sad face, the makeup frown thick and chalky as a hotdog bun; the other no face whatsoever. There never was a happy face.
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THE SUPERINTENDENT by Justin Bigos
The air as still as bathwater, no breeze from Sheepshead, we carry clear plastic bags of empty bottles and cans, blue plastic bags of plastic bottles and milk jugs, we squeeze flattened boxes into open boxes, then tie it all in twine – but do we cover it in tarp in case it rains? He…