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Four Fables

Alex Wells Shapiro For Alaina Getzenberg, Charlotte Observer Reporter __________ An Ekphrastic Fable about Construction Workers’ Breakless 8 Hour Effort to Remove a Racist Owner Strapped under the pits, bronzed Jerry Richardson flies away, sloppily offering a football by the nose to passerbys pausing at the spectacle like Jesus’s limp…

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Concussion

Concussion Zachary Hughes __________ The weight sits just above, just behind my eyes, Not throbbing or jabbing at me sharply— It just pulls—makes my eyes and head want to sink down— If someone told you to hit your head against the wall over and over, Would you do it? What…

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With the Intent

With the Intent Pablo Piñero Stillmann __________ Things were dicey between her & the boyfriend. I was, I guess, “the other man,” even if I didn’t much feel like one. An evening after wasted hours of pre-season football, the woman took me to a party at her cousin’s place. I…

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Tough Call

Tough Call Dave Malone __________ When my father reffed high school football games, he kept a mental log of epithets the fans yelled and shared the best over Schlitz with his newspaper buddies on our patio. It was mostly laughs except for the occasional telling after a six-pack of the…

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Tecmo Bowl Days

Tecmo Bowl Days Matt Rector __________ before the spastic torment of middle school when an erection was just an uncomfortable oddity and the television had a dial and wood paneling we lost a summer to this game backs hunched thumbs fast legs folded on the floor inside our parents’ living…

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Two Poems

Peter Hogan __________ Board Drill On the football field I am a boy crashing against a mountain and being pushed back except the mountain is a man who is the trill of a steel whistle, a full metal jacket, a shepherd in the same sense a hangman shepherds I am…

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All Football, Dec ’20

All Football: Dec ’20 Editor: Chris Lowe Letter from the Editor by Chris Lowe Fiction “Hash Marked” by Jordan Escobar “The Unexpected Dryness of a Lemon Poppy Scone” by Jacob Ginsberg “Mascot” by Beth McMurray Four Fables by Alex Wells Shapiro Poetry “Double-Sonnet in Race” by Prince Bush Four Poems…

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is it too tender to kiss?

is it too tender to kiss? Hannah Rousselot __________ I.in the past, i always held my wounds outgaping and red, hoping someone would noticeand want to kiss me better. many tried, but none could re-knitmy skin, my heart, my brain togetherwith strands from their own body.i had to do it…

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to patch, to atrophy, & to flip

Tyler Barton __________ to patch Fletch and Gil and Sal and Del are stuck on the side of the highway in Kansas, waiting for Triple-A to come and fix the broken tire of their sprinter van. The hole in the tire is shaped like the hole in the center of a…

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What Fancied Her

What Fancied Her Rikki Santer __________ If a toilet seat can be a lyre& applause stored in a box then this is the story of a believer—your closet in the candy-colored language of clown—you witha pimiento center & comfortable as a sock, never ruffled or lacybut blooming in tie-dye spider…

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