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American Short Fiction

Publishing exquisite fiction since 1991.

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Issue 82

Featuring new stories by Lydi Conklin, Annie Liontas, Kyle McCarthy, Carrie R. Moore, KJ Nakazawa-Kern, and Colleen Rosenfeld.

Stories

When We Go, We Go Downstream

I   In the restaurant’s fading light, he tells the story to his woman. Warily, the way his father told it to him: There once lived a man named Elijah. A man who, among many other things—blacksmith, singer, lover of…

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New Riverview Apartments

The motel had only recently been converted. Converted is taking it too far. The new owner strapped a tarp over the motel sign, installed mini refrigerators in all the rooms, and began renting them out as efficiency apartments by the…

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Archer’s Paradox

My boy Dr. Darren Wu is going through a divorce and we don’t know if he’s alright. He did buy a bow and arrow and a bullseye, but since his yard is short, he extends the range of his target…

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The Skilled Anatomist

It was as though part of my breast had been cut out by a skilled anatomist and replaced by an equal part of immaterial suffering . . . And however neatly the wound may have been stitched together, one lives…

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The First Wife of Bluebeard

CHARLEY – 2007 How it worked: we were bait. We wore platform heels. We had our hair down. We were high from performing, and some of us wanted wine and some of us coke and some a bucket of ice water…

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Sorry About the Wolf

I studied your pictures for hours. Hours over weeks, because it took that long to arrange a date. Not because of you, because of me—in the aftermath of my breakup, I spent long days on worthless magazine pitches: tired ones…

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Issue 82

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