Most read stories

That Crazy-Ass Willy Wonka Boat

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I was crouched under a bruise-purple sky on a field of battle. I held a World War I-era weapon, an ancient black-iron spear with a spring, and I was told to load balloons onto it without popping them, and then I was to fire the balloons at some unnamed ta

Cornfield

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This is not a story you expect to end at Cape Horn.

Everything I Have Is Broken

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My mother’s old china no longer reflects. It’s value is now estimated as drywall.

Non-Stop Service

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Please direct your attention to the flight attendants as they demonstrate the safety features of this aircraft.

Improbable Bodies

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The book has known many women’s hands, something erotic and frequently checked out from our local library. Its cover depicts a man and a woman, both with improbable if not impossible bodies. I believe the term is bodice-ripper.

Estranged

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He kind of enjoyed living by himself. It was nice and peaceful.

Turtle Summer

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He was her summer fling, the first cock to crow when the sun rose over her tequila smile.

Wings

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The trouble began in October, when Ava, an embittered receptionist who worked at a small museum housed in a five-story Westside brownstone, discovered that the floors were littered with enormous grey feathers

Smashed Idol

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He was the kind of man that I would rather have declawed than date, and then leave him on a gurney, helpless and anaesthetized. Cliff Eames had made me feel that way since we were teenagers. He would never be helpless. …

Hangover

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“You wouldn't believe it.” Peter leaned in to whisper. “Don’t let the Kodak moment with the wife and kids fool you. That guy is totally gay.”

The Invisible Corpse Candle

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Her eyes stared wide with panic, her teeth chattered intermittently with impressive intensity, and with her ineffectual stabs at the air she completed the portrait of distracted mania.

Love and Destruction In A '67 El Dorado

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He had her pinned to the back seat, expressing his love. Do you love me? she whispered in his ear. Do you, do you, Jimmy Dale, do you love me? His only response…

A life in books

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Forget Ulysses, life itself is a stream of consciousness if you ever have time to get out of the stream and take a look at it. And there’s nothing that gets you out of the stream like a short sharp shock.

Heart Line

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One sunny morning, a big-bellied ball of yellow fur surveyed a yard full of prospective adopters and ran straight to one. She’d been chosen.

Flirting With Immortality

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That stupid bastard seemed to defy death at every turn in his life. His actions suggested invincibility, but his catch phrase indicated full awareness that he was indeed quite vincible. And how fitting was his name. We didn’t know if it

"Fancy Me"

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He stopped the shower and recounted his life, now Kin-less and plain.

Statistics (or: Walking to Work through Lexington Market)

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I avert my gaze to the crab grass pushing through broken concrete, the spent condoms, the empty vodka nips rolling at her stockinged feet...

September Morning

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They were carried out / over shoulders of running soldiers / naked bodies pass

That's Grace Too

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I read the ending to her and it was clear to her--clear as it could only be to a woman, to a woman you're in love with--that I had been describing her.

Across the street.

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When the talking's done, they get in their cars to go wherever they go, and just as soon as that last car clears the path, the yellow-cabbed trucks are back and the men get out.

a microcosm

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The right is empty, waiting to receive the load like a catcher behind home plate.

From Time To Infinity

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On some evenings, when I would sneak out of my room, I'd sit on the verandah and count the streetlights. I'd count the stars in the sky and trace the moon with the tip of my finger and consider how anyone could make it through the night when there were so

Birthday Buddy

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His birthday buddy was like a wife to him: they were born a day apart. This was coordinated, he believe, in the womb. Well, to be more accurate, wombs. She was due two weeks earlier but waited; he two weeks later but cut his womb-time (as the kids call i

The beautiful young girls from high school

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Macarena Lithuania

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At dinner in Marrakech, Namid danced on the table, waving a white napkin, propelled by jetlag and poor judgment.

chet baker

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chet baker shades my eyes rippling through the cool water sometimes we feed the fish

Fallen Women 1010

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Like all professors, I'm required to maintain office hours to help my students so I'm at my desk every fourth Tuesday of months without an "r" in them from 10:30 to 11:00 p.m.

Blinding Light

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Snow sheeted on the river...

Old Vibrations

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There's always a sound, something triggering the fear.

A Hole In The Bucket

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In 1978, a computer program became privy to my grandmother's most secret thoughts.