Most read stories

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...

Zombie Night

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The man and the lady loved to laugh. She would tuck her hair back and lay her head on his stomach after dinner while watching old scary movies on Thursday nights. She would listen to his stomach digest the food and laugh then, he would laugh and…

Grief Has No Welcome Garment

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Twice burned, it buries its graves.

WHITE

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

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.

December Can Feel Like April Here

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Today the isobars are far apart.

Six Points of Light/ Dark Star

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Johan was telling stories about the occupation. The Germans were stupid, he said.

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…

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 …

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.

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.

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

Miss Havisham's Fire

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

Call Me Naked

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

Arcana Magi Pure Vol.2 - c.1

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The sound of drums blared from down the street. Car horns tried to fight the sound. Mayumi and Keiko saw the size of the crowd walking past them increase.

Writer's Cough

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Ok, so I’m sitting here trying to write through a frigging cold. And I. . .Oops, . . . . . . wait a sec!. . . I’m stopped, astounded, stunned between coughing my left lung clear over my keyboard and watching it flopping on the back of my desk. . .

Guns in the House

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Jack would have felt betrayed, and my parents alarmed, had they ever suspected me of playing with Jack's guns, but I found the temptation overwhelming.

Gasoline

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Her hair’s the color of LA at night On such occasions when the Santa Anas Have left the hills bone-dry and burning bright