Most read stories

How to Cheer Up a Sad Song

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It's one of the most difficult problems of aesthetic philosophy: What do we mean when we say that a song is sad? None of the big names--Aristotle, Kant, Croce–Benedetto, not Jim–come close to answering it.

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

Passings

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Perhaps my grandparents, Fred and Lela, when they were growing up....

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:

Music That Tastes Like Blood

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It is your music that makes me want to crack open my ribcage and rip out my heart as it still beats, to cauterize my carotids, and shove the mechanical insides of a clock into my thoracic cavity.

Capital Offense

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They can’t exterminate the poor just yet

Veined and Green

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

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.

The Lycanthrope Fun-Time Activity Book

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an elongating boy with butter-yellow flecks in his eyes, and skin patched like a tabby.

Richardson

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What is golf?

Deus Ex Machina

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He rolls in unbidden across the stubble fields / Old acquaintance astride a newly booming cloud/ Under sky an alien shade of strawberries whipped/ Her watch stops ticking out the rest of her/ scheduled breathing poses

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…

Sleeping Apes and Washing Dishes: What I Learned From Magazines This Week

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Eat blueberries every day and you'll live to be a 92 year old mogul. Really.

Aftermath

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Oh sweet, sweet morning light

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." …

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.

young salesman

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When I was young I bowed with such forgotten politeness, a young salesman, enchanting, in the silken trades. But I remembered the sun also when it was in Hades, which had forgotten to set, or to rise. Peace, also, dangled there by the neck. Such a pre

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.

Things Like This

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I'm an older guy. She is still quite young. I tell her I may be too old but she giggles and tells me that she did the research and it said because there is snow on the roof doesn't mean no fire's in the stove. She proved it. Things like this. We excite ourselves,…

His Name is Chaos

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Should probably be faster at the cash register

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 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

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 . . .

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"!]

Vision and Conviction in San Lorenzo

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"They don't know how this formed or how it got to where it is today. What we do know is that it's not going to last forever." Said Edward McCabe to his daughter who hadn't learned to talk but communicated with her father through her agreement or disagreem