Most read stories

My Uncle's Last Day in Hospice

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In and out of morphine dreams, he flies through the unfinished roof of Illinois sky. Below, matchbox-sized farm machines. A silo becomes his father's thermos, the silver-capped tower from which he stole sips at ten, his first secret. Back …

Mon in the forest: a fragment

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Mon wakes up surrounded by trees. The light is grey, the trunks black.How long have I slept? he wonders.He doesn't know which way to walk. In every direction, the same prospect of trees. He looks up at a blank sky. No sign even of the sun.***He starts walking. Slowly,…

Hollywood Sugar

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No pain is private. How can it be?

Bedtime Stories

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I want to read a story that ends unhappily ever after: one where the bad guy wins and no one gets the girl.

100 Words

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She thinks this is the place she dreamed

In Brief

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I can admire Falling Water and find Mr. Wright a complete shit.

Boil

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Boil (n.)––1. Pus-filled pustule inflammation of the skin, usually painful. 2. Slang boiled pus, bucket of (n. phrase)“Your asshole brain is a bucket of boiled pus.” (see also pus, SCOTTISH derogatory term for face.

Aurora Borealis

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I recalled the one night stand I'd had with the girl one balmy summer night in Minneapolis. We lay on my bed in the moonlight, and I touched the nipples of her tiny breasts with the thumb and pinkie of one hand.

Miss Zoldac's Fifth Grade Class Balloon Launch

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INSTRUCTIONS: To all students, please address your index card: "To the Finder of this Balloon." Beneath that, write something that will encourage the finder to email you back. Then tape the index card to your balloon's string.Happy Ballooning! To the Finder…

The Nude Pianist: A Novel: Chapter 9

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Michiko stood in front of Steinway Hall on West 57th Street.

Flash Gordon in Iowa

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I will show you how, in the spring, the sidewalks here look like a crossword puzzle resting under a glass of lemonade,

The Application of Birds

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I know someone in need of healing.

The Centre of the Universe

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"Look Emily, I’m charging your solar powered calculator and helping you relieve your dependence on foreign oil."

The Nude Pianist: A Novel: Chapter 23

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After the Tokyo experience, Frank and Michiko decided that when she went on extended tours, Frank would accompany her.

Death by Dinner

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I can't believe it's Frankie, but there he is at a table on the far side, just in front of the big picture window. I hold the menu close to my face and peek again over the top, watching as he reaches under the white linen tablecloth to plant…

Resource Management

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’m sure they have their/ cleverest working on it, though.

A Strategy to Overcome Rejection

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“If your work is good you will get published. Just keep at it."

The letter.

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I am useless. A freak. Different. They all hate me now. All except you, of course. You will never leave me. Never. I'd kill them all if I could. Every single one. But twenty-four, that's a lot even for me. I'm so sick of the cliques; the special groups and hastily strung…

Watching Stanley Kowalski in the TV Room of Belle Haven

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That streetcar named Desire, it don't hardly stop for me no more. Leastwise not while I'm awake, and I don't have to be telling no nosy aides why I make them noises in my sleep.

Putting the Damage On

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My Thursday head belonged to a former Miss Brazil named Rita.

Saturday TV with Dad

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By the sixth - Dizz, Falstaff buzzed - Croons - The Wabash Cannonball

Showtime

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Showtime on Broadway.

Seeing Me

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I got to see me the other day.

Magdalena

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Magdalena followed the receding tide, her tiny feet leaving no rumors in the hard sand. She gathered only the most beautiful shells and presented them to her waiting Abuela. Her grandmother told her that the only things that a woman truly owns are her dreams. She told her…

Sensation

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She could see him doing these things but she could not hear him.

Recipe for the Broken

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This poem first appeared in “Walt’s Corner” of The Long Islander, founded by Walt Whitman in 1838.

MOTHER MOUSE AND HER BRATS

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Oh, you aren't going to lecture us, for heaven's sake?

Invoking Fire

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We talk of his time in the jungle.

Archaeology

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I would like to go back (with spade, pick, soft bristles), and sift through time and layers, brush away the intervening years, and find: the tooth, knocked out by my then best friend, when we were seven, careening downhill in my father's wheelbarrow on Boscobel…

Sorry, Charlie

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Vietnam, Tet, and beaucoup Charlie