Most recent stories

The Miracle of My Father's Hat

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During the liberation, a Jew in the Russian army, asked him who had been the cruelest. My father gave them the name of the farmer who had murdered his father, and was later told the farmer's son was sent to the front and killed.

Black Wheat, 3

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(it) looks out at the world from behind a film (it) does not participate (it) is slow to love . . . There is the image And they say they are in the world . . . Blood does not shake their hearts They lie and take your s

Literally Choose Your Own Adventure

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You enter the lobby of the office building tentatively at first - you're a little nervous about this interview, after all - but you recall how spectacular and professional you dressed that morning. Plus you read through the company's LinkedIn profile at least five times…

To Sleep

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The woman wrings her hands again and again, reaching up to place one under her chin, then to her cheek as though there is some pending trepidation no one else can see...

On Desire

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For two days his parents had been fighting, and they would tell him to tell the other one something every morning that was supposed to be some sort of slight at their personal failings, which had been inflamed by their twenty years of marriage.

Illumination,with grace

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Jerry peered out into the dark landscape with no fear left.

So Comes Love

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Her students read their work aloud in class, haltingly, sometimes proudly, and their willingness amazed Miriam. They were immigrants and retirees, carpenters, security guards, Indian nannies, Iranian escapees. She loved their odd word choices, the lack of editorial impulse.…

Not the Prelude in C# Minor?!

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Richard played the piece again, slowly, fingers stretching for the high notes while the left hand kept the bass line moving. Then the theme, both hands hard. The notes on the score blurred, every phrase reminding him of a different melody from a long-forgotten time and…

Reading Without an ISBN

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The goal is to perform along with Jason Lee Norman--who is touring with his book of very short stories called Americas--a selection from my own collection called Country Without a Name. The symmetry excites me.

Similarities

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She was skinny and with breasts like a wound up skein of yarn.

Meticulous

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Have you measured the cups, the conveyors' yield? Do you know the span? I am the LORD your God, she murmured.

Black Wheat, 2

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They are really living (they) say things they don't mean . . . Do not know what they say Take the path without heart, seeing the image . . . The moon rises above them It does not move their blood Nothing calls out to their blo

A Stolen Pipe Goes a Long Way Towards An Empty Pouch of Nothing

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We were always blowing stale enough air into each other's faces from the smallest roundest tables available looking at each other sideways at the same sad time as the puppet show…

The Cat Beneath the Off Ramp

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Like Smart’s cat Jeoffrey, he’s a mixture of gravity and waggery.

A Delicate and Ancient Art

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He was a sushi chef, and he would spend hours in their kitchen practicing his knife skills, and the speed with which he can put that there and this in that and so on; and she would see him on the floor most mornings, still wearing that dirty, tattered ban

Pig Girl

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"In the camps we ate whatever garbage they gave us." This according to my mother. "We had no choice." But I had eaten pig with gusto at an anti-Semite's table. Somehow this had to be undone. Burial in soil was all I could imagine.

A Drowning

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Her time was spent in its usual way, breakfast, pills, organizing and cleaning. It was just hours behind today; hence the late swim. She was proud she did it, that she went outside. She swam, moved herself in the pool, chilly as it was. The pump made a wa

I Once Knew a Sparkledrop

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"And then I, and I believe, I alone, saw this small child run..."

Rewind

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Ave Maria: Part 6

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“I swear that man is a force of nature.” This was her mother's way of describing her father whenever her mother came too close to the precipice. While growing up, she could never allow herself to fully acknowledge the meaning behind her mother's…

When Dreams Come Knocking

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“What are you doing after this?” I asked, faking a self confidence I didn’t truly posses at fifteen. I didn’t seem to realize that I wasn’t old enough for any of the clubs they’d go to. I’d heard that fans sometimes followed the band to an after-party.

Black Wheat, 1

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They left their great need behind when they were taken out of the country They live without thought of that blood They do not respond to anything that calls to it They are shallow They feed on image (alone) Blood does not shake their heart

Path of Least Resistance

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I followed the car-path tendrils/ further and further north.

Machine-Gunning Butterflies

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I was making good bread as a New York studio musician and jingle writer, anonymous back-room jobs.

I Am the Poetic Kiss of Death

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My poems have appeared in four different publications; three have died shortly after they ran my stuff. Coincidence, or something more sinister?

Tourists

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someone left graffiti on the billboard over: "God's a hard act to follow"; the one that made the news

Favorite Child

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It was in the early sixties when my mother discovered she was my father’s second wife. Four years before, they were married quickly, by a justice of the peace, because his transfer to the States had come through. He’d charmed her with his dark chocolate e

The Web

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The vibration of my cell phone on the nightstand shakes my brain awake. It always does. These are the times it bothers me most. When I am in that deep sleep. The kind of sleep you fall in, after you wake up the first time and then roll back over in the early…

Viva la Doglady!

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The dog catcher appeared to be trolling the neighborhood in his doggy death van.

Tumbalalaika

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When the arguing started, their voices would get louder and louder, till they broke into my dreams. That night, I woke and listened in the dark for what felt like a very long time. Perhaps I should have been afraid, but I wasn't. For one thing, they never