Most recent stories

Sand Dollars

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“Life is on life’s terms,” she told me once. Her arm, wrapped in clear cellophane, was freshly adorned with a green-pigmented sand-dollar: a living shell.

(7) Plus and Minus

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"Her actions in the city seemed invariably designed to destroy that person, which she’d worked so hard all her life to become."

young salesman

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When I was young I bowed with such forgotten politeness, a young salesman, enchanting, in the silken trades. But I remembered the sun also when it was in Hades, which had forgotten to set, or to rise. Peace, also, dangled there by the neck. Such a pre

The Clown Show

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Long nights on the road and into the ravines, wondering wordlessly how far they had traveled and where they were going, wondering and forgetting and consulting again the map, although they now travelled those forests beyond the forests on maps

Madd About Tadd

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Tadd Dameron once described himself as “the most misplaced musician in the business,” and one needn’t call the missing persons bureau to determine that he may have been right.

Where You Lay Your Dreams

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In all my marriage stories, I am both victim and hero.

Chopsticks

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They’re coming now. Thousands of them. Black wings, antennas, spindly legs.

Rowdy

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Flash’s hackles stood brushlike but he kept his head bowed just enough beneath the bigger dog’s stare to delay the inevitable fight. Flash, Mal thought approvingly, would pick the time and place.

Beer Pong With the Nobel Prize Winners

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Alcohol and American writers have always had a connection–about 70 percent of American winners of the Nobel Prize for Literature could be considered heavy drinkers if not more.

our ragged wits, ragged minds

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Our ragged wits, ragged minds, after acting out all, imitating all honey-like tunes, air song, excellence of song, true flower of the world. So the sun has some of its honey wintered away, to bring it into contact with such a human voice as yours.

Secrets

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She buried her secrets in a bowl of brownie mix....

Courage Under Fire

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Once upon a time, my friend and I met a nanny pushing a baby carriage and reading an e-book. She wore a plaid dress, blue stockings and a white barrette. A set of wrinkles marred her tanned brow. Multitasking seemed too hard on her. Inside the carriage

Tatters

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They sat on the couch, and he tried to unbutton her buttons, but she fended him off.

Dinner at La Maison Bouche

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The knife that precedes the bigger knife that precedes the spoon that precedes the flat fork, with stuff like that I'm all butterfingers, & even though he's never been to Italy except once to shoot a gun when the world was a great big jumble, he remembers all…

Baking Bread

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the champagne foam cascades like cherry blossom ensnared in the first gales of spring

Watercolored Different

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Simon Ridley only had one special power. Whenever he walked into a room, an awkward silence would descend.

Pandora’s Box

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I’m going to stop there, before the darkness sets in.

Taking Leave

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A walled city doesn’t let you out any more easily that it has let you in earlier.

Learning About Sonnets

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Sitting in the upper last row of Wyatt Hall, Matt stretched his long legs under the fold-up desk top. He looked down past his fellow students' heads to barely catch something Dr. Mock had said. . . .

Left Chest Pocket

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no entrance fee

Ghostbusting

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Jill's number was flashing on Carol's caller ID. Jill, the baby sister she had practically raised after their mother died of a stroke when Carol was 12. It had been months since they'd talked. Jill had been avoiding Carol because Jill's idiot husband Mark…

inflamed flower of your youth

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What was it about you that so inflamed the flower of our youth? That you could touch lightly that which illuminates all splendor and simplicity? That you could reach beyond mere flesh directly into the gates of heaven, and put me there, floating within

Mutant

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The fallout came tangled with snow. We thought the sea would protect us. But it came from New Mexico greasy with Plumbbob’s vaporized pigs.

My Own Skin

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Chubby. Plump. Pudgy. Portly. Bulky. Buxom. Rotund. Ample. Hefty. Corpulent. Zaftig.

Remarkable Depths of Semantic Ambiguity

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Thank you for submitting your epic poem I, I, I for consideration. While we are encouraged that you have relented from the ruthless self-endictment you affected so unconvincingly in your previous entry, Why Am I...

August

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One moustache hair at moustache level on a filmy bathroom mirror. A red velvet spread on a big round bed. Dear Ma: We saw a bearded lady.

Marry Me

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My mother told me never to trust girls who speak from the side of their mouths. But Kat, with her rainbow bracelets and flat vans, can't speak any other way. A creature of A.D.D. and zip up leather, studded belt and the next No Wave, has mistaken me for the last…

Summer recipes

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Instead of julienning the fava beans you could, instead, slip your linen shirt off your pink shoulders and hang it on a tree branch like a white flag yelling “I don’t want to fight anymore, goddamit, this aftenoon is beautiful.”

my future, maybe yours

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She went for the typewriter first.

Fake Letters

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Dear Husband,