Most read stories

Rittenhouse Square: excert from Ari Figue's Cat

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Trunks of plane trees with parchment bark, their shaggy pillars bear a canopy of green like a great tent spread over the square of the park. Cool misting lawn sprinklers, their umbral spay--brick walks glisten in the mottled light. Fading blooms of rhodo

Sees, Kindness, and Made

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SeesWe fell into this lake together and traced the clean soft lines straight back to ourselves, with a carefree laugh, ha ha ha-- an embarrassing ease. This small miracle does tend to put in orbit something high flying besides clouds into the sky inside of…

Being Old is No Place for Sissies

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My natural blonde hair is no longer sultry. Instead of a Dietrich look, I now assume a dead on impression of Bette Davis in "What Ever Happened to Baby Jane" some mornings.

Out of That Bed 1963

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My father's hands were huge. His left knuckles gashed as a kid when he rode his bike too close to a moving train. When his fingers fisted around a glass, the scarred joints bulged from his grip like blind eyes.

Beautiful Plague

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Jacob Obrecht, you are beautiful. Everything inside your head and everything you’ve ever made is beautiful and singing.

Rejection

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I hate math. I hate everything about it.

writer’s block

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round & round this empty block again & again i go

Veld fire

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The crackling inferno sweeps across the ground Devouring all in its scorching path

Frank Meets Francine

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I interviewed in an hour and didn’t have an umbrella, so I ducked inside the next door I passed. It didn’t matter what they sold, I wasn’t there to make a purchase.

Ditching the Universe for Katy

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I am running for only one thing now. For Katy.

The End of the World

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I find driftwood, long, smooth logs washed up on the beach, drag them to dunes still wet from the sea...

A Manual for Readers

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The story will starve. It will crawl up your throat to get the cracker.

Alfalfa

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The year I lick so much windowpane off stamps I have to use Elmer's glue to back the twenty-center for a postcard cash request to my mother, that I am alive note at the end of term, is the year of all the "wine" parties. "Wine" is what we put down

Accidental Faith

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Until millennia have passed and the world is dug up For future historians to ponder And through their meticulous disassembling of dirt They will find my book.

We Don't Need No Education

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“There’s an ill energy that emanates from your precise heart that I find attractive”

My Boogie Man

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We'd both done well to avoid crying before today and I couldn't stand to see him like this. I crawled on my hands and knees to the closet. “David, come out of there. I…I don't like this any more than you do. But you can't come to college with me.

To the prostitutes on Boracay

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. . . not if I have anything to do with it.

The Thirteenth Sign

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I'm twelve again and

Old Wounds

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We got married in a hospital. My bride had her appendix out the day before our wedding, so we decided to tie the knot in her room at Hoover Memorial.

No More Dogs

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Highway 45N cost me four dogs when I was growing up. Actually, having our backyard abut the highway was the real problem. It got to be where I was afraid to get too attached. We lost Nicky,…

Story

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For two days, I bashed out words with grimacing fingers, wrenching images from my whining consciousness – a weak, lumbering, uninspired piece – and now for what?

A June Defection

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I came from the only flat region in the kingdom of mountains and fjords, and called the city “Down in the Dumps”. The beleaguering mountains smelled a flatlander when they saw one, and hated me right back.

Confess another sin

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I Draw a Map

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I draw your location on my thighs. It takes up both legs; it’s far. I think about showing you but something comes up. The phone rings. I tell her I don’t want to donate to the PBA.

nudes

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for a handful of weeks/ my father took me to/ the college of art and design/ downtown/ where i took drawing lessons./

How We Send to Anderbo

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She's always sitting in a soft chair watching television with little stars dotting her elbows and lightning bolts on her wrists.

Pieces

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I find my mother’s pink Pyrex mixing bowl at the antique store on Fairview Avenue. It’s in the hands of a fat woman in a blue down parka, and she’s holding it upside down, squinting at the sticker on the bottom.

Carmen (from The New Yorker+ a Jimmy Breslin "afterword" from Newsday)

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Every trip her mother leaves it until then: Shouldn’t she look for an apartment in a better area; shouldn’t she try for a job with some future? “And, you know, someday you could get married, Carmen.”

The Strongman Used To Weep

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The Strongman used to weep alone in hissingle dusty tent at night, all of uscould hear him, sobbing, thinking about theone incredible time in his mostlymiserable life he accidentallybrushed his thick arm…

Lunch at Lefty's

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Sixteen years married, and now she wants a wedding ring. He brings her a box of Cracker Jack. She doesn’t think it is funny.