Most read stories

Noises

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Another noise, softer than the first: swish, thud. You are still. The house is very loud tonight.

Peanut Time

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A peanut, who knoweth

The Nude Pianist: A Novel: Chapter 34

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—Now that’s a hell-of-a-painting, Frank, he said. Those colors are engaged in warfare. How the hell did you do that?

Animal Crush

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two pairs of arms and legs

This Cowgirl's Lament

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A tornado and peacock were bred in his paddock; the couple gave birth to a turquoise lasso.

The Winter's Too Warm for Bears to Sleep

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The winter’s too warm for the bears to sleep, and they get up in the middle of the night with insomnia and wander about the streets in their pajamas, knocking over garbage cans, looking for a midnight snack of some kind. They’re getting kind o

Falling Towards Oblivion Avenue

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At some point, you care/ just enough to wake each morning,

Cassie Fly

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...the relatives didn't seem nearly as fucked up as she thought they would be considering...

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.

trenton

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his word

Oopsy-Daisy!

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[This story definitely WON'T be appearing in this month's "Alfred Hitchock's Mystery Magazine"!]

Bats in the Catacomb

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Dreams / of being a millionaire are replaced by dreams / of being a billionaire

Snapshots

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On a street-lit night in Jeddah.

The Sound Of...

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What if Everything I have been doing Hasn’t been heard By anyone?

Ritual

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The dance draws deeper whirling witches weaving rhymes The fire spits fierce in the falling rain soon the spell will spill from secret times

Flutter in Night

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Have you heard this yet? The daughter flew home to care for the mother, whose pump is still tick ticking—though now with aid—which means she leaves the kitchen when the microwave clicks on.

A New Chapter to Song of Solomon: A Poem

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My beloved lets me crawl into bed and put my feet on him since his skin is warm and hot like a fire roaring from within his soft flesh.

Visitation

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We sat up in bed. It's ‪two o'clock‬ in the morning. Blinding circular flashlight beams probe through the half pulled shades. Magnified black silhouettes of men's torsos lumber back and forth in the yard. We are in a fishbowl and being invaded.

Sarah

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Rumpelstiltskin cried because you belong to me;

Ink Play

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Lying on a high seat in the south study, this is what I see:

Settled

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Zusman snored on the sofa as Motel gathered his belongings in the dark. He moved quietly as had become his custom in the mornings. Initially he had tried not to wake his nephew on his way to work in the…

The Bounce

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I. Two cancer scares since June, one came up nothing the other nothing much. (My breasts are dense: I know all about moles— little bastards don't have to get sun to go nuts.) My manuscript travels ether to…

Threshold

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But we proliferated back

ANSWER: (g)

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[CAUTION: READING THIS STORY COULD CAUSE IRREPARABLE "CULTURE SHOCK" AND IS NOT ADVISED FOR OLD FOLKS, PREGNANT WOMEN, OR THOSE WITH "MONSTROUS, FRAGILE EGOS"!]

The Listener

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They think because you are a writer you are not much of a listener and so you begin to recognize all of the great opportunities to be much more of a listener and then you shut your trap and get sucked into the whorls of her big wet brown eyes with Italianate…

Confinement

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Even music relies on what/ you know as music/ for its power to enthrall.

All About the Guns

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Been looking for guns. His guns have turned up missing. He’s been looking for the guns. Looking for guns. The au-pair must’ve snuck back in And took the guns. And the baby. The baby must be crawling off with Guns again.

Any Given Recent Day

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Ten-year-old Bobby Akins learned that a shotgun shell struck on its brass end with a hammer can indeed take out the left eye of an eight-year-old brother observing the proceedings close by.

I Once Knew a Sparkledrop

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"And then I, and I believe, I alone, saw this small child run..."

Invoking Fire

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We talk of his time in the jungle.