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Liza Donnelly

It was like a scene in a movie; it didn’t seem real. The man kicked her.

Sonja slapped her sister. How could she shed tears for the past?

Sonja slapped her sister. How could she shed tears for the past?

Narrative Prize and Pushcart winner Anthony Marra reads “Chechnya.”

They had come for him very early in the morning. It was still dark outside.

There is a pure fear, in waking somewhere you have not lain down. She runs until her blisters bleed. Then, she runs some more.

“If a man wanted, he could be anything and not come back.”

Ira and Ada are stepsiblings. Within a month they were sleeping together.

“Then I can promise to kill either of you if I ever see you again.”

Mikey said the hole wouldn’t lead to China, but he was frequently wrong.

I don’t remember a time when I didn’t know my father’s grief.

He’s in the back of the cop car, hands in handcuffs, shaped like infinity.

Eleanor was the first normal person my brother, Nick, ever dated.

“People think Sean is a screwup. I want them to know him as I do.”

“Your mom is awake,” I said. “You need to go in and see her.”

I don’t know who he wants to be, and it’s not because I haven’t asked.

If someone looked into his eyes they would see how ugly his mind was.

He hit all of us sometimes, but he hit me hardest and the most.

I told you how I’ve always been attracted to little violences.

At night the voices on the patio sound like small darting birds.

There’s nowhere he can kiss where she hasn’t been kissed by the sun.

The mechanism and its crank pull us forever closer, you and I.

I wish I could tell him he’s not going to hell. It would be so freeing for him.

When nobody knows where you are, you get to talk however you want.

It was an act that made me feel safer but also somehow more imperiled.

My father then got partials implanted, which were later punched out.

I realized you were my fourth love, and the system was always doomed.

He thought about kissing her. Then he decided that she was just lonely.

Interviewer said he had no intention of stealing anything from Subject.