Most discussed stories

French Trains

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When I sit in the front-facing seat beside him, I feel him flinch a little and stiffen, not from fear but from aggression.

Ink Darkly the Painted Seasons a1 s01-2

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So long I have journeyed a poverty-stricken fugitive seeking shelter, and know rest only in the hollow of your hands.

Kraków Correspondence

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The SS and Gestapo began rounding us up, at least those who aren’t registered, those without yellow cards, today. Rumor has it they got at least 1,000 and took them to the camp, to the barracks. I tried not to watch and only listened, only heard some of t

Free

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The print is not ideal, it's true.

The Child's Veil

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You said yes

FRAT JERK (1960s)

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I threw my cards on the table. The jerk was playing his classical records again. I could hear that lousy music a mile away and he was the kind of kid that makes your skin crawl. But he had a CD sound system and it was up loud this time so that the house

Amen, Hallelujah

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"Now, here daddy was on the back porch at night talking with some man about leaving."

I Used to Be a Literature Major

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I remember reading poetry in the library / when I was in college, after skipping / Sociology, Psychology, or Theology. / I remember thinking: What is this nonsense? / I don’t want to waste my time on any of this.

Regrets du Noir

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You want to be Teilhard de Chardin? You’re getting started way too late. There’s a better chance you’ll be tomorrow’s Peking Man if I bury you in the cellar.

Perdition

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There existed within them the deeper perdition, of course, the perdition of culture, American culture, the 21st Century suburban version, made up of Strip Malls From Hell.

Fuck Yeah America

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After sportscasters announced the assassination and while the reverberations of the words were still fading people were already shouting

The Tamarack Swamps

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Last night, in a tavern called Wits End, we dropped quarters into a console, sized and shaped like an old TV.

Outpatient

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"Both my parents were hypnotists. As were two of my grandparents."

Six Feet Over

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I’ve paid my dues in this dimension/ so show me where the rest of them are

A Facebook Love Story

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This is a story about Jim and Robin. They are strangers. Or at least they were. They are at the same party, but standing on opposite sides of the room. Robin is standing near the door thinking, “I wish there was someone here to talk to,” when she sees Jim. …

Third Shift

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Some great, doubtless precious; some hollow, likely empty; some only shards, but you never know...

Hip-Hop Lit: New and Noteworthy

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Her son was doubtless the biggest wanksta that ever went to Andrew Jackson in the whole crumby history of the school.

Sixty words or less

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She wakes up sad. She can't shit. She spreads out the foil. no creases. folds it in half. She puts the stuff in the crease. holds a lighter under it. A zippo. then smokes it. Well smokes the smoke. It's like kissing god or the…

Conditions of a Narrator

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Moore doubted, perhaps, that readers could sympathize with a man who had killed someone for a cause or a girlfriend who forgave him. Perhaps she felt that maiming is (not) worse than murder. Perhaps she decided that the story should be about that.

The Nude Pianist: A Novel: Chapter 30

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Anatoly Gringovitch took a swallow of beer, thoughtfully put the cap on his Ferrari da Varese custom fountain pen, and launched into his story:

Art and Artifacts

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In the morning after a cup of black coffee, she decided she was hungry and opted for the leftover egg roll and dumplings from the previous night. She looks for the chopsticks sticking out with the rest of the utensils and picks up the last of the dumplings and places it…

Ann, meet Bob

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Ann finally got her eyes to focus, and there he was, her husband, looking better and happier than she'd seen him in ages, with the same Bombshell she'd seen him with earlier (So it was him). His hand was on the small of her back and he was talking and she

At Risk

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I wonder if this is how my parents viewed their marriage.

One Thousand Incarnations and One Thousand Deaths - Part I

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She heard mortar fire, whose percussive power rose above the tapping typewriter keys. A perspiration of terror broke on Loretta’s brow, under her arms. Then suddenly, the whistling of shells.

An Alphabet

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A daydreams about a woman whose name he’s forgotten next to B, who’s been drunk since afternoon.

My Poetic Nemesis

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Except for the bathroom stalls—you know the one that goes “Here I sit all broken-hearted”—the only poetry in the house is composed by Hazel, recited to her fawning sycophants.

Night Wreck

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You were watching TV when it began. That much is obvious, since you have always watched TV on Thursday nights, and Thursday was when it began for everyone in Polisville. Around 11 PM, a train on its way to a Nevada landfill jumped the tracks. It's a secure landfill, and the…

ghosts

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conflicts in time

Starspeak

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So if we all have an idea what goes down when the young person at the cash register (the registerista?) asks, “Can I help you?” then we all know there’s a different way to habla at Seattle’s gift to the world.

Frothing At the Fountain

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When I came back from California the second time, in the summer of 1965, I was the first around our town to wear my hair long, influenced by the Beatles. And I bought a bunch of blue caps that everyone in our gang wore, with the number “69” sown on