Most discussed stories

Birthday Buddy

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His birthday buddy was like a wife to him: they were born a day apart. This was coordinated, he believe, in the womb. Well, to be more accurate, wombs. She was due two weeks earlier but waited; he two weeks later but cut his womb-time (as the kids call i

Exiled from English

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Then they made him stay after school and met with his parents. Scott was sent outside to play in an empty playground. He didn’t feel like playing. He sat on the steps outside the classroom and listened to his Dad shouting through the plastic walls.

Dear A. Lien

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Time is a form of sandwich. Each component of the sandwich is nestled between night and day, which enclose it like slices of bread. There are minutes, hours, and seconds. Seconds are tiny, like sesame seeds. Minutes are a little larger. Think of them as p

three gretchens

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The story of a second, a stone, and an android -- all curiously interrelated and all, coincidentally, named Gretchen

Wind Calling

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Listening to old friends speak the same way, the same things tells me they have been dead a long time. They are in their form of living, their self, there is no new season of growth. I witness each of them continue on the same path because it is familiar

Directed by Jackson Pollock

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I don't know how to describe it, in the way that it should be.The ghosts of the founding fathersthru subway smoke and traffic light,visions of long before the Dakotasuccumbing to the myth of gravity,dead bodies stuck in water towerson the roofs of cheap hotels,counterfeit…

First Chapter of Rain (novel)

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Every day she loves me a little less, and justifies it by saying that there is less of me to love. At some crucial, overlooked space in our life together, I used up my compassion and started to spend hers.

After

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The next week, she sends a small white box in the mail / with tissue paper, a ceramic mold the color of bleached bone—

My Voyeur Life

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It's the way an earnest five-year-old boy pronounces every single letter as he whispers. Something about octopuses, something else about peas.

Air Plant

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Their son doesn’t eat anything. They can’t see how he keeps growing. He’s like an air plant, living on air alone, all the while knowing they themselves will never live on air alone again. They sewed their wild oats. They lived their universal life

Vincent

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They were really big, a lot larger and taller and stronger than he was. Sometimes they were holding him, all of him, high up in the air. Sometimes they would have him crawl in front of them. Often they put him into some form of holding cell.

Harry's Hair

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Harry's hair had been in the process of falling out for years. He had tried every over-the-counter remedy and prescription available with no success. Over the years, his receding hairline had become a widow's peak, then male…

Test

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We’re safe as houses/ and unmoved. We grow/ accustomed to the sound

Fair-Weather Best Friends Forever

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“How scared?” Mikey said, not wanting to find out, and already looking pretty nervous.

No Alternative

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From This Distance

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Can you remember now? How we could each disappear completely, connected despite fault lines. . . .

It Is Enough

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I don't know what my mother is thinking. She's either cart wheeling into crazy land or turning into a ghoul.

Borden, Dream on Lord of the Pies.

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A plague of dykes mattered not. This spider-girl had driven the world of thought from Borden’s mind.

The Unpublished Writer and His Love Interest (The Painter)

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When the writer expressed with subtle alacrity that he adored the painter, she was flattered and didn't raise objection. The writer-in his aloof manner, with experienced caution-pointedly wrote a poem directly for his muse. She never spoke of it, and hi

Damp

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I'm a madman. People call me other stuff, but I'm a madman. My name is Roberto Nolasco Bahag-hari. Yeah, I know. It's kinda funny for a name. Friends sometimes call me RNB though I hate that freakin' music. Sometimes people…

the return of Ulysses

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Then you came home from your travels and stole her, your new queen, though she was ready. And raped my heart as you entered the new passage to heaven. And I cried out your name on the river, and swam in the warm waters behind you, naming your new name a

Buoyancy

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When I ate with my girls, Bliss and Victoria, I would lift my head up and look at us eating until I could imagine him chiding me. “Our daughters are looking more and more like you each day,” he’d say. “Fat!” I didn’t feel like eating when I thought abo

Islands

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Off of the northeastern coastline there was a series of islands that won bread and butter through fishing. We walked off the ferry and through various docks while noticing vessels come in slowly boasting sides protected by worn plastic fenders on ropes affixed to…

The Thing

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I look back at Bobby, his wide blue eyes staring at me. A dark shadow on his round baby face also tells me that he isn't entirely convinced if the thing is dead in the first place. Because even the folks buried in the town's only cemetery have a way of co

What Made Them This Way

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Flags engulfed in beautiful nighttime alcohol flames that will end all nightmares of country of origin. The release of souls from the captivity of flames like see-through doves in the clear light at the backside of the see-through universe.

Strange Times

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From my place, down here amongst the earth, we have many names for you.

The Yellow Wonder

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Whenever I hear Adam Sandler's song, “My Piece of Shit Car”, it brings back memories. Notice I don't say fond memories. It brings me back just like the really bad backwash regurgitation flavor…

Lips that Touch Liquor: The Gin Buck

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It was twilight, and the sky was getting darker even as the lights of civilization were becoming more noticeable in the gloom. The daytime city, with its grit and dust and texture, was disappearing. Soon there would only be electric light and neon and the

The Cactus

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Each evening the man allowed himself an hour of fresh air. He and Prickles would situate themselves on the tiny balcony overlooking the same street, a blanket bundled around them both for warmth. These were the times he liked to talk to Prickles the most

A Dull Roar

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The other night while we stood in the kitchen locked in each other's stone silence, he finally said, “You're waiting for something to get you to the other side of grief. But there's no such thing.”