Most read stories

A Course In Positive Thinking

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The debits and credits of life have been recalculated. You are not due tax; you are owed a trapeze. It turns out you have a natural gift for hanging upside down, knees to the clouds.

Big Secrets

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O’Malley imagined the blissful, narcotic innocence of Toby’s world where soft-shell crabs crawled into people’s mouths and hummed a happy tune as they were chewed and swallowed.

Peach

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She's standing outside the 7-11, skirt up round her ass. Ripe. She could be a whore but she looks way too classy. Plus she has a huge soda - I'd guess diet - and a Twinkie.

Tree Voices (revised)

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Shhhhhhhh...

THE GIFT

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If you run into my Aunt Lucille, put your head down and keep walking. She knows when a person is going to die. She knows when a fatal disease is heading your way and she doesn't keep it to herself. She told my best friend, Mary Lou Pierce, don't bother

Smooth Criminal

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In an early scene in Marvel's 2015 movie Ant-Man, the film's protagonist, Scott Lang, a convicted felon and former burglar, is summoned to his boss Dale's office at Baskin-Robbins."Three years at San Quentin, huh?" says Dale."You found out," Scott replies."Baskin-Robbins…

LOTUS

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Make cartography with your mouth...

All-Night Cartoon Party

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'Hey, are you supposed to be from a cartoon or something?' said the Grim Reaper. I had to take a big drink before I could reply. I didn't know what to say, so I said 'Could I see your watch, please?' He looked down my dress while he thought about it.

Angels

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Not everybody sees Father. Not Mom, not Dad, not even my little brother, Andre, and he see lots of things. Me, I need to.

Five Uneasy Pieces

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Eighteen-layered canvases were prized by both of them, regardless of whose work appeared on top.

watch

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what drives them here?

Boys of Summer in Yonkers (Memoir Excerpt # 1)

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Boys of summer in Yonkers played stickball and baseball.

What You Catch a Glimpse of, Forget As Soon

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There are gestures, unmarred by the words put to them after all has failed. When Y. stopped you from talking to apply lip balm to your dry lips. Or she sidled up to you to read what you had written for her. When you lay on the grass together she put her head on…

Short Fuse

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he scans the headlines of the tabloids as he waits to pay. “Dog Accidentally Shoots Man With His Own Gun, Elvis's Hidden Extraterrestrial Daughter, Swedish Man Bursts Into Flames on Train Platform.”

LIGHT FINGERS

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Like gymnastics, shoplifting is a discipline of youth.

The Human Car Wash of Self-Esteem

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It was one of those dinner parties where everyone had had a little too much to drink, and the conversation around the table had grown more . . . shall we say, spirited.

(There Are Ways) to Come Home

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When you return home, one year to the day that you left us, you will wonder if you can do it all over again.

TPP or...

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This was looking down from what we know as The Grassy Knoll.

How It Is

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When Ryan isn’t around, those of us who know him lament that he peaked at 17, at Disney World.

Petunias

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People huddle in their basements like kittens. People laugh, darkly, saying they'd rather be surfing. People wonder if their batteries are charged. People never do get what they want. People grow tired of the sad dog following them around. People want you to know how…

| To Sew the Night Together, At Last | (A hybrid essay)

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____________________________________I get an internet connection and send this poem out in haste: Drugs, New Orleans…

Divinatrix

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Hooking up.

Girlfriends

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—That was harsh, said Jen as the bathroom door slammed behind Melanie. —Mel's my best friend, not yours. She needed to know that shade of blue doesn't go with olive skin. —Viv, you said she looked like a whore. —That's how our friendship…

The Black Hole

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Matilda went wild at sixty-five. Legs left unshaven for the first time in fifty years, hair still and proud, knotted with forgetting. She’d roam the streets at night, a traveler without design. Matilda was a gardener of sorts, digging up all previous assu

Summertime City

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Columbus Avenue, I’m the tense union of poor city rich city/ gentrification.

Memory Freeze

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When the snow reached the windowsills I was no longer a virgin.

The Mommy's Girl

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Her mother dressed her like a little girl would dress a doll.

The Counter Where Names Go To Die

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One day a woman, one of several translators at Ellis Island, asks him why he has changed a passenger’s name from Checzowicz to something else. “The name was too long,” he says. “Ten letters.” She replies, “But you didn’t change O’Shaughnessy, and it has

Freckles

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My eyes became purple, and boys called them "picture windows". Well, not boys, exactly, but one girl did. Junie.

500 Words or Less

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A brief commentary on the uselessness of endings.