Most read stories

Sam and the Planets

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No, she hated the vain, overweight, pathetic, glass-of-merlot-a-day, SUV piloting, Carmen-cell-phone-ring-toned, housewives and consumer sluts that charged through the store like starving hyenas through the fallen, decaying, putrid, corpses of a plague-ri

The Inkblot Test

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“Regard this inkblot,” the Psych says to Worker 168. “What do you see?” Worker 168, a thin young women wearing overalls, peers at the inkblot. “I see a beautiful summer day,” she says. “A young woman, wearing a flowing dress, sits…

Eating Grief at Bickford’s

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Eating Grief at Bickford's · From Allen Ginsberg's “Kaddish” There are no places anymore Where I can sit at a threadbare table Pick at the crumbs on my plate And wipe The white dust From my pitch …

The Birds (2)

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The birds were stacked up in the branches of a pine tree behind the feeder. Several were sitting on the fence. “They’re massing,” she said.

The Untimely Death of the Old Forgotten Man

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I watched haunted as my pearl tooth circled the rotten porcelain sink. I could feel my hair thinning and my pale skin suddenly felt too loose.

Music Box

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Katie loved butterflies. Katie loved daisies. Mainly, Katie loved presents.

Lisa

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She didn’t say yes, but she didn’t say no. She didn’t say anything. So I helped her to the car and we didn’t talk along the way.

Turning Thirty

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It was a year of red, white, and blue bell bottoms, chokers, and mini-skirts. It was not a decade of pink stretch pants, pink sweatshirts, and pink snowsuits.

Wild Dreams of Reality, 6

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The diner was half filled with the loose ends of humanity that stayed up until five in the morning. We picked a booth by the window. The light in the diner was a dingy yellow, and the seats were that lobster-red vinyl that could only have been installe

The Butterfly Effect

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Now it turns out, the story doesn’t begin with the butterfly lady, herself, but with her brother.

Overboard

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Six months ago, Gary hired a goateed designer to "defoliate" the office, trucking out all the ficus trees and spanish moss to make room for curved sheets of fiberglass and, as he called it, "negative space." Now, her voice echoes off the concrete floors.

Snapshots

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Jake remembers that Amy told him once that she thought that somehow he would always be a part of her life. That was before she went to Spain and married an American bull fighter.

The Anniversary

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.... The sun tears through the windshield as if it were an six-foot wide magnifying glass and for a moment it feels to them both as if they are in a manipulated universe of fire and ice, storm and heaven, as it does when the skies crack and spread open a

You Friend Me On Facebook

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You look just like your mom she says I LOL her and say, funny cuz you look just like yours

Elephant in the City

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No beeping of horns, just complete silence. No panic, just calmness. There’s this one word: serendipity.

The Pocahontas Forgiveness Goes Viral

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You generated coal light from your gait as easily as the new sun crawls through a sleepy forest, without worry over hot spillage, or who might be horribly blinded or grossly revealed or given visions in that rare moment of wet earth and…

Frankie & Jake are Married (another novel castaway)

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Frankie married me during my theory stage. I hadn’t known her long.

Farming, A Handbook (for Wendell Berry)

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out here the land/speaks in Quaker silence

The Earth Squeals

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Who knows how long I have been crouched here, tied down by kelp and thin vines, trading laments with animals? They all look terrified.

Golden State

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The first door on the right is the bedroom. Even if I try to forget; my body remembers and the strength of its yearning fairly pulls me inside. I noticed you left the door ajar. Really you should be more careful.

Dinner with Sam Rockwell

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“I liked you best in Choke–you were sexy in a lazy, sort of ‘70s way.”

Confetti

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We go in gently at first, skimming over the first few swells and dropping speed, but then we pitch hard, tail over. The windshield holds. I think of Lily. I think of the baby. And I see my life.

Solzhenitsyn Jukebox

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A retired feminist literary agent named Jackie and her boyfriend, Jock, were on board. Jock was kind as one might expect of a man traveling with a feminist, and Jackie was happy yet stern. She mentored me one day over lunch.

Bert & Ernie: The Pre Nup

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BERT AND ERNIE -- THE PRE NUPBy Roz Warren and Janet GoldenInspired by a recent Supreme Court decision, Bert and Ernie are finally going to tie the knot! Their just signed pre-nup was leaked to us by a Muppet whose identity we've promised not to reveal, in…

The Tracing Game

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Shadows skipped across the bedroom wall at 80 km/hour. It wouldn't be so bad if people wouldn't use their high beams but it's the price you pay for living on a dark highway with low property taxes. “How do you sleep in here?”…

Two poems by Raquel Chalfi in translation

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On the Shore, Tel Aviv, Winter 1974 From the Songs of Crazy Dolores

Fish

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A woman with spirit appeals to men who fish because she is still alive.

Godot, Go Wait Yourself!

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a bone-crusher handshake

Sorbet in the Luminous Capsule

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Even in the brief flickers where your eyes and nose are visible you look gelatinous. Like a forgotten traveler suctioned to the side of an immersion tank. Am I sick because this bizarre spectacle is irresistible to me?

Tracks

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The winter following their son's death, Mr. Kelly's wife became absorbed by the tracks that ran in back of their house. At any given hour in the night, he'd hear her in the next room, their son's old room where she now slept, shuffling through dresser drawers. He…