Most recent stories

Train Whistles In Wintertime

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Train whistles in wintertime made him feel lonely.

Barn Owl

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I was out of my element. I was on property that wasn't mine. In a woods with mansions tucked away among the trees.

Star Light, Star Bright

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I am experience and information// at a small but irredeemable remove.

Ten Tequila Shots

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After sprouting boobs and a vagina before her sixteenth birthday, a girl watches her divorced father fall from parental grace by drinking ten tequila shots and baring it all for the neighbors to see on his birthday.

Imparting Shots

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He knows why I’m here, so he stalls, talking about the coffee, about how it’s a new dark blend from a little shop in The Village, about how he loves the flavor, so rich, but just because a coffee is dark doesn’t mean it’s stronger, that, in fact, it’s the

Home Security

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They might think that loneliness has made me gullible, more than willing to open for them all kinds of drawers.

Unwanted Stories: A Public Service Advisory

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Unfinished, deeply flawed stories require the kind of handling you see in movies where a Virus That Will Doom Mankind is disposed of by scientists in hazmat suits.

Friends

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The boy stared out his window, noting the suns slow and eventual passing behind the distant mountains. He saw his face reflected in the window pane and turned away. His shadow loomed…

dealt.

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Stealing time. Always gambling. I used to wake up with wet eyes; remnants of nights and days spent in places I never wanted to leave. I took to insomnia to escape the dreams that reminded me of places I could never return to.Now I sleep here. When I can.

Boxes

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His voice isn't familiar but his words are. He says he knows we haven't spoken in years and apologizes for it. I can hear him pacing on the other end of the line, tapping things and then a shriek of glass shattering. Really, I tell him, no need to…

Danse Macabre

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Each day, they trot the coiffed/ and painted cadavers across the stage.

The Bird King in Love

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1The Bird King has fallen in lovewith a radiator.He adoresher pockmarked skin,her neurotic arias,her coldness,her impulsive warmth. 2Tiring of his dalliance with the radiator,the Bird King woos an armchair.She's amply upholsteredand groans dreamilywhen he sits on…

This Is the End

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I guess you’re gone now That’s okay I guess I can live with my own ghosts I had no idea What it meant But now I do It meant I was standing At the end of everything And did not know it

Ghost

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You want to be there, but not noticed. Alive, but not too alive. Because that's how you feel every day. Like an apology with legs.

the total compiler

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The idea of an infinite textual universe occurs in many places in the works of Jorge Luis Borges. The contexts and permutations of language, which others had held to be perhaps infinite (allowing themselves to use such an imprecise term), that…

Drive-by Neighborhood Fiction Flash

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It's about dinner time. My neighborhood is in Sa-bur-bia. Driving my gold 2007 Malibu i pass Chick. She notices me and stares standing in front of her house. We were friends about ten years ago. Chick is still divorced. Tall skinny legs. Educated blu-ish eyes. Wet…

What Happened To The Rain Dance?

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The water quality will give you a hint

The Mommy's Girl

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Her mother dressed her like a little girl would dress a doll.

Milkmen

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I can barely pick out the numbers on the houses

One Star

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...somehow that light has found me.

Five Acts

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The television was playing reruns of Mr. Ed, but it was hard to hear because of the flock of birds in the palm tree. I’d sometimes imagined the birds coming through the window, a swarming of pink cotton mouths, mawing everything in sight.

Linear Critic

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8) An exercise online calls for the first sentence on page 45 of the book nearest you as a suggested description of your love life. The book 9) nearest me still is _The Quarterly_, 1, spring 1987, that I have on my desk in preparing to write an essay.

An Orb for a Better World

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Max sighed. Solving for x was boring, so mind numbingly boring that he didn't notice the flickering blue light hovering in his room. It crackled and popped, growing until a shimmering rectangle stretched from floor to ceiling.A hand pushed out from the rectangle, and a…

Professor University

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Is this a tenure track position?

Secure

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This is the Minuteman tine/ of the three-tined fork// we can stick into the modern world/ when it’s done-- a MAD triad.

The Song in the American Soul

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They are riding through the wild onion of life One layer at a time Turning the world inside out Looking for the unusual patterns Inside the gaping muscle of space With its heart-pounding unnatural heat

This Outhouse Reeks

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The bathroom had exposed rusty pipework, A minty lemonade smell, Ice in the urinal, And a wall of stone-cold mirror. She put some lipstick on, but it looked fake under the lint-covered bulb dangling overhead. She wiped off the lipstick but…

Steps

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He deplaned Air France flight 9 from JFK to Charles de Gaulle airport at quarter past noon.

Mauthausen

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I was feeling a bit introspective. I was busy in my own mind assembling the history of the place and getting ready for the visit. I was naturally not someone who would cluster up with a bunch of people I had just met and had arrived to participate in this

Drought

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Everything is at sixes and sevens.