Most read stories

Chatter

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The night before his mother's teeth began chattering.

Professor Einstein's Living Proof (an excerpt)

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Light “I can escape the feeling of complicity in it only by speaking out.” The professor arrives on time, sockless. The former a sign of his polite upbringing. The latter, his lack of pretense and high …

Inconsequential

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I write poems as if language matters.

Cobbler's Clinch

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“If Sir would observe, the storm welt, a shoe for the big occasion, a shoe that will guide sir through the dismal passages, a shoe that will roar in the face of adversity and …”

The Apartment House

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Everybody called her The Crier because from time to time we would hear her crying.

The Star... an excerpt from The Exile of Gaspar

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The night is very clear and unusually cold. We are so near to the star that its light banishes the darkness that tries futilely to extinguish it. A small village twinkles in the foothills to our east. The cry of a lost sheep cuts the night like a blade

Profiling Robert Allen Zimmerman

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Since when has it become a crime to walk about a neighbourhood? No one will ever convince me that it 's okay to follow, harass, or approach any unarmed person with a gun and shoot them.

Jouissance

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BECAUSE to fuck is an incidental REASON to be here

Salinger Pays Caulfield a Visit

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Out in the world again, pretending to belong.

Valentine

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"His middle name is Valentine, and when asked about it, he isn't sure why."

Fun Times at the Memorial Park

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Good times, underground.

Echoes

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...Heroin. It helped them get through the tricks and sucked up their flesh.

ghosts

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conflicts in time

The Ghosts in the Meeting

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No one had told the newer tenants that the dead would be given votes, and they were in an uproar: it wasn’t legal; it wasn’t fair; it was creepy.

U R Doomed

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the swarthy terror network

Did You Get Two

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“106 more miles,” she said.

Cousin

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“The beginning was good. That’s what he likes. The moment when you’re driving in the open air and your hair is flying and your skirt is whipping up around your knees, and he’s smoking, of all things, and happy and looking at you."

The girl laughing in the dictionary.

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Trigger Warning.

The Everyday Juggernaut

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I will go to work in the morning and no one will stop me. I wish someone would stop me. I don’t know if my car will start in this cold. But if it does (it always does), I am going to drive to work.

Desire

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She said “I have to go”, he answered with his eyes “Don't” and they stepped closer to each other in the kitchen, a step on the tiled floor, the remnants of their tea cold on the counter top.

Private Red

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Your favorite nickname existed only in the bright red cherry smoldering at the end of your smoke.

Shadow Play

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I read it all wrong. In writing her novel, I thought Marilynne Robinson was writing about twins — writing, in some way, about me. Instead, these characters, Lucille and Ruthie, were standard sisters, one older than the other. In fact, Robinson explains th

Carousel Horses

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From this distance, he reminded me of a sleazy pink flamingo, waiting for feeding time at the zoo to deepen the timbre of his feathers and hint at the promise of a narcotic aviation before his commune of hens.

The Gift

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Margie sprayed the gift with her most expensive perfume and tucked it into her sweater’s front pocket. This way she could hold it close to her on the subway, so no one would see the pretty wrapping and try to snatch it from her

I Wonder About the Trees

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I stole forth dimly in the dripping pause

The Masquerade

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Atlanta, 1990The night we almost died,crushed at a one-hit wonder concert,comes back to mewhen the club announces it's closing.An ancient excelsior millturned industrial dance hall,I spent three years mapping every dark corner, finding secret places for sex and…

maybe just a little too sensitive

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"do you know what your problem is when it comes to girls?" she must mean other than the fact that they're all completely insane. or at least all the ones i've dated.

In Distress

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When a multinational big box furniture store opened just off the expressway outside the city selling all the same products at greatly reduced prices, they contemplated the possibility of closing their store.

Yellow

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Slipshod shoes were the first sign of a meltdown. Sometimes she could see it coming. A prickly gentleman washing his clothes on a Thursday afternoon. One week he’s fine. Nothing wrong with owning a sour face. The next Thursday, his shoes don’t match.

We Loved We Laughed We Cried

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My wife broke the news to me. She enjoyed it, too, I'm certain of that. It was a juicy piece of gossip.