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

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.

Arcana Magi - c.22: Moving Forward

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Alysia never said a word as she rested her body on Suzaku’s feathers. She felt the wings cover her like a blanket. It brought memories of her mother doing the same as they watched a movie together on the couch.

Ditching the Universe for Katy

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

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.

Veld fire

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

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...

Confess another sin

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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…

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.

To the prostitutes on Boracay

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

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 Good Boy

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...I had a string of Sunday School medals that knighted me a warrior for Jesus Christ of Nazareth...

Frozen Chicken

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One of the pieces, I noticed, had the real shape of a miniature chicken, its mohawk, pin legs, and small definition of wing. “Look at that,” I said to my friend. And just then, the wing twitched.

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.

Kitty Love

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Our next door neighbor is in love with his cat. His wife sits in our kitchen crying her eyes out.

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.

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.

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”

Earworm

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It scraped at Paul’s brain like a cat’s claw at the door. He hadn’t heard the song in years. Was that the Searchers? The Seekers?

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.

Whatever Happened to Sue Ellen?

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When she awoke in her yard, she poured what was left of the rum into the dead grass. The man beside her lay with fingers curled, a claw she’d found wedged up her skirt when she woke. Tom, she said, his name nonsense, tongues. Might as well have been any

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.

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,…

Swimming Pool

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My glasses fog up every time I go to collect her from the pool. I'll never get used to glasses. When my sight got suddenly worse the day she was born, I didn't tell anyone. As she turned from baby to child, my love for her grew, and my world got smaller,

Velcro Shoes, a Cardboard Computer, and Other Signs of Brilliance

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It wasn't until later that I realized that any time a teacher complimented you on your use of imagination, it was because they didn't know what else to make of whatever you'd created. My homemade narrative video in lieu of the assigned “getting to know y

Third Time's the Charm

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No jobs except drinking...

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.

Threesome

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Six kinds of crazy, he said. That told me everything. It told me enough.

An Argonaut Ethos

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My daddy made all these gold records on the walls, died, and left me to run BadSmack Media, even if I could only manage to run it aground.