Target Fixation

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Fiction
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Six-Word Stories
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Readers' Narratives
First & Second Looks

Aim High Olongapo

By Matt Pavelich

Gray was a seagoing marine and a good one in that he disappeared into his duties whenever he was at sea. It had been difficulties ashore that had kept him these three years at the same rank, a rank entitling him to a bottom rack in the enlisted men’s berth. Aboard the USS Mansfield his was an ant’s routine, scurrying to distantly issued commands, calling fools “sir.” On orders, he might go prowling the steel passages in body armor with a scattergun, or running and ducking through watertight hatches, all in the pretense that some plucky enemy had stormed a nuclear aircraft carrier in the middle of the Indian Ocean. Stand by to repel boarders—sure. more

Artificial Tears

By Connie Wanek

Tears sometimes come

in a bottle.
Twist it open and apply drops
several times daily
if you haven’t enough of your own,
if you’ve begun to see light

where there is none,
on a humid night in the country,
black and brooding. Nothing.
And then a lightning strike.

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