Most recent stories

Now's the Time: Three Women of Jazz Today

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The world of jazz resembles the Elizabethan stage: bare, unadorned sets, little of what is performed is reduced to writing, no, or hardly any women.

San Francisco

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A dead whale drifts.

Freckles

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My eyes became purple, and boys called them "picture windows". Well, not boys, exactly, but one girl did. Junie.

A Thousand Words

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Photographs can create, both good and bad. They can create a way to make a living, but they can also create opportunities for black mail, divorce settlements and most of all they can create power.

American Birthdays

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Cherry was America's least favorite pie. Her mother made it every year for her father's birthday because "daddy doesn't like cake." America had to wash the bowls, the wooden spoon, the plates and finally the Pyrex dish. Her brother got to "contribute" by climbing the tree…

Your dog, or hazelnut gelato - which would it be?

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It’s hard to lose. Harder than you think. I guess the ultimate question is: If I had to give up one thing, my dog, or hazelnut gelato, which would it be? I’ll tell you, between those two, it would have been easy to choose. But losing you, that was a who

The Football Hero

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He was the first football hero the town had ever known; so fast, he ran rings around teams from other towns.

Order

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Still worried. I could use some more hope in my oatmeal.

Night Swim

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She wrapped her legs around him. His hand barely held the rope and later he could not have said if it happened above or below the water’s surface.

Regarding Hank

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Won't speak a word against 'em. Car trunk stunk like bad chicken long after, but I won't speak a word against 'em.

Gershwin’s Second Prelude

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While Kate practiced the piano in the tiny third-floor apartment, Wiley cooked dinner, jogging in place in front of the stove.

Threads

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She said he was missing the whole point: it was a decoration, not an actual pillow. You were supposed to place it somewhere artful.

Licking around the rim

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Sure, it was a hot day, but the driver was in the middle of a driving lesson!

Your Love Life

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Maintaining a healthy love life requires effort and professional advice, and Your Love Life columnist would be happy to assist you.

The alcohol is on my mind, on my mind, on my mind

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The alcohol is on my mind, on my mind, on my mind

I Was a Cat Once

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This is a 50-word story.

Rite-Aid

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It was the most prestigious cashier position in the entire state!

Appointment

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

Split second

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When people talk about the end moments when one's life flashes before his or her eyes, they often refer to time as slowing down. I can attest to this phenomenon during my final moments, before the collision: the song playing on the radio, the squeal of tires and flash of…

WHORES

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... if they called her Mother, would she take them home and raise them?

The Pocahontas Forgiveness Goes Viral

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You generated coal light from your gait as easily as the new sun crawls through a sleepy forest, without worry over hot spillage, or who might be horribly blinded or grossly revealed or given visions in that rare moment of wet earth and…

Arm

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As I was going into Wal-Mart, a man with a useless arm was coming out. I'd never seen anything like that arm—a dangle-flesh, rubbery thing with no purpose.

The Man Who Suckled Elvis

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No one wanted to bear witness to this grand emasculation

Mother of the Earth

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On Terry’s eighteenth birthday (the summer of 1966, the same year you graduated from high school, and the year I broke up with Sharon) I took Terry out to Fox River on my dad's ski boat, and opened up my robe and showed her all there was to show of myse

Tarot

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He had no idea about the first three cards - what he would call the flop - which looked dubious and full of danger.

The Pope of Rock and Roll

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Pope Leo XIII endorsed a cocaine-based drink and at the age of 90 sat in on a session with a castrato that is still available on CD.

Hors d'oeuvre

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What scares her about libraries are unshelved books, the ones you thumb through while you are waiting for the elevator, because you realize that there are too many books in the world and you are holding that particular book only because it is lost.

Event Particle (10)

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my tiny white world, the cube in the closet in the back above the shelving in a secret compartment cut into the wall

The Creator of the Nipple

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Speaking of stiff nipples, I heard you once wanted to become a painter, because of your fondness for nipples. Feeling like Gauguin and his little Polynesian women/girls, are we? So, you're going to try to out-paint God, are you, Mr. Sistine Chapel of the

Voronezh. Samara. Tyumen.

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They have a saying in Russia: Live in Voronezh, work in Samara, die in Tyumen. In honour of Saint Rose, born on the banks of the Voronezh, fed the hungry and the poor of Samara, torn apart by wolves in Tyumen on the exact date that she had herself predict