Most read stories

hide the dildos

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her: what are you worried about? me: the dog sitter.

Fish Boil

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Put sunscreen on your / bones.

Slow Train

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In grief, I'd ride a slow train there with you, / one hand in yours and one hand on the rail,

Falling Out of Bed

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My wife stood in the doorway and talked to the back of my head. “You really should talk to somebody about this,” she said.

Beyond the Voice

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We might as well be honest: we’re talking about the two of us here. No one, not even the cameraman, had any idea even after all these years. For more than a decade we’d been bringing the six o’clock news into a medium-almost-major market region.

How To Train Mules

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“Mules don’t like to dive, Esther.” “I said maybe, Hugh. Maybe.”

Cure

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It's as if there are little men inside her head, wielding hammers.

Personal Trenches

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The headlines were my source of information and contact. Four Soldiers Killed in Baghdad read one. Seven Ambushed in Fallujah. I’d read them, look for his name, and maybe clip it out. It put me there; put me in touch with him.

Seed Toss

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Know what you’ll become? You’ll become one of those guys who masturbates in any single occupancy restroom that locks.

Apartments

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. . . there is nothing so selfish as sleep.

You Know Who in The Hell You Are Not Playing For (We Are All Performing At Being)

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I've been avoidingyour beautiful fact for years in just the past few hours it seemslike it was the scariest plague on earth. Andit worries me becauseit's something so new that Idon't know what to dowith myself.Yes I wouldn't knowwhat to…

Halloween Hangover

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Did someone say BOO?

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.

Free Space

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The winner was some kid from Ohio or Oklahoma -- one of those states that begins with an "O" and ends with a yawn.

Écriture de la chatte

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YKK is a zipper manufacturer whose initials stand for Yoshida Kōgyō Kabushikigaisha. A boy told me (and I believed as a child) that YKK was my name in code.

A New Notion about an Old Story

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A dark girl, quite poor, maybe three, maybe four, leaned on a statue of a horse and his man. (The rider rode him in place, but as if in a race.) Her dress needed patching, her heart needed smoothing. She'd tried to sell…

Unsaid

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whistling some blithering tune, trotting around the kitchen in his underwear with his ribs, a long row of meatless tragedies that screamed for something other than the meal he was making.

Appointment

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He stared at the mirror, his hair looked chewed up–severed by a miniature lawnmower.

September Morning

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

Can't You Tell When I Get Lonely?

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“Can't you tell when I get lonely?”, she asks. “No”, I say. It gets awkward because she wants me to know when she gets lonely. I don't give her the attention she wants without realizing it. She moves away and stares at me for…

When you were nine

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When you were nine your head fell off in the playground. Dr Mort was called. He pasted it back on with PVA glue. You'd never know now.——When you were nine your arms turned into trees. Dr Mort worked his magic with the chainsaw. You still need light pruning once…

A Body Divided, 4

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After surviving the first night in the hospital, I was put into a shared room to save on expenses, and to make room for the deluge of new cases that were coming in, and that was when I made friends with my roommate, Tommy. He was a boy about the sam

A Short Film About Baseball

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The throw was the last leg of a triple play.

Sufficient

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She used to think of him as someone to entertain with charming lies, but things evolve in unexpected ways.

A Love Poem Written Just for You

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You wanted a love poem written just for you. / Here it is. Don’t look askance.

Butterfly, a novel by Julie O’Yang (excerpt)

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‘So what exactly did you decide?'It was two years later that Sato-san put the question to me. The two of us had been hiding for two bloody years, moving about in the marshes along the river, living off small, skimpy meals. We couldn't turn back to our unit, because Cesaru…

The Garden Heaters Of Kilburn

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when women’s hair shrinks into tight curly balls and sits on top of their heads like scrunches of wool, blowing in the wind, hanging from the mouths of recently shot deer.

You Never Knew

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You never knew How to express What you didn't know You felt With your words You picked on You taunted You destroyed Did it help To feel yourself Did it work To disparage Those who were Innocent and young Blameless For living …

Bride and Groom

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He wears an old black tux, shiny at the elbows, and his gray hair has been styled and sprayed into a fragile tornado. On his lap sits a Chihuahua wearing a bridal outfit—veil and all.

Cream-colored Berets and Big Fish

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Alone on the platform, I waited for a train.