Most read stories

The Blue Bird

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The blue bird tapped at my window and pecked my crumbs. I talked to him as to a small person about the things of life, of flowers, of trees and the sky. Even at times pretending he was erudite, I questioned him about evolution and extinction. He looked at me as if he…

First Contact

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... her heart went kathump kathump and as the sun warmed the morning Patti once again melted into her normal condition of slightly dazed trance with not a care in the world but the health of her African violets that she now tended to on the window

Stop.

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Accept that your husband's heart always belonged to his first love. You should've noticed sooner because she works in your building and won't look you in the eye. She takes the stairs because you ride the elevator.

The Green-Eyed Shwemyethna

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Moon-girl spins around & around drunk on her outrageous momentum as if she could make the world rotate on its own fables.

Paper Elephants

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Every year people came from as far away as Des Moines and Halifax for Elephant Day. They came to see the elephants.

White Bread

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Brian takes off his size eleven shoe and shakes it out on the table.

The Jumpers' Pool

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The way that worked was you gave the bartender a buck, and he would write your name on a square on a calendar that was behind the bar. If somebody jumped off the bridge that day, you won the pot.

A Theology of Anorexia

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She always told them that she had eaten earlier, that she had had a big lunch, that she wasn't hungry. "Leave me alone," she cried, running from the table to her room. This anger would burst out of her, so sudden and so total in its transformation--from t

Dear Andreas,

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Dear Andreas,My mom is asking me to come home.They found you amongst the ferries, down the street from the pile of unearthed bedrock I lived on as a child. It took two months before you showed up again. You left everyone scared, running to the bridges, but there was no one.…

I'm Writing

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More and more, incoherent masses of letters scroll through my mind. Ideas struggle to form. Flashes of images flit rapidly in front of my mind’s eye. There are fish, mountains, presents, forests, mirrors - a menagerie of meaningless symbols march pas

Slipstream

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Moments before they had been holding hands, but when they turned the corner and she told him she did not want to go down the dark path he had turned also, into someone she did not recognize and could not understand.

A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte

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A woman is fishing in the Seine at the far left of the painting, while time is suspended and light remains. One man plays a trumpet. A half dozen people sit or walk under parasols. Couples stroll and children run or sit or stand beside their par

Amputee

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He is my daughter's son and his father's worst enemy.

Doesn't mean I love you

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I’m practically naked; coral sundress, very damp panties, black with lace insets. I know I still smell like pussy.

Mountain Country

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I’ve always missed the mountains, but I didn’t know it until I saw them.

At the Crossroads Bar

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An eye patch waits aslant his passenger seat.

The Song of the Jardin Venus

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The place is a living rebirth, And all death is only temporary. For soon in the land, the soil, For soon in

All the gaping mouths without a voice

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"Mammy, why do they throw sand in our eyes?" a girl could be heard screaming from the 30-foot-deep ravine, Babi Yar.

They didn’t read Pitchfork or Stereogum or Gorilla vs. Bear or Hipster Runoff

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They didn’t read Pitchfork or Stereogum or Gorilla vs. Bear or Hipster Runoff, only glanced at them, not enough blaise in reading, but skimming kept your credibility, thank god those sites now posted more and more videos. They didn’t subscribe to VICE

Bone Density

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Madame Fauve, / with a twisted braid, is dancing.

Missed Connections

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We were on the L train.You were reading Fifty Shades of Gray;I was reading One Hundred Years of Solitude. You never looked up until just as I moved off, always looking back your way and hopingyou would lift your head. And then you did, at the last moment,but…

Sink, Sunk

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the moon's got it out for the far-sighted punkish usuper supping on the upswing of a downward slope

My Rat

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Today I'll make the call

The Object of Desire

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I was born to be desired, stamped with the insignia of my creator, and folded in precious, shimmering materials. If the fate of my co-createds holds true for me, then this covering was further covered with the name of my creator, printed on materials too rough ever to touch…

A Quite Literary Catfight

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Cavett asked McCarthy what she thought was overrated about Hellman. McCarthy–never known to mince words–replied “Every word she writes is a lie, including ‘and’ and ‘the.'"

A Glimpse

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I am everything she wanted me to be. I am crossed legs, chest out; I am wearing a soft white dress—lacy and completely inappropriate to the Midwest, to 2011, to anything about my existence.

Adults at Home

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The afternoon my little sister won her first U.S. Open, I was also busy, having strenuous sex with David Solemn, a man I’d met earlier that morning at Dunkin Donuts. We did it on the white living room carpet in my parent’s new Connecticut house while

Sharp Was the Blade: chapter from Ari Figue's Cat

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You do not open the wound all at once. You do not slice or cut or slash. You stroke, as a lover's finger strokes the skin of her beloved. You slide the blade lightly over the surface. You do not think, I am hurting myself. You do not think, pain. You slid

The Look

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He looks in silence and he looks with longing.

Losing (Valentine's Day Massacre Poem)

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Paid and laid, they leave.