Most read stories

Songlines

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When the planes crashed,when the levees broke,when the ground shook,there was a song I dreamed of,humming subsonic,a chorus of voices and prayersuncorked like the little brown jugthat holds all the love and memories.In the outback, Aborigines believewe create the world by…

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.

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.

Backstory

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My editor even said so: “Ralph, the Karmann Ghia is the only car for Henry. The only one he could have possibly driven.”

Boo!

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"Why didn't you tell me it was Halloween?" he asked. She shook her head. The doorbell rang.

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 …

The Coming of the Apocalypse

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The Operations Management Guru was visiting the twenty-fourth floor on Tuesday, and everyone at the company was wicked with fear.

A Documentary About Sharks

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As I lean over the chrome rail and look at the floor on the street level of the mall, I ask myself a question. If I was to fall, I wonder if it would be better to land and lie there with my eyes open or closed. Closed, I decide, would make me look like I was at peace, open…

Fever

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Mesmerizing, the night’s queer colors, the darkness given depth by the earth’s crystalline sheen, by a sky choked with a million fleeting prisms. In the woods surrounding the house another branch snapped, a gunshot loud crack. The echo lingered, cap

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.

Phenomenology

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The universe is churn-

Fish Boil

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Put sunscreen on your / bones.

All Art Is Betrayal

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a world of probability against plague

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.

We'll Always Have Paris

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“Tonight’s news begins with a Stone’s Throw exclusive. Intimate friends of hotel heiress Paris Hilton have confided that the talent-starved celebrity has agreed to marry Quaker Bob, longtime spokesperson and package icon for Quaker Oats cereal.

Sufficient

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

Trust Walk

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They were two girls walking home from school.

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.

Dawn of the Planet of the Apes (Update)

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A group of scientists in San Francisco struggle to stay alive in the aftermath of a plague that is wiping out humanity, while Caesar tries to maintain dominance over his community of intelligent apes.(IMDB synopsis) That's the idea swimming so far as it is in…

A Selection From Einstein's Letters

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My dear Papa: I don't care to join you on holiday. Last summer when I came you and Frau Himmelfarb played "Wildlife Management" so late into the night that I got no rest.

Roper RTW4640YQ1

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locking the door against dangerous// human curiosity and forgetfulness.

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…

Goodbye, Brother

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My brother died in his sleep almost two months ago. He was 25. He was addicted to pharmaceuticals. Two days before he died, he fell asleep at the wheel and crashed his truck into a highway sign. It was the last thing he owned. He had been living with m

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.

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…

Three Sundays at The Grove

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Now, gazing into Greg’s expectant eyes, the only Chinese word Deepti could summon was kuei. Ghost. Before that summer, her mother flipped through the pages of Maxine Hong Kingston’s memoir every day, as if she could glean magic from the touch of her finge

Cure

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

Appointment

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

Dig That Girl!

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Leave your dog and your dog-eared lovers at the door. I smile at the bouncer, pay my ticket, and wink at a slasher chick. She gets pumped on heavy metal gods and Kwaito

How to Remember Important Things

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Save the whales. Save the dolphins. Save the bored housewives. Save my hands, so often cupped over the sorrow in being alive. Save the beautiful made-up cherries of delight I feel everywhere in your presence. Save the sprawling…