Most discussed stories

Circling '84

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Other things are on my mind when the Tupperware lady says, "First, let's move your couch over by the door and the table here."

Ask Mr. Fix-It!

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Got a home repair question? Ask Mr. Fix-It! He usually knows the answer, and if not, your problem isn’t worth fixing.

Butterflies are the souls of dead babies

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When he leaves, she collects all the caterpillars she can find at the bottom of the garden and sits cross-legged in the shade of the buddleia. She makes a hollow in her skirt and drops in the smooth green, the furry black, the red, spotted and the spiny ones and watches as…

The Feet Must Go

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There's something wrong with my feet, if they are my feet at all.

Weather Forecasting

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By the time the forked tongue of the flag extended flat like it was pressed between two of my thick volumes on weather forecasting, the man was still walking with his nose glued to the ground.

There’s No Peace In The World

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Then there was the time I splurged, hoping a higher-priced phone might keep me from slamming it against the wall.

Elevator Neighbors (from The New Yorker)

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“Do you think she paints?” “Her face, a little, But don’t you find her kind of bony?”

Loop

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Everywhere fear binds the elements

ABSALOM

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He was still on the ground...

Friendship

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The routine was this: after getting off from the job at Carpet World in the Bear Run Shopping Center off of I-95, Stephen would wait for Dink to pick him up in his mother's honda. Then they would drive around for a while, usually on the less trafficked ro

Communion

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I dream empty, the wind blowing benzene blue. Shards of glass. Barbed wire. Bricks crushing flame into notions gone quick, never painless. Is it my blood? In my eyes. On my hands. Is it for you? I'm not sure where I'm walking here. Walking towards what from. Is it…

Lucky

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Jane worked out of her new husband's suburban house, struggling to remember it belonged to her too. She shook off memories of years in a rented Mid-City shotgun, an old elevated dwelling that still seemed like home. It ended up with four feet of canal water…

The Big Game

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The vampire donated floodlights so the children could play ballgames at night. The lights came on but the dugouts remained vacant. The vampire sat alone in the bleachers. “Sometimes I am less than the sum of my parts,” he said to the sum of his parts.

The Sun, the Trees, the Clouds, the Grass

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The sun was a dish of burnished courage

forgiveness

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she sees that no one has considered her needsshe feels left out, and so she strikes outon the offensive, nostrils flaringpoints her finger and makes her caseshe has been wronged, justified in her angershe will not back downthe accused one is hurtstrikes back with her own…

The Bachelor's Hymnal

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OhYou like quiet nights in?I do tooBut we might not get alongbecauseOnly part of youwants silence

Unlucky Star

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“I don’t want you to, not even for one minute,” she continued, tone empowered, “Blame yourself. If anything, you’re the only one who has ever given a damn…” she thought more, then added, “…besides Jeremy.”

The Jaws of Life

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You’ve known her since grade school and even though you’ve never copped a feel, it gave you a strange chill when you heard boys talking about her breasts, pressing against madras or chamois with some devilish life force, or how one day she’ll fuck l

Here is the thing. No one knows what it (actually) represents

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beyond knowing that when it hits you, you've been very much run over, and flattened like a stack of cardboard pancakes. I've seen it all before, and it works all right I guess. But my oh my, my, my oh thank you Jesus, to…

Ibby's Falafel

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Dark hung over the night like an occupation force. Across the street a Cuban diner fought it off with green and yellow neon lights, Latin rhythm beating through the air.

to a gregarious stranger

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Three lines.

Of the smokers I’ve kissed

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The man next to me on the Shinkansen from Tokyo to Kyoto makes me think of the smokers I’ve kissed.

Private Red

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Your favorite nickname existed only in the bright red cherry smoldering at the end of your smoke.

mythical son

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I would have given your son to you. I would have had him in a heartbeat. And I would have showed him your inner beauty, even though you were absent. I would have hidden nothing from his nature. I would have given him everything and anything he needed, s

How To Find Yourself (or a reasonable facsimile)

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While I had believed that the subject had been exhausted, that the bottomless pit of the individual navel gazer had been done to death, now here arrives How To Find Yourself to show that previous literature had only scratched the surface of the belly butt

Buy Me Some Peanuts

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The voice on the other end mumbles, not forming words, but I understand: I am to be the starting third baseman for the Detroit Tigers.

Maginot Line

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We shared a bedroom, my sister and I, all our lives through high school. This was unfortunate, as she was extremely neat and I, two years older, was extremely messy. In my defense, I was extremely clean and she was not. There is a…

We Shall Not Go Unheard

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I am human, I am no piece of meat.I am (womb)an.I stand on my own two feet.I move my own arms and legs.I do not scramble eggsnor do I wait for the telephone to ringfrom possibly potential datesdesperate for my affections,none of them remotely worthy.Independent am I. …

Blackout

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The blackout lasted longer than anyone thought. From my fifth story window, the whole city seemed to shut down. I heard noises above me. How could it be?

Sheep

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Sheep are very philosophical, I hear. Stop this hopeless dreaming.