Most read stories

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.

Yadda, Yadda, Yaddo

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I arrived at Yaddo, the prestigious artists’ retreat, in the summer of 1941. With America’s “day that will live in infamy” several months away, my own day of infamy began the second morning of my residency.

Illicit

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... a moth, a kiss. A silence.

Strange and Silent Hands

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

Angel's Return

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I never looked at her face.

Ten Minutes in the Life of Franziska Kafka

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bullet points about her soul

WHAT WE REMEMBER MAY NOT REMEMBER US

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1. The clouds and the shadows of the clouds. The early light, like the night undressing herself revealing pink beneath, underneath the glory and the intimacy like early love made of arms only arms fingers and…

Glass

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Her bulldozer of a husband died five years ago.

Featherbedding

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She sets the muffins aside, opens herself, nymph-like, mouth spread and gritty. She pulls the dirty edge of his gray t-shirt up so to show herself to him, spreads herself across the mattress like thin flesh oil over too much canvas....

The Witch from Bilbao

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I remember the first time I saw her. I'd just pushed through the crowded bar and waited to place my order.

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.

The Bee Factory

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I pick up a pile of postcards, but all the pictures are of bees. There are close-ups of the bees and their perfect anatomy. My favorite picture shows the bees swarming, and I am at the center, their queen.

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.

Suicide Draft

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So, dear world, whose dearness I have never truly known, I bid you adieu.

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

Okay, I'm In

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I get what you want done from me. You want the old one two sucker punch that goes straightaway through to the tenderest part of the aching heart, the one that tumbles you out of your old worn out gut wrenching way of living life for…

Skyscrapers

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I love to lie when discovered. "I'm your new neighbor." "The landlord sent me." "I'm the ghost of the girl who died on the 11th floor." "I fell from the sky." I wear billowing white dresses and a wide-brimmed straw hat that throws my face into shadow. Peo

The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson

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Mighta been a fake.

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.

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

Forgetting Superman

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

Goddesses

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The man she loved did not love her. At first she prayed to Athena for strength and steadiness. She began to knock on wood, spit on her…

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.

Fall

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She's a nurse, plugging leaks, postponing via triage. I'm an engineer, watching essential systems shut down as my body buys extra minutes.

Children

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This was a dream in which I didn’t know fear.

That Particular Diamond

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looking space packed right in up therelike a sun bleached kite stuck in between the several bluish colorsof the sky today has its ownamazing heartbeat. I can seeit clearly from here. Oh I can feel it reverberating for miles andmiles. If I look away it…

Go Ahead

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A drag queen thrown from the mechanical bull Thursday night is my fault, they say, they meaning management. And because of the ensuing brouhaha and the ambulance and the medics and a thousand flannel shirts straining for a look, I failed to pick up Jenny, my six-year-old…

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."

Academic Papers & The People Who Write Them

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It distresses me that I do not write enough. I know I’ve told you before that I don’t read, and it may be super-ridiculous to tell you now that I don’t write much either, but that is the sad catastrophe I with affection refer to as my life.

Round the World Now

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It's true that he had always been more pure than her, looking for the authentic experience, authentic food. And more adventurous. Blogging their way around the world, yes, that had been his idea . . .