Most read stories

missing item #7

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in her bedroom, opening night of his solo show she is snapping her nylons to center the seam stretching from her toes to where the line disappears into the hem of her dress.

The Watchers

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Up at the top, a quarter mile south, billows of black smoke crawled up the faint blue of the sky.

Oopsy-Daisy!

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

August 1976 Jefferson City, MISSOURI

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"We gotta find a way to get high!" "Shh! My parents will hear you Tommy! Their bed is right above us." …

Modern Teleology

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little curly moustaches

Youngish Professor, or Grad Student TA

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Natty looking in his 2-tone shoes and argyle socks blue blazer with 3 gold buttons on each cuff pale yellow hemp or burlap necktie, of course with a blue shirt (never white!!) long mopish hair hanging on his forehead and a

Tissue

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A tissue, she was saying - hand me a tissue. Her seat belt was locked and she was rocking back and forth in it cinching wrinkles into her favorite blue silk blouse. I can't remember her wearing anything else. Her hands were gesturing - on and on- an endless loop…

Veined and Green

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Where we’ve penned heart shaped question marks, seeds sprouting bowed heads, a congregation of confused supplicants.

Mobiles

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My stories are ramshackle; they lurch along in old sweaters with holes and missing buttons, drinking from mismatched cups and saucers.

Pen Pals

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Sitting together at Starbucks, we composed a long love letter which we've been mailing back and forth to each other, signing our name upon each receipt and returning it for the last nine months and it has grown to eighty seven pages, barely fitting in a shoe box.

Strawberry Swirl

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Keisha selected a strawberry swirl cupcake from the waiter's tray, so pretty, from the hottest, coolest, newest patisserie. Moist strawberrylishious cake, swirly pink frosting, sprinkles. Keisha was one lucky lady, scoring a bizdev gig at recession-proof…

The Hamsa.... an excerpt

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It is your hamsa that protects us,” the girl whispers to me. “Then I shall give it to you,” I reply. “No,” she says in the unselfish innocence of her youth. “It is yours and you must keep it.” I smile and kiss her dirty forehead. Eternity passes whil

It is Easier Than You Think To Ride A Train: The Q & A

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Q:What made you want to be a person who rides a train? A:As soon as I learned there was such a thing, I wanted to be one.

Happy Birthday to Me

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Happy Birthday to me. It takes just a second on waking to remember, It's June but it feels like December.

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"!]

Transgressions

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Once you descend, the third rail/ hums its invitation

Where's Waldo?

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Over his usual ham sandwich and skim milk for lunch Uncle Waldo used to always say, “Going out in the dead of night without a flashlight is dangerous.” But I knew what I was doing. After dark, I'd slip out and sneaker on down the path to take a dip in a…

Taking Leave

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A walled city doesn’t let you out any more easily that it has let you in earlier.

Falling

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Sometimes when I fall I see a ...

Bridges Are a Lot Like Long Corridors

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Nothing good ever waits at the end of a long corridor.

Paradise

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From the rumple of pre-dawn Queens, sure South on 95, to almost Savannah by dark; still cold, but we’re full of what’s coming:

Capital Offense

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They can’t exterminate the poor just yet

The Blue Jay

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His mother hated blue jays, hated them with a passion she usually reserved for no-count trash who drank beer on their front steps and worked on their cars in the street.

The Rodeo of Doom (Excerpt)

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Today is the last day of the semester. It also marks the end of my tenth year as what is referred to as an adjunct, an appendage, a necessary but unidentifiable tentacle in the College of Architecture at Andreas Tangen University in Los Angeles.

End of an Arabesque. Degas

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Holding a bouquet of flowers wrapped in a tissue in one hand, a round shape that balances the round yellow burst of light that is her dress. While the flesh of her chest bulges forward and she balances as though in a holding pattern in flight.

Great Books of the Western Bedroom

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Artie Shaw gave Ava Gardner a reading list in preparation for their honeymoon that included The Brothers Karamazov, The Origin of the Species, Das Kapital and The Magic Mountain.

His Name is Chaos

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Should probably be faster at the cash register

The Body in the Other Room

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I couldn’t parse the grammar of her body nor decode the secret softness of her neck.

The Bird King's employees

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The Bird King's advisors and ministers are a range of rusty kitchen utensils. They all observe a respectful silence in his presence.——Contrary to popular belief, the Bird King is not an atheist. His meathook priests do their rounds at twilight.——The…

The Rat, His Treadwheel

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The rat had been informed, assured, cajoled in order to gain his assent—duly lied to, in other words, by the researchers with not one tear of remorse, with no smudge or smear of conscience . . .