Most read stories

War

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We borrow a flag from a neighbor. It’s sitting on top of the TV in the den. We haven’t figured out where to display it yet.

Three Short Fictions

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We were to eat just meat and to become discombobulated over vegetables and bread and not to indulge in sex with strange men—men were all strange once you got used to their distance—were Lincoln logs, poles, boulders and scrub trees.

King boy

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“He had emerged from slavery, -- not the worst slavery in the world, not a slavery that made all life unbearable, rather a slavery that had here and there something of kindliness, fidelity, and happiness, -- but withal slavery, which, so far a human aspiration…

Read Chinese (from The New Yorker)

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Roy Orbison, Roy Orbison, Roy Orbison, Roy Orbison, Roy Orbison, Roy Orbison—right now that’s all I can say.

French Vanilla Death - Seconda Parte

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The lead man, who did not seem to be the most important or distinguished, just the one walking in line before all of the others, knocked twice on the door and opened it quickly. He stepped gingerly through the doorway and the others filed gloomily in afte

Pool Toys

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Confused, I paused and locked eyes with the girl who’d just bounced it with the long, dark hair. “I just saw you with it.” She stared back at me. “Do you see it in my hands now?”

Peeling Onions

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I was in the kitchen peeling onions. They stung my eyes, and perhaps I was crying. I heard my dear husband run into the room and turned with the knife in my hand.

Mussel Memory

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Andreas Cappelanus taught that the word / “love” comes from the word meaning / “to fish.”

Surrendering August

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on the far shore, in the vineyards timed charges explode like the sun catching on fire it scares crows away from the grapes

At the Wedding

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I wear a white dress. I vomit on hers.

The Poet

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...there is something quite delicious about the air between people strange to each other, something that makes my skin crackle alive with the possibility of touch...

Full Tilt Boogie

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Your tongue is enlarging... wait, it’s growing hair. No, wait, it’s planarian flatworms, an earthy taste oozing down your throat. A terrible itching spreads from your solar plexus, under your skin everywhere. You know if you scratch even once, you won

Night at the Reservoir on Airline Drive

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Del and I watched my brother toe his way to the edge of the cottonwood branch that arched over the reservoir.

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

Carapace

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He gathers our abusive fathers, our esophageal tears, our peanut fetuses.

D Evil in the D

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when the devil dies he divides enough evil for everybody

Seventh Floor Ward

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Hers is the kind of crazy that can't be masked. She's worn it on her sleeves since tenth grade.

An Observant Man

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How much more attuned he was when surrounded by forest, consigning meaning to each tiny sound.

Arcana Magi - c.15: Chisame Murakami, Sentinel of Genbu

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The water burst into droplets of rain and fell on top of her. Chisame laughed out loud, a joy that overwhelmed her as she repeated this feat over and over.

Swimming

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I held on to the edge

Watercolored Different

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Simon Ridley only had one special power. Whenever he walked into a room, an awkward silence would descend.

Dream Life (flash friday)

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Virginia hated herself for every moment she spent wondering what it would have been like if things had been different. How would her life be if Glen hadn’t been misdiagnosed, if he hadn’t died when she was a year married and four months pregnant? Not

Ode To A Wave

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She comes and goes,gingerly at times, or, caution tossed,a headlong rushof foam and froth.No matter, I am steadfast,keen to be immersed once morein her salty splendor.

Earth's the Right Place for Love

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When he turns around she has her top off and is climbing out of her skirt. "I don't like old men that much," she says. "We don't have to talk. No one will know."

Unheard

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“Spare change?” he asked the couple heading into the cineplex. They glanced at his brother, saw something was wrong with him, then at him, noting his dirty and disheveled state. They passed without a word, not even a head-shake.

Hunting the Thylacine

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“Ah, there’s the Tasmanian tiger,” the visitor says in an American accent, maybe midwestern. “It’s called a ‘thyracine,’ right?” “Thylacine, yes.” “Un huh. Thylacine. Extinct now, isn’t it?” “Oh! Let’s hope not

The Gulf

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My 99 year old mother...

Strange and Silent Hands

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I shuddered. This is how we are chosen by strange and silent hands.

Forgetting Superman

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I forget you. Upfront: that’s how this ends.

Fat Tuesday

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She likes his smile and Cajun accent, his earring and dangerous ink.