Debbie Wen

Uncollected Territories

By KIRSTIN ALLIO

My daughter, Mosie, called me early to remind me about the dentist. She was feeding the dogs, and I could hear them whimper and moan as she gratified them. The old dentist had suddenly stopped taking my insurance. I stood watching the lake, its blind surface: here I was, a condo with a view and I’d never had any feelings for Lake Washington.

She had nothing else to say to me. Both of my children—Basho and Mosie—were first-time souls for whom the emotional was alien.

Uncollected Territories
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On My Problems

By LOREN GOODMAN

I’m the kind of guy who when there’s a problem, I like to get on it. I don’t like the problem to get me, I like to get it. When there’s a problem, I face it—I don’t let it faze me. You could say I like to faze it. I like to face my problems and take care of them, I don’t let them take care of me.

On My Problems
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Vanishing Point

By ANYA VENTURA

We all dreaded the Butterfly Haven, a greenhouse whose thermostat was set to an oppressive eighty degrees. We were tasked with ensuring the museum’s collection of exotic butterflies did not escape into other exhibits—Mysteries of the Marsh, Birds of Chicago, Wild Music—or suffer at the hands of visitors. The Butterfly Haven was a new addition, a garden under glass, the wild and fruit-bearing world reassembled. It was nature trimmed and mail-ordered, the gestation of life contained in a laboratory and maintained through ongoing shipments from Australia, Asia, Africa, and Central and South America. Butterflies died and were replaced in equal number.

Vanishing Point
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October 2017 Poetry Feature

This October, we’re celebrating fall with new work from four of our contributors.

LINDA ASHOK

Becoming A Rice Pot

She held the rice pot too
close to her bosom each time
she had to take a cup of it.
Once she would take as
much, she would keep back
a fistful. She never wanted
the rice pot to be empty.

October 2017 Poetry Feature
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At Dinner the Lady We Are with Makes a Joke about Mosquito-Borne Illness

By SARAH CARSON

New Orleans, LA

Restaurant

I am already six hurricanes deep when Beth lets me into her bathroom stall at the Bourbon Street restaurant where we’ve stopped for after-dinner lemon tart and port wine. She is crying, and I am not. I am rum-laden, as always, and she is not, obviously, and I do not think of how ironic my middle school guidance counselor would find this, that there would someday be someone in the world who would open a bathroom stall for me instead of the other way around.

At Dinner the Lady We Are with Makes a Joke about Mosquito-Borne Illness
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The Hat

By SCOTT LAUGHLIN

Budapest, Hungary

Budapest

At this moment, it is night in Budapest, and a woman has left her hat in a restaurant. This restaurant is in Buda, yet she is already crossing the bridge into Pest. Yes—perhaps you didn’t know—Budapest is not one place but two places split by a river. Like the woman separated from her hat. Perhaps we are all schizophrenics.

The Hat
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