Most read stories

Warts

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Marie and Mary lay side by side, partitioned by flimsy blue vinyl on cheap plastic rollers.

Pitch Meeting

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

Night and Day

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The muezzin calls the faithful, his voice soaring over the rooftops, over the trees and the brooks,

Rule of exchange

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She seizes my hand. I resist just enough to sense her strength.

Begonia {part seven}

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Swoosh, swoosh, swoosh, swoosh; the rhythmic thrust of Mezereon’s wings…Th-Bumm, th-bumm, th-bumm; the drumming of his heart…Hooou, hooou, hooou; the exhalations of his breath…

My Spirit Floated Free

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The last thing I heard was a loud retch The loudest retch I have ever heard

The Brevity of Anthropology

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In time's embroidery, the human storyis a short stretch of a short strand within the thread of half a knot-and that stretch of strand's defective. What will mourn us when we're gone?Not the plants which live so lightly on the earth.Not the scorpions and not the ants.Perhaps…

Me and Coleridge Take a Spin in the Phlegethon

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Like so many high school drugheads I warmed up to Coleridge because he was an dope fiend. If you want to get young men interested in poetry it helps if you lure them to the art through controlled substances.

Edward Ogle the Ninth

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Vanilla bean trampoline

Intimate Dialogues - "Ledge"

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It was a mildly windy day of the working week in the financial district of the city—the bright morning sun was out—when a security guard was called to the fifteenth floor to deal with a disruption. “This way.” Someone pointed to a desk. At the desk

In the Chambers of the End

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Tiny skiers look like beetles/on a white bedspread. /We watch them fall to earth from/the high peaks and tell ourselves this is the week that sealed it

The Nude Pianist: A Novel: Chapter 35

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I visited his loft last week. There were many exciting new pictures. Francesco was your main money earner before, now he will be again.

Secrets / Cigarettes

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We gave our cigarettes names.

Breaking News

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We are our own pathogens.

Every Mirror with Two Sides

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She was gazing down at her two hands holding the peach seersucker top, but without blinking she saw four hands—ahh, idiot, the mirror! But in the next moment no, it was four hands . . .

The Roses Ask For You

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The roses ask for you when I smell them They seem to remember your touch more than others. They can’t bear it when you’re gone and wonder when you’ll be returning I am beginning to do the same I no longer go outdoors to be with them

The Shredded Carcass of a Small, Helpless Animal

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It gets eaten.

The Games We Play

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During the hangover, I crawl to my desktop computer and then Google “rapid STI testing” and “speedy divorce”

Two

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i am two / one part me / another part them

*cute little space bat with scissors*

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I AM A FIRE SWAN! THIS IS MY QUILT! YOU ARE MY QUEEN!

Sensoria

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For Takama this created the second conundrum of the day. One even bigger than the first. When he’d first learnt that sensei and he would be boarding a flight together for a series of demonstrations in Geneva, little had he expected he would be locked up i

The Girl Next Door to Andy

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Then there was this short little girl, Jo Ann, who had a daughter and was divorced, who lived next door to my buddy Andy. She told me right after we did it one night that she had always wanted to have sex with me when she was growing up, as a teenager, I

The Executioner

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No one knows where the wind comes from, but sure as hell it comes. The executioner glances round the reception area. Nods to himself. Function versus form. Anodyne, instantly forgettable, like hotel rooms. Perfect.

The Nurse

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I lay on a table in a cold room in one of those little blue gowns that open in back.

Origin Story

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My father taught me how to solder and that's when I first started to write. Now, when you hold the soldering iron in your hand and depress the trigger, the tip of the gun heats up. Novices uncoil the solder and place it on the hot tip, but that just results in it…

A Study in Plastics

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She sat Indian style against the strawberry tree. In her hand she held a little mirror and a note that her father left her that morning. What a night, eh? See you in the morning. That’s what it said.

Atrocities

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My table offers up the gutted calf/ with carrots and potatoes yanked / alive and whole

How to Tell if Your Loved One Belongs in the Booby Hatch

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It is well known around town that Ray's dad went crazy. Today, when asked, everyone will tell you that they knew all along he had a screw loose, told their wife, “That Mick Borkowski's gone bat-shit.” But when it was happening, no one paid it any…

The Catch

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His granddaughter, Ivy, sat on his knee looking at an old photo album she found under the couch during one of her afternoon explorations. She made him wipe off the dust and cobwebs before he took her through all the pictures, per normal protocol. The albu

Wheelbarrels

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What a great feeling it was, the day I first thought about and discovered how toilets work. Nearly as exciting as the day I learned wheelbarrel is actually spelled wheelbarrow.