Most discussed stories

Valentine

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XO

February Fifth

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We've worked silence over / Like pros, our best work together.

Victor Krowchuck Gets Dressed

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He puts on a choir of prepositions, 142 adjectives, 317 ramifications of cotton... and 177 semicolons engorged with cabbage.

" I Know Bernie, I Can Get You In."

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* Dedicated to Bernie MaddoffThere was a long line at the men's room.You know,when men reach a certain age,there is an urgencyto their frequent trips.So I saw an opportunityI said:" I know Bernie I can get you in.""Really?," they saidbut I played it coy"It ain't easyBernie…

Hollywood Sugar

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No pain is private. How can it be?

She Could Have Given Him Strawberries

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She lets go and it slides back too slowly.

Left On The Scrap Heap

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Daylight and cold sensed as an abstract, a number in my mind. Air thin, polluted, lacking oxygen. But the Recyclers are at it again.

Experts Say Planning Key to Spontaneous Sex

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Priscilla Mainwaring has a little surprise in store for her husband Dan. “I’m going to greet him when he comes home on his 50th birthday wearing nothing but Saran Wrap,” she says. "The Cling Plus kind, not the Premium."

ATF

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A father's soft neglect has repercussions.

Locked in a Small-Town Cage with My Superheroes, and Having No Way to Get an MFA... (Memoir)

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...I grew up in a provincial town which at the time had no bookstore and no library — no library even at school...

PERSUASION

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A story about convincing people to do things they don't want to do, written entirely in dialogue; originally published by CHEAP POP.

Pilot Wannabe

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We were both looking up at the rainy sky, while the big jet barely moved through the clouds, coming in for a landing at Oakland between storms. It sort of reminded me of 911, the way they just seemed to hover above us, barely moving, like they were poss

Settled

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Zusman snored on the sofa as Motel gathered his belongings in the dark. He moved quietly as had become his custom in the mornings. Initially he had tried not to wake his nephew on his way to work in the…

Maximus and Kimchi

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The dogs shit on the roof and then, every two weeks or so, the man in Apartment 311 climbs out the window with a plastic shovel and scoops the shit into a white plastic bag, which soon grows heavy with dung, dangling from his black-gloved wrist.

The Book

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The following is a true story, or rather it is a true experience from the story of my life. Some say that just because something happens doesn’t really make it “true”.

The Writing On the Wall Has Been Covered by Graffiti

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The graffiti has grown so large It has covered everything we know and love It has covered the windows, shutting out the light And it’s all about leaving your mark The ones who are living outside your walls Have grown worried about leaving th

Bums of the Bird World

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Yeah, okay, so pigeons are the bums of the bird world So what are a flock of crows working over a wheat field while the artist Vincent is desperately trying to live with his bleeding ear or to sell at least one painting during

Against Nothing

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To be free of pain. Is that what we all want?

The Signal

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I take the plastic off of the last videotape and stick it in the VCR. I make sure the channel is on 6. Still a commercial. I get my notebook, turn it to the next page and write today's date on top. I get ready. I don't really like the back and forth banter the other news…

A Boy Who Looks Like Horses, or A Horse Who Looks Like Boys

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He nuzzled the breasts with his face for a moment, his leathery skin and tangles of hair tickling her in the process.

Supernova

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Ben had us over, me and him and his boy, Benji, to look at the supernova. Ben was always coming up with these things with the telescope. Jupiter's moons, Saturn's rings. On his wedding night he made everybody stop dancing and run out to the golf course so he could show us…

Hotels (an excerpt)

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“Snobs,” our head housekeeper Denise called them in her deep voice, while peering out from under her glasses at me.

The Kid With the Hair

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threads of Cocoa Krispies

The Solipsistic Lady Novelist

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“I’m haunted,” she says, “by so many things–earth shoes, amulets, seventies mood rings.”

Lisa

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She didn’t say yes, but she didn’t say no. She didn’t say anything. So I helped her to the car and we didn’t talk along the way.

Natchez Shrapnel

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I was like a bullet shot from a university tower

Living in the Lapin of Luxury

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“There’s cheap land at Cudlee Creek perfect for breeding long-haired rabbits,” he added. “They can’t jump high so fencing costs are low.”

The Further Chronicles of Mars (tribute to Ray Bradbury)

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And in the dark caves a new secret, hidden from flyby probes and the imagination of men. In these new caves, names for the loved ones, Bradbury, Clarke, Rover

A Requiem For The Heavyweights

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Breathe a stench of Eton musk...

Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa is Trying to Say Something to His Mother

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The songs that she used to sing to him still dance in his head while he wrangles equations. The stars in the cosmos spell out her name.