Most read stories

Ascension

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He reveled in the chase, giddy when just out of arm’s reach. When to catch him, that was the question.

It's a Wonderful Life

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My wife is making lunch. I suggest leftover pizza. We are going over to the neighbor’s house for pizza tonight, my wife says. I tell her that’s okay. I like pizza.

Moments in the Community of Women

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It’s the small stuff. Always. A conversation with a stranger, brief yet so connected it overwhelms you. These encounters can move me beyond my reality, little reminders that, if you just crack the window a little, something very special can blow in.

deflated

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writing because it's the only drug i havesick on sadnessas the weight of the moment crumbling around me comes down some sweet second inspires…

GONE

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The box thuds at your feet: mug, plant, wedding photo, the 25-year pen.

The Beast Remembers Its Broken Promise and Starts to Cry

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It's a good thing too—because Of the way that feeling Made her even more beautiful than usual. You shouldn't doubt such an obvious Feeling. It's a good thing— Because frankly you have Been informed before. When Beauty …

Cousin (from The New Yorker)

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...to know something people around you don’t know can put you outside of them. And then you can’t get back in...

Filth and Splendor: A Love Story

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Solomon just makes people leak. Literally.

Old clothes, bread, cream and butter.

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‘Just get out of bed,’ I reply. ‘It looks like the fairies have been at your head. You should turn your clothes inside out. Put out a biscuit. Ring a bell. Buy a rooster; or a recording of it crowing. It will keep the sprites at bay.

Grief Has No Welcome Garment

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Twice burned, it buries its graves.

Flannery O'Connor's Tea Party

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“He's the one who took five tries to find your vein during your last blood draw, right?” This question spilled from the row of twenty EKG machines that now made up the hospital building's larynx

WHITE

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I reached for that hair and the air zagged white...

Miss Havisham's Fire

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. . . catching her breath somewhere between ecstasy and surprise. . .

Word Fish

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Looking with his ears, Hearing with his eyes, Not really mute, he simply didn't know how to speak.One word, then another string together,a crack spreads across an ice covered lake. Now there is an open channel, and his thoughts roil the…

Call Me Naked

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[He] practiced aromatherapy and licentiousness, in no particular order.

A Night Ride With the Conservative Poetry Enforcers

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We've got our gang colors on because we're out for retribution. T.S. Eliot made an appearance at a writer's conference on De-Privileging the Dead White Male last night, and the head of a low-residency poetry program tossed hot green tea on him.

Death

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fate is an illusion we use to ease the terror of our mortality

The Dark

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Outlined against the thinly layered darkness of the room, there is a silhouette of a small boy with his feet pulled up to the chin, failing to hold its own against the thousand stares from the deep violating the stillness of his room, their long familiarity with the…

Pick Me

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Strike me down hard, bolt of pure blue, laser focus square, blast of hydrogen nuclear, knock me on the keister, blind me down, oh Lordy Lord Lord.

Nothing At All

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The ice in my drink provides ample cooling. The brew strength of my tea is just such that it combines in a pleasing fashion with the melting ice. My mind is clear and my belly absent hunger. I am completely sated from any physical desire at this very mome

The Nude Pianist: A Novel: Chapter 2

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Independence Day was a Thursday. Frank had been invited to join some Yale Art School classmates in Vermont for a three-day bacchanalia.

Walking To Gibraltar, Chapter 3: In Which Everyone Was Wrong

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What's the protocol for telling people your spouse has cancer? How do you tell your son, your friends, your co-workers? How do you tell your mother? How do you tell her mother?

Par Delicatesse

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I know what he meant. I've been in the 3 A.M. cream cheese. I've known the hole in the bagel.

Stroller Mania

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Get something cheap and light at Target. Trash hell out of it. Encourage baby to urp up in it.

Leaky Pipes

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I was thinking everything was OK, until one day I woke up and realized that I was living on an entirely different planet, and you seemed like a complete stranger to me. I was feeling so ashamed of these feelings, that I couldn't even tell you about them. I couldn't…

You Say Sorry Just For Show

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The last of your tenuous septum dissolves when you press the nozzle of the neti pot against it.

Madness

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I read my book of names. Over and over again. Our name appeared in the newspaper 254,991 times between 1896 and 1944.

Black Children Learn Derivatives

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The white faces of the train look up in an attempt to satisfy presumption, smoothing out any interest into glassy eyed gestures toward looking but lacking the very important quality of sight.

Swoon

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Tender veterinarian, even if you weren't so tall, or your eyes so warm, or your fingers so long, or if you didn't bend over my sick cat with such astounding grace, or shoot those quick, intense glances at me, I'd have woven dreams while in your uncommon presence. Vulnerable…

chicken little considers the sky again

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oh, sure i’m still running around like a heads-up/off/prophet/profit/fit trying to cut off my very own de/(con)instruction and all other sordid a•void•able & available/a-Babel towers of post &toastmodern doom/daze