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“Ode to Women Who Bleed—A Lot” by Irena Praitis
“Ode to Women Who Bleed—A Lot” by Irena Praitis

“The time I’d planned to hike the rim to rim to rim of the Grand Canyon with three athletic friends—all non-menstruating fellows—only to wake at four AM and find myself bleeding and no protection (it was way too early, but you know it kind of shows up when it wants anyway), and one of their girlfriends, who wasn’t hiking with us, when I whispered to her, only had a slender regular. A. Slender. Regular. Right. Which I took, of course.”

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’72 Datsun by Elizabeth Cranford Garcia
’72 Datsun by Elizabeth Cranford Garcia

“Trash-can colored and rusty, it was a car all throat,
all fits and stutters, a guttural language

choked at every breakneck shift of gears,
a devil’s-in-hell kind of loud, so buzz-saw loud

you could feel the fuel catch fire inside it, its inner life burning
with something I was too small to name.”

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Feminine Absurdities by Carly Brown
Feminine Absurdities by Carly Brown

“It wasn’t until my fourth or fifth sip of tea this morning that I noticed Miss Nancy Carson was missing her eyebrows. I promptly set the cup down and stared at her across the breakfast table. I wanted to make certain she had not simply hidden her brows under too much white pomade. The girl is at an age where she has begun to prepare her toilette, and painting takes practice to master. But her brows were not covered up. They were gone.”

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Colliding by Julie O. Petrini
Colliding by Julie O. Petrini

“I knew who Tim Davis was in high school, but I didn’t introduce myself to him until my mom ran him over with her car. And this is not some kind of “meet-cute” story, where her tires caught his foot as she slowly backed out at the grocery store or something. Rushing home on a drizzly November evening, from a place she should not have been, my mother mowed Tim down as he rode his bicycle to work, paralyzing him below the waist.”

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Clarinet Lessons by Stephanie Early Green
Clarinet Lessons by Stephanie Early Green

“Dad and Mom got divorced two years ago. Mom says they split up because Dad is selfish and wants to sow his wild oats, two decades too late, and doesn’t want to be burdened by the demands of a family. Dad says they split up because of Sarah. Dad says that the death of a child strips the skin off a marriage, and if the bones underneath aren’t strong, everything falls apart.”

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What They Wore by Shutta Crum
What They Wore by Shutta Crum

“the women turn pages slowly, so slowly
unsure if that is the vest Katya knitted for uncle
before he went for milk, never came back

each numbered photograph a too-bright gasp of light
the book, a first step with each mass grave
do you recognize this apron? this belt? these boots?”

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Be Here, Softly by Claire Atkinson
Be Here, Softly by Claire Atkinson

“I looked myself over, the version of me across the table. I was a year younger then, but I was in rough shape. January was obviously only shaving once every few days. His face was covered in that awful black stubble. His hair was a mess. His eyes were tired and vacant behind the glasses. He slouched in the chair, thinking me over. He tapped his fingers on the table, the gears turning, trying to figure out what to say.
‘This doesn’t make sense,’ he said. ‘It’s not possible that we’re trans. It shouldn’t be possible.’
I nodded sympathetically. ‘I get what you’re saying. I understand. Yet here we are.'”

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Sit-In by Arleta Little
Sit-In by Arleta Little

“Two women in hijabs and abayas approach us. One of the women asks, ‘How long will this be going on?’ ‘It’s the community that’s doing this,’ Zenzele answers. ‘So, I guess, as long as the community keeps coming. This is all different people. There’s no one group organizing it.’ The draped women speak to one another in a language that sounds like the wind over the surface of water before they smile at us, nod, and walk on.”

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My American Dream by Farha Mukri
My American Dream by Farha Mukri

“There are many versions of the American Dream, I want to tell my parents. The one involving a large house with a picket fence and two-car garage is just one of them. Just as there are many versions of your daughter. There’s a version that prays four times a day and recites the Quran. There is a version that enjoys hanging out with friends, including men, on Saturday nights with cans of beer and board games. There is a version that fasts during the month of Ramadan. There is a version that gets pepperoni on her pizza during the rest of the year.”

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Mending by Anna Stacy
Mending by Anna Stacy

“’Two weeks,’ Tamara echoes, like she’s mulling it over. Her legs are dangling over the arm of the chair. ‘Why don’t you just break up with him the normal way?’
‘Because that would require confrontation,’ I explain.
‘And knitting an entire sweater is easier than confrontation.’
‘Yes.’
Tamara turns to Lark for support, but he’s nodding solemnly. ‘Yeah, that holds up,’ he says.”

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Evelin by Ann Bauleke
Evelin by Ann Bauleke

“I imagine Evelin, her flour-sack print dress, brandishing stick dolls with her younger cousin, whose rash and persistent fever earlier that month no one mentioned. I imagine Evelin waking near dawn, whimpering, coughing, hot to the touch. Grandma takes her into their bed, Grandpa having left to cart fuel to farmers. The child sleeps fitfully, radiating heat.”

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Lake Macbride by Kathleen Maris Paltrineri
Lake Macbride by Kathleen Maris Paltrineri

“In quietude I feel I am everywhere at once—my own body rehearsing its wintering act, too. I look up from the table to the far side of the lake to see a buck limping, his hind legs sixteenth-notes in the dry leaves. From far off, a shot sounds like an encyclopedia falling to a wooden floor and like the echo of its striking.”

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Passage by thandiwe Dee Watts-Jones
Passage by thandiwe Dee Watts-Jones

“It’s official: dementia and medication. Not unexpected. But getting the ICD code is like being pinned. Mom does not protest.
The transitions before me are not unique, I know. Yet the fact that they’re universal and part of life matters as much to me as cocktail party chitchat.
What I treasure are tiny pearls that appear in mundane surroundings, a particular moment between particular people.”

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Decisions by Livia Meneghin
Decisions by Livia Meneghin

“consider the (curious)(strained) way she admires the hummingbirds (hovering)(swirling) above her head, and the air now saturated with (teargas)(sun)(clementines)“ Enjoy this audio recording of “Decisions” by Livia Meneghin from Vol.

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Sausage by Ilene Rudman
Sausage by Ilene Rudman

Enjoy this audio recording of “Sausage” by Ilene Rudman from Vol. 31:3 of CALYX Journal! Buy the full issue here. Ilene Rudman is a psychotherapist and career counselor living in Maynard, MA.

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The Air by Sandra Kohler
The Air by Sandra Kohler

Enjoy this audio recording of “The Air” by Sandra Kohler from Vol. 27:1 of CALYX Journal! Buy the full issue here. Sandra Kohler’s third collection of poems, Improbable Music, (Word Press)

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