Most read stories

My Drifter Doppelganger

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Looming ahead was another polite suburban party at which, after a couple of pops, I'd say something that embarrasses my wife in front of her girlfriends. Or so she claims.

Boys

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He came to a spot on the edge of the strawberry fields where he liked to sit with his brother and watch the turkey buzzards circle overhead

SNOWSTORM

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long lines, short words

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.

Sunflowers

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On that balcony, on every other day, she practised her other, more worldly religion - gardening, specifically sunflowers.

The Ogontz Branch

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There are stories I will not tell, stories I shudder / to remember. You'll forgive me for withholding them from you. / You may, of course, not tell me everything about yourself either

The colour! The power! The vision!

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... and photos of friends from former lives: the Wolfman; Drac; the Mummy; my ungrateful Son; even my gold-digging, coat-tailer ex-wife.

Accidental Discoveries

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They look like giant golden raindrops, or flying saucers, or peculiar fish out of their element

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.

Zoo

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It's London Zoo and ten minutes to closing time. The clock walks in and out of cages. I love you baby when you laugh like that at monkeys.Penguin and pelican, wing in wing, approaching. It's some bird act, I know. Two birds from nowhere. One flies, one walks.The zoo…

Arcana Magi Pure Vol.3 - c.3

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Mayumi and her friends arrived at the beach. The sun was near setting for the night, and a few stars began an early peek in the twilit sky.

Honeymoon Bike Ride

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On my honeymoon, we went upstate to the Catskill Mountains.

The Sweetness of Youth

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On my twenty-second birthday, in the spring of 1979, I had a crawfish boil, my first. Ninety pounds of red mudbugs on a picnic table spread with newspaper, my birthday cake sitting at the end of the table like an afterthought.I hadn't…

"The Misses Moses," from my collection Aliens in the Prime of Their Lives (Norton 2010)

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The Misses Moses by Brad Watson from Aliens in the Prime of Their Lives The Moses sisters lived together, alone, in the fine old brick house near downtown where they…

Booming

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"I want more grandchildren to spoil," the woman said. Will took a swig of beer at such moments. Maxine only answered with “someday” and looked over toward her husband. She knew it was his fault, didn’t really know why, but blamed him anyway.

Three Teeth

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Three teeth. You can pick them out if you hit pause just right. Probably not a person in the entire valley who hasn’t seen that video from the Eastern Cheerleading Finals. They even showed the tape on the eleven o’clock news in Scranton, my face ci

Electricscooterland

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We were a perfect match of broken pieces of flesh and cobalt. We moved in waves of couch plastic crinkling and clicking.

Blackout

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The blackout lasted longer than anyone thought. From my fifth story window, the whole city seemed to shut down. I heard noises above me. How could it be?

Morning Sounds

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Morning sounds

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

Gravity Does Not Apply

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Gravity? What does that have to do with writing or with this improbable tether of blue marbles?

Cruelty

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...when they decided to teach her a lesson, it was with particular vigor and vitriol...

Truth Or Consequence - 2

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. . . he wants to organize society into its most efficient configuration with everyone thinking alike and willingly cooperating. Only then, he believes, can humanity reach its full potential.

Raise Really High The Roofbeam, Gassbag

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When I heard that my brother was going to get married, I was more surprised than anything, but also awed by his courage. Our sister, named Baah Baah during a particularly bad recreational substance binge by our fun-loving, aristocratic parents, Nancy and

even dead body

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I'm a jogger of these parts, but I've yet to discover a dead body, or even dead body parts, or worse yet, discover that my parts will be discovered by some unfortunate jogger.

Five Breaths Or Less

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She flew through the air, linen skirt billowing around her. Below, her buckled bicycle was taking a different route. Less aerodynamic than she, its trajectory was brief, crashing into the ditch. Elspeth kept on flying. Time slowed, and expanded

The Hound - Part 3

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The bullet split her head in half before she could finish her sentence. Her blood sprayed out onto my face and covered my lips. The taste of life as it suddenly ended.

It Isn’t Personal. It’s Business

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because you pay/ for it to matter to me.

Don't move

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The tech turns off the music. The capsule blares. I am in Jurassic Park with Sam Neill. I am Timmy, descending the electrified fence, almost toast. I am Karen Silkwood, a deer in the headlights, then showering off plutonium. A garbage truck is compacting

Private Red

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