Most read stories

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.

Dry Tuna

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"If you don't like it then leave!" Sally screamed.

Into The Night

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Under a conspiratorial moon… the shovel my silent partner… organ-less torso to the worms.

Betrayal

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My brother Herb married his high school sweetheart right after completing college. This was a girl named Beryl, whom he'd met originally in Mr. Reinert's marching band at York High School in Elmhurst. I remember one day in particular in the middle of the

Little Oddities

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The energies align to compel you,/ wave by field, charge by pulse, into/ an ever increasing circle of speed

Jack

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We’ve already agreed on a date when Jack posts some new pictures of himself. I have to swallow. Hard. In four days Jack’s become twenty years older! On Thursday, a boyish thirty-something was smiling at me from my PC. This Monday I find myself stari

(On Tuesday...)

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On Tuesday, he wears his suit to the cafe. Of course they'll let him pay! Of course. Under the table, his wife accepts their wadded bills.

Aftermath

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They waited not a moment longer than was necessary But moved right in and Began their loathsome ch

The Shopkeeper

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His eyes are closed yet restless, as if too many thoughts loop beneath the lids.

The Sentence

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Two women are escorted to the desert, where they are shackled to the ground. Who are they, what have the done, and will they survive?

Query

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time timed times time

Pitch Meeting

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Someone shoved over a table. A little girl started crying.

Walking To Gibraltar, Chapter 5: In Which Lymph Nodes Are Involved

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Astrid did not smoke. Astrid did not drink. Astrid was not overweight. Astrid did not live a sedentary lifestyle; her whole life, aside from shopping, was working out. Astrid had no history of breast cancer or other female cancers in her family. Astrid di

The Window (Part II)

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When we saw the window, we were impressed. It was so clean and transparent that it reminded us of a new pair of glasses, everything so crisp and clear through it. It looked on to nothing. Actually it looked on to the refridgerators and a few stoves, though most of the…

Reportage 1

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But oh my goodness ladies and gentlemen, out from under the vast reeking field, under this generation another generation has been rising and they are bursting up out of the soil of corpses they were boiling under there all along and they are bursting up o

Figures in Disquieting Landscapes

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Tentacles hold fast to the small/ thrashing thing they believe is true// which, devoured, once crushed/ completely still, turns into shit,

Rain Typing

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"I'm just going to take a power nap!"

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…

Never Said

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We're at the Park Diner. My dad Tommie is sitting across from me. He looks haggard, tired. His skin is pasty and washed-out. He's not talking, so I'm not talking either, but it doesn't matter because it's hanging there between us.Cancer.Motherfucker.“Don't look so…

Exordium

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Overhead cranes balance ordinance from one end of the palatial enclosure to the other. There are robots, high-voltage, force-fields…more than a hundred ways someone could get hurt. I looked back again…She was gone.

Flash Before Your Eyes

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It was the dead of winter. I took my father's shotgun from his closet. He kept it wrapped up in one of those khaki-colored gun tote bags that had a zipper running the whole length of the gun. It was a 16-gauge, single action shotgun. Anyone could tell wha

Imagining the Reading as Effacement

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What the spaces say// can be heard in the short/ and longer silences

How We Fight

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HORDES OF MEN desolated, struck down, destroyed, sunken form of skin and skeleton, bare cloth matted to torso, bodycage and hipbone, face and neck darkened, bloating to black, rain the endless dream stuck fast in the stone-dead skull and blood a fine sheen over all,…

Indentured Servitude

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"I’m wearing a white sundress with little strings tied at the shoulders, sheer white panties, and a lace push up bra." It sounded good, sexy, likable. The kind of outfit a girl he’d fall in love with would wear- if he was prone to love, that is. "That sou

The James Joyce Piggly-Wiggly

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In Aisle 3 would you brighthearted find Count the Chocula.

Diary of a Bolshoi Potato Dancer

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“Is that an erect annual plant in your codpiece, Mr. Flax, or are you just glad to see me?”

Tiger Milk ( Part 3)

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"Soviet Mandelstam rose like Christ from the Nightmare, Rises from the gulag, sunrise on the page."

Cold/Warm

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I wear boots over bare legs feigning ignorance To the coming storms, the snow the ice the cold

Fairy Tale

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Ey’, it’s where I followed him down

Authenticity in a Time of Consolidation

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Culture gives what it feels you deserve/ in the cul-de-sac of your time and place.