Most recent stories

TGIF

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“You’re off till Monday,” the big man told him. “You can thank Mr. Big Mouth and company for that. Death detail gets two days off.”

The Man from OBERIU

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Elizaveta still wore her winning smile, the one that only charmed. She looked up suddenly: “Watch out, Pushkin! (falls over Gogol) “Watch out, Gogol!” (falls over Pushkin).

It Can Hold Us All

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Look out for rotten ice. If you fall in, pull yourself out like a seal. Take off all your clothes and get to shelter.

A political parable

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One of these days we aren’t going to believe whatever they tell us.

IGGY (Iguana Iguana) — A Novel (Chapter)

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After he’d told her on Friday that No, he wasn’t going to sign that contract for the cemetery plots she’d picked out—“I don’t want to spend my whole life knowing exactly where I’ll end up” is exactly what he’d said—the marriage, as far as she was concerne

In the Beginning...

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In the beginning there was salt. God licked the salt and said it was Good. Then there was light. And then chocolate.

42 Mirrors

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What becomes the identity of a woman who has been denied all her rights and thrown into a mental institution?

Generous World

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perhaps because it knows that time’s a solvent/ and dissolves all things in time.

You're Never Going to Break My Heart

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Like any lovable lump of hidden rocks, these hills she breathes life into, blinking existence, are all well worth jumping up and over again and again. Just ask the little kids. Their endless landscape of discovery…

Eleutheria

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She watched an inky cloud suck all the color / from the trees.

“Adrien Brody,” Adrien Brody, and Adrien Brody’s Nose: A Response to Tao Lin’s Response to “Tumblr ‘Shit-Talking’”

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Here is “Adrien Brody” through a Freudian lens: Calloway wanted to fuck her father. She flew to New York City to fuck a version of her father who has a name similar to an actor with an interesting nose and a lot of talent. Neither Calloway nor the actor n

Phil's Last Stand

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Phil was scared. Not of his own shadow, but of the three men from ConAgra who'd dropped a duffel bag of green outside his den the week before.

Let me tell you about the smell of the rain.

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You are lonely. Let me tell you about the smell of the rain.

beepbeepbeep

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Howard needed to finish this time. As his marriage slid further down the sinkhole toward divorce, it was important to him that his affair be successful.

Melt

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I returned from work three days ago to find an enormous cube of ice set in the middle of my living room floor.

Extra Ticket

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My best friend died yesterday. His name was Franklin Seever, but we all called him Lin. It started when we were in Little League. There were two Franklins on the team so Coach, who was my dad, called the fat one Frank and my best friend Lin.

The Untold Story

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I kept a journal for so many years I've forgotten everything I wrote.

Antarctica

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I don't have the feelings of self-worth a young woman should have, Monica Lewinsky tells the nation. She seems to understand there will always be some amount of ice beneath her.

No Word for Enchantment

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fanned lashes on rouged cheek a glamorous sea creature in violet perfume

The Naming

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we name invasive species,

How I Made My Fortune

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At the time I first went to work for Mr. Byron my family was in a sorrowful state. My dad, much as I can recall, was one of those roving kinds, called himself a carpenter or contractor, depending on the kind of job he was aspiring to, and was subject to f

Portrait of the poet as midwife

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Some poems slip out easily Thick and solid Well-oiled and fully formed

Last Night On Oil Street

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Tomorrow the authority smashes. Tonight we march, splash, carve letters in wet paint from room to room until steel blades bend. The letters will tilt in shadows gliding over the walls to mask our tales born of fractured wrists and the ghosts, our keepers.

Horizon

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She liked talking to him, even now, when they’d spent three years talking. She thought about other conversations with other men at other bars, some of the bars on the water and some of them tucked behind shopping centers or off of different h

Notebook (excerpt)

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I try as much as I can to write but only in as much as you believe―am I successful.

Shuffle

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Something is clearly wrong with them and we're supposed to socialize them.

Eidetic (from OPEN CITY Magazine Number 16)

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Who do you think are the true intellectuals? I'm a fan of both Gore Vidal and Harold Bloom although most people can't stand either of them. George Plimpton is interesting...

Never

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When a woman dies too young, Say at 42, Her bones broken, Her body bruised Beyond recognition Much less repair; When she dies Thrashing In the street Amid rainbow-hued pools Of water and gasoline And blood, Anointed on a bed Of broken glass In a…

Glue

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There is no cement stronger than the one holding a miserable couple together.

Plath's Plague

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Before my mother died, she developed an unhealthy relationship with Sylvia Plath. Under the faded florescent lights of the university they would speak to each other, as I quietly did my homework. I was only seven, but I knew something was the matter. I…