Most read stories

Siam

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Our city is really two cities, conjoined. One lives during the day, the other at night. Those who live and breathe daytime air call the city by one name, a name which evokes the relative newness of the place, a name with words just barely invented.…

The Shreds of Flame

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For years I watched behind the glass While merry parties purpled past But now the world’s a Solemn Mass And I can only think.

Take our marriage and replace it with blue cheese dressing,

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the brand we like best and buy whether it's on sale or not. Surely there is another blue cheese dressing that is sold, possibly in San Francisco and made in a Berkeley basement by hippies who scrape together all of their change twice a year and buy cheese from an ancient…

Frankie & Jake are Married (another novel castaway)

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

When I Lived There.

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When I was fifteen and we were moving to Mississippi, my boyfriend in Canada told me I was going to live in the swamp with the alligators. I didn’t understand why my father would pick such a hick place. Rob gave me his cricket bat to hang over my bed, a

Arcana Magi - c.13: Along the Way

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The Sentinels flew low and through the woods. Carefully navigating their way around the trees, they heard the sound of birds chirping and frogs croaking in the morning.

Mississippi Blues

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“Jus’ because a story told right don’t make it true,” he said. “Sometimes the story is there ain’t no story. Sometimes you look way down inside, and ain’t nuthin’ there. Can’t write no book ‘bout nuthin’. Won’t sell none. But them

January 1, 2012

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I couldn’t begin to give an account of the latest days.

How the Species Began Again, I

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Tina saw a tear escape from beneath the frame of the man’s broken glasses. It followed the contour of his cheek until it quivered along his jaw line.

The Master of Sleep

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The Master of Sleep had lived alone for many years, so when his daughters first moved into his house he welcomed them, seemingly glad for their company...

Trader Joe's, on a Sunday

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When you think I'm not looking, I always am. You say it's like nicotine, your best analogy as a non-smoker. The kind of hit that is hard to live without and isn't it human nature, you ponder.

The Fallow Heart

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I stared out the window, the fog creeped up the Avenues like a spectator.

2002 or 3

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She was petite, pear-shaped, white, the girlfriend of a friend who'd done his degree in Russian Literature, but that's not the only reason I liked him. The husband I had for a while traveled whether he needed to or not and so I'd go with Julie and Phillip to movies,…

Me. You. Love.

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In my own case, before Ellen, of course there was someone else. She—well, she was someone who I felt as if I’d always known and always would. And I think she felt the same about me.

Red Left Hand

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"I see a child's bicycle swarmed by bees. A stolen oil painting of a helicopter...no, no, that ain't it. Wait. A high school basketball coach will hang himself from a bridge you often think about. This man, now, he's a Navajo Indian.

The Deli Worker

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This is the story of my friend, Gil

Pieces

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I was a whole man once.

Warning: Literary Fiction: The One-Dollar Minister

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It was Warren who introduced me to this bouncer fellow named John O’Toole. Warren met O’Toole and his wife, Angelina, through the dark prison poet Eugene Forcer. Forcer and O’Toole were the best of friends until a riff erupted between them one drunken n

Where Time is Water

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Dog time is water. Incidents bob near the surface, fall into whirlpools, sink or drift with the flow.

Liebe Grüße

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Left, I see parkland and cyclists and sun. Right: picnic blankets, naked men and lunchtime assignations.

Ways in Which Looks Deceive

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Everything is illuminated. If anyone is watching, we look happy.

Coast to Coast

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No one knows that, while the ex-Area 51 guy delivered his rant, Art Bell left the booth for a Diet Coke.

Dig

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Every morning, the children dig holes for their parents. This is both necessary and beneficial: the kids need to dig and the parents have to be buried.

Hattie Hanratty Does the Previously Unthinkable

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"Hattie? What are you doing?" Bosley asked, the quaver in his voice an indication of an impending erection.

No Dirt In Common

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I feel a strange loneliness for her...I think I will go to the beach, and forgive it for its sharp sand and lack of trees.

Hemingway for Gloria

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He disliked intrusion and very specifically innocuous intrusion, nice guys, one might say, who tried to be near him to learn something from him or who admired him but who, as in that passage, came merely to disturb his work.

We Talk in a Roundabout Way

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You are a boy with a birthday bike smiling like our son, standing in a photograph surrounded by other sons, who turn rocks over and over, who keep snakes in plastic bread bags, who find the bones of something wild in the woods. You smile that way still.

Ancestry.comedy

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all paths converge on Africa/ and Eden, and the fall from animal grace

Yes You Can--Buy My Book of Bad Poetry

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America has given birth to many great poets--Walt Whitman, Emily Dickinson, Muhammad Ali--but why should talented people have all the fun?

Arcana Magi Cross - c.4

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Ai did not know what to do, nor say. She did not want Manami to suffer anymore than she already has.