Most read stories

Jelly Doughnuts (from The New Yorker)

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Simmi's only been in New York three weeks, but the second night she was here Buck took her to a coffee place he knew, and now Simmi makes sure he takes her there every night...

How the Plum Fell, and Not Necessarily Why the Apple Flew

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A friend of mine is killing me With all of her lies. If I die tonight, you can bet it's Because of her. A friend of mine Is killing me with those lit eyes like Twin pyramids holding up her rambling Blue skyline. Look I don't have to …

Men Respond to Women's Tennis Grunts With Armpit Farts

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An armpit fart is a simulated sound of flatulence produced by creating a pocket of air between the armpit of a partially raised arm and the hand, then swiftly closing this pocket by bringing the arm close to the torso.

No Algebra Again Today Haiku

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Our lives depend on/ engineers

An Open Letter to my Fictionaut Family

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Dear Fictionaut Family,Some of you may recognize my name and remember reading my work, some of you may have joined more recently and be wondering what the hell I'm doing addressing you directly. I began writing on Fictionaut in 2010, during four years as I was fragmenting…

Lesson 38

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You have a house (plural, as in Spain)

The Crescent Caretaker

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Enter Tipitina’s – the rotation hole where electric, shoeless uncles allocate their copper goulashes to catch white dripwater.

Robert Penn Warren and Orange County Blue

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We were old. Wind came in with small threats and played games with drapes. A print of orchids and some other green affair that looked to me like kiwis. Sadie was arranging some items on a desk and I noticed there was a cricket on the window. I was thinking…

Can I Take My Gun Up To Heaven?

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I thought of Ruth burrowed deep in the nest of her closet and quickly jumped into the footlocker. I nearly stopped breathing as he entered his bunker.

Tumbalalaika

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When the arguing started, their voices would get louder and louder, till they broke into my dreams. That night, I woke and listened in the dark for what felt like a very long time. Perhaps I should have been afraid, but I wasn't. For one thing, they never

John & Jackie

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By the time I learned how much I loved my family, I was 3 years and eight-hundred miles away from them

404

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By the thousands youngsters swarmed into the streets shuffling aimlessly, many mumbling to themselves, heads bowed as their eyes stared fixedly at the plastic devices in their hands.

The Damp Place

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As long as he could still take the stairs, he would go down there to be with the memories that each piece held. He knew that their time was about up, because his was too. His wife had already gone, and even before that she had long stopped using the washe

Refugees

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Four in the morning. I was awake because I'm always awake. There were little fog-halos around the streetlights.

Hors d'oeuvre

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What scares her about libraries are unshelved books, the ones you thumb through while you are waiting for the elevator, because you realize that there are too many books in the world and you are holding that particular book only because it is lost.

Happy Hour

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We were in the car more than anywhere else. A few days driving, then a few days to get back home.

SUPER DAD flies coach

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“I don’t want to scare you,” the stewardess says, “but there are ten police officers waiting for you outside the plane.” I reach into the diaper bag and grab an Elmo raspberry/pear cereal bar, rip it open, take a bite, sip some apple juice fr

Babies

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“Your brain, your brain tries to make sense of things like this, specially life-threatening weird shit, so in my mind the grass was on fire and driving out swarms of invisible bees that were stinging us to death. Invisible killer bees. You don’t shoot be

In Portland, Where It Rains

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So many opportunities for mud can be found in these hills,

Eighty-eight

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She realised that things you can't prove can be more intimate than the things you know to be true.

Waiting for His Wife

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"Dad, I already told you about your wife. She’s not coming."

Sack of Meat

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The Nurse left work at five o’clock, walking down Dekalb Avenue toward Flatbush. He didn’t frequent the bar closest to the hospital, although he guessed other nurses and doctors from Brooklyn Hospital did. But he liked to pretend that he cared about h

Animals

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I folded my problems into pretty paper animals to keep me company. I set them on the Formica dinette set. I jammed some into cracks so they’d stand up straight: organized warfare

Prairie Rose

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Every Friday night she gets liberated at The Haymarket Square doing a bunny hop or a do si do with ex-members of The Saint Augustine Women's Choir. She remembers how as kids, shy or awkward in dresses, their voices formed the harmony, the flight of something V-shaped…

Tiny Dancer

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This latest married man who lives at a great distance has leeched her energy in that very particular way such men do. Next to him, I am as interesting as long division.

Poems Are Scary Things

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They will take you, naked, and put their tongues and fingers into intimate, erogenous openings

Of Life

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beware the slice of the knife cutting like a curious comet blasting through solar systems down the throat of the bad ass milky way

A Body Divided, 5

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Physical therapy was on the agenda every morning, first thing. A nurse would come to my room from the basement floor where they did physical therapy. She'd wrap me in a blanket and put me into a wheelchair, even though it was obvious I didn't need one to

Jack and Jill went up the hill to fetch a pail of water (the update)

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tough noogies

In Machu Picchu

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"I wonder what happened to Murder Man and Lust Girl?" wondered The Black Toadstool. The Anti-Justice League were in Machu Picchu, on a short vacation after taking over most of South America and the South Pole. The South Pole had been so easy. …