Most read stories

The Actual Poets

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And here’s a picture of you at the end of the line to the great toilet of fiction, waiting to relieve yourself, quick before the poetry gets to you. Or worse, the actual poets.

Un Americano

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His eyes are wide then narrow and brown. Hers are gray then they look away, toward the back door where a delivery driver has walked in, carrying a tray. Nothing is going to happen today.

Bad Monkey

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The hotel sits on the highest point in Shimla: a place of cedar-scented air, an aggressive monkey population, and summer houses left by the British Raj.

EXAMINATION

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I had the idea while I was in the county jail. I would get jail glasses; I wouldn’t be me; I’d be some other person. I could pretend that it was someone else rotting away in that 8x12 cell.

Wash That Man

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The washing machine at home was broken. It was an old leaky Maytag. A discouraging mess—twisted panties, sky-blue jeans, and an old lover or two or three floating downstream (the reverse of spawning salmon). Each man was slightly drowned,…

Two Weeks in a Dristan Land

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I smelled the bleach of burst anemones the sweet arousal of the Dungeness crabs the seaweed of sour twigs and feces

Jeremy

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My name is Jeremy, and I am in love with a zombie.

A Quiet Noise

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the sun is quiet like the mountains, the birds except for their wings

Cleaverly Done!

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‘what’s the hassle kiddo, chopping meat is fun, come here and listen to the music of the chop, the sound of steel ripping through air, slicing through flesh and hitting wood, poetry I say’.

Prologue (excerpt from a novel)

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The clip-clopping of footsteps now echoes from the opposite end of the alleyway, and as you turn to face the figure who appears behind you, the figure wearing a fierce Noh-drama mask, you determine that this time you will enlist its aid in decoding this r

Barrier Island

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At the beach house

Regarding Hank

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Won't speak a word against 'em. Car trunk stunk like bad chicken long after, but I won't speak a word against 'em.

Bunking off

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He looked like a black paper doorway pasted onto a painting of summer.

SWING-SET

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Soon, out of the womb ‘down there' is nuance. It guides you, like a legality, like your own breathing, in and out of overtone, hardcore hodgepodges, those inklings near sacrosanct beyond breakfront negligees and neo-negligence leading the good life. Isn't it…

The Humanists

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“She’s very sick. She’s dying,” and he smoothed my hair along my neck. “It’s leukemia. A very rare type,” his hand reached my shoulder and stopped there. “She only has a few months.”

Winsome Mshindi

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The cold and the ice’ve really stoked a fire in those old bones of his. He runs with the gait of a racer, front legs straight out—each extension producing a crack like Jack London spitting into the cold...

The Next Best Thing to Dying

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Later, my daughter told me that she hadn't been scared because as I lay on the ground unconscious I continued to laugh, gradually relaxing into a big smile as I came around a minute later.

Excavation

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"the dark velvet slide of the tongue."

Legs Unwilling

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Summer bakes the metal playground slide to ripples. Still, kids line up. Sadists, all of them. Lucky enough to choose pain. Max feels it every breath, unwanted.

Style Shifts

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Style Shifts “Oh, yes, my cousin. We were rude boys until the armed gangs started to gather. Used to be we could pass a night driving, playing our songs, acting tough. Yeah. We'd mouth off, flash some teeth, spark some anger when we felt like it. We…

Take Back the Night

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A woman who is, say, a culinary arts champion or an heiress devoted to literature such as Bryher (Annie Winifred Ellerman) or Peggy Guggenheim might be able to turn me on, turn me out, turn me around.

How To Find A Galaxy In The Dark

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I don't know what I'd expected from the week of mourning after my mother died but I sure hadn't pictured this marathon cocktail party. Our house is packed with people, food, booze and borrowed chairs. People I haven't seen in years keep turning up with casseroles.I'm…

Secrets of Philadelphia

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Bruce Springsteen begins singing from the loud speaker he was bruised and battered and couldn’t tell what he felt.

Sagacious Abridgment

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A cloudy autumn morning greeted Sean as he stepped from the trolley at Grand Central Station. On his way to the tracks he purchased a copy of The New York Times dated October 24, 1934.

In Dubai

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I do not know the species of birds here. / The two I see playing on the balcony at night / I can never call back.

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."

Destiny Narrowly Avoided

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Then it started extruding tendrils and tying them all into intricate knots.

You May Be

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beautiful, but you don't own beauty. You may be sexy, but you don't own desire. You may be smart, but you don't own wisdom. You may be good and kind, but you don't own love. You may like trees, but you don't own the forest. You may like to…

Need food for family

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The young man pulls out his wallet, grabs a couple of bills and stops short of handing them to the bedraggled man. “So how do I know you’re not going to go out and buy some crack with this money?”

Blue Baby

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they taught art