Most read stories

Miss

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On Saturday mornings, by noon, the delivery car comes from Boston and unloads fresh bread and sandwiches, pork ribs and ground pork stuffed inside of breads and buns and banana leaves, bean shakes, and sticky rice desserts.

Often I think on who pulls the strings,

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In a plush leather chair, / high up a shiny skyscraper,

stinking nightgown

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Frank says if I eat the whole bowl of live crickets he’ll give me five dollars and his grandfather’s silver bullet from the war.

DEAR MOTHERFUCKER

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I'm standing outside your window with our son's fingers in my fist.

Simmer Time

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Usually the predawn light means bedtime for wicked guitar players, but not that bloody Sunday.

Better Boys, Early Girls

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... tomatoes swelling and turning pink...

Nevertheless The Plan Was Not Implemented

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Thomas Friedman was right when he said, “Much of this biodiversity in Indonesia is now under threat.” It had been this way since gasoline became currency; I remember bartering with The Governance for the newest edition of The Guinness Book of

The Fault In Our Three Stars

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So there are these teenagers and they're all dying of cancer, or at least were dying of cancer, or might be dying of cancer, and then a couple of them fall in love and lose their virginity to each other, and these teens, they're all smart and charming and only a little…

If Everything is Inevitable

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Christine comes back from the future looking tired, which is the opposite of what I expected. For some reason, I imagined the future as being invigorating. But she walks into the apartment and abandons her suitcase by the front door, collapses into a heap on the couch next…

The Magical Thinking of Birds

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Her eyes grew wide, moist, catching the low light, holding onto it as if an imprisoned lover. "So you come home." I smiled. Was she playing a game?

An MFA Creative Writing Essay Question

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7. Using Cohen's Method of Structure craft a piece of fiction featuring unexpected conflict. (12 points)

Rags to Riches to Rags: Prologue

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My grandfather rode with the Czar’s army. He was abducted from a village in Austria, trained to pillage and drink, plunder and rape, and ride the best horses that could be had. They were given the best vodka and the sharpest swords. They were all just boy

Lang's Dragon

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Fritz Lang. Even before I ever met the miserable son of a bitch, with his monocle and superior airs, I hated him. In person, he was an insufferable asshole.

Dinner at the Bigelows’

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Mrs. Bigelow loaned Tessa a black tulle maid’s uniform and helped her pin it in at the sides. She tied on Tessa the stiff white apron. Slippery, pale, opaque stockings of real silk oozed through the girl’s fingers, secured by a heavy satin garter belt

Cactus Subconscious

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The voice in the sand: "If it has soul you must funk it."

Soviet

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The neatly-gentrified Mtsensk District plaster buckled in all the right grey-painted places. The aged, yellowing windows rose and fell in fashionable decay. It was a well-upholstered citizen's slum, drawn to exacting state specifications. Local housing authorities…

Anhedonia (excerpt)

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Things have happened. It’s a given. What, are you crazy? Of course things have happened. It’s the world, for Christ’s sake. Things are happening. I am consistently missing most, if not all, of them.

What Einstein didn't say

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First you must accept / the speed of light as constant. / If you can’t do that, stop reading.

Gang Bangs, and My First Time, Almost

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Glen always had to be the first to fuck his sister, especially before that big galoot from down the street, whom Cheryl really liked to fuck, otherwise Glen would get violent. She had just started having her periods then, I remember. We were all there one

Women Making Love to Monsters

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I started dating the Minotaur because of Colleen; at the time she was going with a friend of his. The whole thing was a surprise to me because I'd never been attracted to Greek men. This is how it happened. Colleen's new guy, Ian, was known by many…

Clover Grill: A Short Story

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I'm somewhere on I-10 in Mississippi, barreling westbound at 80 miles an hour through a rainstorm on a late Wednesday afternoon. The last road sign I remember was for Beauvoir, some Confederate general's…

The Longfellow Bridge Diaries: Part 2

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They sway from his hips, the torn knapsack, and the corners of the pushcart

White

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“White,” he says. -- “Black,” I answer.

The Last Words of a Genius

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The crowd gathered around the dying man's bed, waiting for his last words. He was a genius. The most prolific writer and philosopher to ever live. He wiped his ass with the words of Shakespeare. The thoughts of Plato, Socrates, Descartes, and Nietzsche w

Vanya

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That spring the war still moved north but we did not go to it any longer.

A Prayer to the Porcelain God

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In her cleavage, Mark is able to discern a golden heart with the image of an arrow piercing it. A bow is super-imposed over both. “I see you are a devotee of Cupid.” Mark states. “I notice that you are a follower of Bacchus.” Diana winks.

Life of the Mind

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Days went by as I stood in the woods waiting for a tree to fall, and when none did, I determined the universe is cold and indifferent and that man’s only hope is to buy wood chippers.

Robotics

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I made this robot. Everyone was making them. Mine was a vacuum cleaner with a rubber jack-o-lantern mask taped to the handle. His name was Z-Bot2131F, but I just called him Brady, after my dead brother. Brady, my brother, had come out cold, and…

Foo Fighters

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Without a charge on the skin of the plane, we were struck by the bronze colored orb. Contact was brief, and it seemed as if the orb passed right through the aircraft. Despite the shielding of the equipment, most of it failed. We managed to land by "dead s

Big

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I found the knife in a fishing box in the closet. The box was made out of varnished wood. My father’s father had made it.