Most read stories

The Good, the Bad, & the Ugly

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One of the women is a brassy blond, and when she takes off her coat, I almost choke on a French fry.

Brief Studies of Doomed Females

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She is unsure if it will work, despite all her reading of physics and flying carpets and propeller planes. The practicalities of aerodynamics in application remain to be tested.

Fort Stark, New Hampshire

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Sometimes you have to make sacrifices to get where you need to be.

All Will Be Well

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Jesus will walk on the water. Judas will walk on a technicality.

Suspended Heart

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The suspended heart became an oracle of sorts. Hung from a string, immersed in the kind of glass container in which tulips grow, it was located between Bath and Body Works and Kleinfelter's Jewelers at the north entrance of the mall. Someone had lost it,

Polite Grafitti

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He was entirely guilty of what he had done and wanted that to be acknowledged and understood by the arresting officer.

Contentment

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On the bed he tickled her until she was crying with laughter. And then the tickles became caresses, the fingers, lips.

Wild Strawberries of Mars

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might leave NYC or Earth

The Bond Trader Goes Hunting

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The Bond Trader begins his morning with coffee and a hit of LSD.

Love Songs for Kandahar

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You worry that the mullahs suspect us, but that cannot be. We never touch in public. You weep and I shake when a neighbor knocks on the door.

Leave Off Doves

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Midway through the fall semester, an unremarkable girl in Professor Woody's Advanced Fiction workshop dyed her hair an unnatural shade of dark, changed her name to Tasmina, and turned in a story filled with made-up words.

The several stages of grief

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Robert was not in any sort of metaphysical or spiritual sense seeing himself, as in the scales falling from his eyes and seeing himself as he was. He was a long way from that kind of insight. He was literally seeing another himself.

Old Church Slavonic

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Because it seems never to be beginning, always picking up in the middle with it’s long resonant tones, which themselves begin as if they’ve always been. Maybe that’s why we love old, sacred music. And by we I, of course, mean my two-year-old Charlie and m

Four Noble Lies

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When Carlotta left me, I cried / into my soup. I shriveled into / harsh mathematics.

Three Poems, One for Each Eye

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1. a bone to pick"It seems to be accepted nowadays more than ever that killing,individual and mass killing,is the order of the day;it is accepted."--Henry MillerWhy can't you leave well enough alone just long enough for it to make its own miraculous escape…

On Tundergarth Farm

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There’s an oak tree in Hanover, New Hampshire. Twenty years old, it is still a sapling. I imagine that one day the tree will have a commanding view of the Connecticut River and Norwich, Vermont, where my mom sat in bed, crying, watching everything unfol

Lord of Autumn

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Gordon He pressed the side of his face to the pillow and waited for the sound of birds. The room was black, the window open; when a breeze came the curtains billowed out against a lighter sky. He heard the clock. He heard the dry sound of Helen breathing;…

Fake Letters

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Dear Husband,

A sense that something has happened

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hunting after dark,/ in the quiet they seemed to appear/ with every new poem I read, each new workshop, some hunting carried on/ by both animals.

Hundred Dollar Hit

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"My god," Toni said, bending over and tapping her head gently against the counter in fake anguish. "His ass in those jeans. Jesus. I should be young and lucky like you." Toni tapped her cigarette ash into the coin tray.

Hello, My Name Is James, And I Am An Asshole

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By my calculations, all hell is uncoiling. At the moment, this fact is not really obvious to anyone, but I'm confident that will change soon enough.

Who Will Carry Us?

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1. People avoided Mac, the Great White Hunter, which was how he liked to think of himself, even though he was not white. Mac was cocoa colored and stalked his prey nearly nude. The city was his…

Moses Reborn

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Influenza Jones knew she was Moses. Reborn, of course, because the real Moses had been dead for longer than Influenza could remember. It didn’t matter that she was a woman and Moses was a man, she knew what her body say and her body say she be Moses. Sh

Steady Keel

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He stands. Shoes for dashing, and he could dash, if the audience would stand for it, through one of two exits, beneath one of three wreaths. This year, the year of the Millennium, the wreaths seem dark and Germanic. The stage seems like a Great Hall set for a solitary…

By 4th Grade at St. Paul’s Elementary, No One Believes in the Spanking-Machine-in-the-Closet of Sister Alice Elenita’s Office

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Arthur farts. Pandemonium. Miss O'Kelly shouts, “Quiet!” 32 nine year-olds freeze. “Close your books, fold your hands on your desk, put your heads down.” Obedience. Silence. Until…

Lizard Back

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The lizard is like wearing wings on my back, makes me fly like a dragon in my dreams, which I have all day long, while looking at you, talking to you, right now, having dreams in some part of my head. I'd like to stick out my tongue and lick the part of m

Ah'd love to kiss ya

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“What was the line in the movie Dad?...

Treading Water

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I was nine when I saw my first dead body.

Frankie's Girl

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Frankie's girl had a habit of making any guy she walked past turn his head and lose his entire train of thought-we all knew it. Frankie was the only one who asked her out to have lasted long enough and worked hard enough to the point of putting a ring on

Realizing I Have Not Moved From My Bed for Two Days

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Quite frankly you are ruining my life. / I know you don’t mean to, but you are.