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Cover
Table of Contents
Editor's Notes
Donations
Submission
Guidelines
Website
Stories
& Essays
...gone
tomorrow
_ By
jp Rodriguez
Barbie
and the Burn Scars
_ By
Dion OReilly
Bright
Lights
_ By
Nicole Exposito
Cricket Theory
_ By
Sophia Alev
Dieciseis
_ By
Kate Delany
Fines Double In Work Zone
_ By
Brian Stumbaugh
Guy and Doll
_ By
John P. Loonam
Lake
_ By
Erlynda Jacqui Chan
Lala's Diner
_ By
Nicole Exposito
Laundry
_ By
Allison P. Boye
Love Story
_ By
Cynthia Burke
Magic Bags and Forgotten Princesses
_ By
Ken Goldman
Squirrels
_ By
Benjamin Buchholz
Poetry
Baking Bread and Other Subtleties
_ By
Leland Jamieson
Corpus Christi
_ By
Taylor Collier
Early Cold
_ By
Yvette A. Schnoeker-Shorb
Ekphrasis at the Mall
_ By
James Owens
Games In Your Uncle's Den
_ By
Robin Stratton
My Spanish Rose
_ By
Jose Rivera
Northern Lights, Southern Soul
_ By
E.F. Kramer
Posted on Fifth Avenue
_ By
J.R. Salling
Sirens
_ By
Naiya Wright
Summer Sojourn
_ By
Cheryl Butterweck-Bucher
The Himalayan Sunset
_ By
Rohith Sundararaman
Time Decays, Clots
_ By
Kristine Ong Muslim
Turn
_ By
Terrance Schaefer
Where You Rest
_ By
Stephanie N. Barnes
Art
& Photography
Bissan Alhussein
_ Paintings
E.W. Hung
_ Photography
Papa
Osmubal
_ Drawings
Linda
Pakkas
_ Drawings
Anastasiya Tarasenko
_ Paintings
Filip Wierzbicki
_ Paintings
and Digital Photography
Nancy Xu
_ Paintings
and Drawings
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Games
In Your Uncle's Den
By
Robin Stratton
We have your uncle's cabin for the weekend
where you spent many happy boyhood summers.
The musty den with the rust-colored shag carpet has wood-paneled walls
and your uncle made all the furniture.
In the tree house he built
you and Stevie somebody sneaked puffs of the Winstons
stolen from your aunt's purse.
Yes, it sounds hilarious
but it's been raining all day and the electricity is out and I'm bored.
What should we do?
Besides that.
The old toy box has checkers, marbles
You take out a deck of old fashioned, gold-rimmed playing cards.
Strip poker?
No. What else?
Twister, Life, Operation, Battleship...
Hey, strip Battleship! Wanna?
No.
I pull out the long flat Clue box
hope that all the little weapons are there:
rope, candlestick, wrench, lead pipe...
Damn, the iron is missing
and so is the wheelbarrow.
Wait, that's Monopoly.
Oh this will be fun!
Shit! How'd you figure out it was Miss Scarlet so fast?
I pull out another box.
Ouija Board!
Let's bring back the ghost of my
uncle!
A tingle, the sudden feeling of being watched.
Crack of thunder makes me jump.
Scared?
No!
Finger tips on planchette, just barely touching
and yet it moves, from letter to letter....
S... T...
You're moving it!
No I'm not!
R.. .I...
I can tell you're moving it!
I'm not! I swear!
P... O... U...
I... J... A
I pull my hands away, relieved, disappointed, annoyed.
Not the ghost of your uncle.
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ROBIN STRATTON is editor-in-chief of
Boston Literary Magazine and author of The Revision
Process, a guide for writers. She's an instructor, novelist, and poet, and her popular workshop series features exercises that teach clients techniques for clarifying and correcting all the most common writing mistakes. Five years ago she started Big Table Publishing Company to provide one-on-one support for writers taking advantage of the challenging but rewarding self-publishing option.
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