Most recent stories

Her Dream of Ending

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I. The girl within the sleeping woman dreams her dream of ending. To her comes the cowgirl with no kids: she's riding high atop her turquoise horse, steady by its braided mane. Silver pistols holstered. The girl in the woman in the dream she's dreaming…

Stump the Nuns!

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“It's a combination of ‘Survivor' and ‘College Bowl' says Sister Mary Agnesita, the show's host. “We take four very strict nuns and match them up with boys who were cut-ups in their grade school classes."

Independence Day

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Not long ago, Owen the Second showed her a skull. He kept it in a brown cardboard box in the top of the closet. "My first wife," he said, and sneered, his lip bunching up around a scar just under his nose.

The Bowery Scene (Memoir, 1981; edited by Charlotte Curtis)

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It is easy to look out on the Bowery and say, "There are the bums." Encountering one, however, even one who asks to "bum a quarter" or tells you he's "on the bum" the word "bum" slips away in one's mind...

But the Sun Also Sets

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I’ve lost interest in the limelight since I’ve come to understand that I’m not meant to be in it. We walk past the Porker Palace and see crowds of the rich with piles of pig in their hands, stacks of pork piled up on their plates as they swirl amo

The Old Man and the Shark

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The shark’s voice was dark, warm and scratchy, like dying embers.

Billie Holiday Visits Her Song

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Why you keep a razor blade in your stocking?

The Cost of Love

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I was, so I was told, the product of much hard work and a lot of invasive procedures. Initially, I'm sure my parents were making love, but then came the slog, the repeated failed attempts at getting one of mother's millions of eggs fertilized. Those tadpoles just couldn't…

The Flame Child

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Lupe drove. She didn't know where she was going, but still she drove. The Mustang whined because she did not shift gears. The street was wet from a night rain and if…

Quitting Is Easy

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I took up smoking just to show the world how easy it was to quit. It’s been five months now, and my wife is wondering why I haven’t yet.

Wild Dreams ofReality, 11

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I took my first shower away from home as if it were a ritual cleansing. It felt especially good, even exciting to be taking a shower in the bathroom of another woman. Why was that? Maybe because it didn't have marble around the bathtub, and it wasn't e

pink sizzle rizzle

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if you have a key fob, you are fired. If you have a real set of keys, you can stay

Sock me in the stomach until I forget it. Down, down, baby. Down by the roller coaster.

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She wants to be an apple on a stick, a mop and handle, a brain attached to bones.

Waiting for Wanda

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And why rabbits? Rabbits never went to a slaughter house. Rabbits died in the road, run over by cars, shot by prepubescent boys or eaten by dogs but never slaughtered in mass. It didn’t make any sense, thought Art and he wanted to ask the small man i

If IT Were YOU

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author's note: the borgs in this story have been programmed to think of themselves as IT and in speech refer to selves as YOU* Though IT too had ball and socket joints, the Borg could not sit down to face ITs inquisitor. While IT felt the need to clean up the fallen…

Flirting With Immortality

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That stupid bastard seemed to defy death at every turn in his life. His actions suggested invincibility, but his catch phrase indicated full awareness that he was indeed quite vincible. And how fitting was his name. We didn’t know if it

Puppet X, 16

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When we lie down under the wind the trees swaying looking out over the fields soft cobweb of a brain exposed to hail exposed to snow trying to back away from it unable knowing the earth (the face it will take) our

Star Anise

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She wonders if Minh knows fear, if it is something that forms in the womb, like fingernails.

we used to drop her off along the way

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We do it all the time...

The Truth

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I want you to tell me the truth, she said. The whole fucking truth.

UNFILTERED

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I made myself tiny as I could, imagining I was Houdini shackled underwater, holding my nose and practicing my escape...

Myra's Mind

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She once told me that cleanliness is next to godliness, but I think everything is next to godliness, if you care enough to pay attention.

KADDISH

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My mother was a child of the death camps, passed her adolescence there. Survived.

Watering

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“Sometimes when I feel the urge to create, I don’t know whether to grab my paints, my camera, my guitar or my pen.” “You could have sex,” her friend, sitting in the desk next to hers, joked.

The Last Words of a Genius

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The crowd gathered around the dying man's bed, waiting for his last words. He was a genius. The most prolific writer and philosopher to ever live. He wiped his ass with the words of Shakespeare. The thoughts of Plato, Socrates, Descartes, and Nietzsche w

Hunger: A Prayer

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Prayer: Cold prayers in her throat, so far all unanswered. This thing grows steadily, unmistakably, cobbling counterfeit cells and flesh together into an unspeakable mass.

Mother's Day

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By lunch: The dryer is an F-5 dervish of mismatched socks, blue jeans and your yellowing college T's, lovingly held onto. For a moment there is a comforting warmth and softness to their smell. In the debris strewn landscape of the living room a carcass

Round the World Now

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It's true that he had always been more pure than her, looking for the authentic experience, authentic food. And more adventurous. Blogging their way around the world, yes, that had been his idea . . .

commitment

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but isn't that the case in most long-term, committed relationships?

Bad Marie (An Excerpt)

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Marie knew that she should get out of the tub. She understood that Ellen was at the point of explosion. But Marie was too invested in imagining the picture she made at that very moment. As if through Benoit Doniel's eyes. As if it was a scene in a movie.