Most recent stories

My Commencement Speech

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To The Graduates Of The Class Of 2010: You are here today at a critical crossroads of your life. For most of your 22 years you’ve been taught to work hard, obey the rules, listen with respect to your elders and to trust that every effort you make wil

Raymond Chandler and His Wife

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One day it was boring / to be alive.

Sorry, Charlie

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Vietnam, Tet, and beaucoup Charlie

Deer People

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There was no provision for keeping the post on the door, but I did not have the fingernails to pry it off.

Arcana Magi - c.18: Me?

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Alysia slowed down for a moment. She clutched her head again. She looked up and found herself at a playground. There was a familiarity in the air.

Some Things You Never Forget

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Some things you never forget, especially if they are repeated frequently. I cannot hear her voice saying those words, now, I have forgotten its timber, its pitch, but I remember the words.

Not real words about a not real place

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I'm going up and down elevators all over the Financial District and I have no office.

Hotel Chelsea

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He tells people about the whores, but what he really recalls is when someone from a room above dropped a rug on his patio.

Refuge

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cotton balls in your ears do not deafen you to the rocking of your mother's bed...as she and the new uncle set forth on the turbulent sea of their maiden voyage.

Lunch With Harriet

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she felt something warm and wet on her ankle and it was producer #1's green tongue and he was still sitting down behind the table and it traveled slickly and caressed her calf with a sensuousness she wouldn't have thought something so ugly could possess

Carmen (from The New Yorker+ a Jimmy Breslin "afterword" from Newsday)

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Every trip her mother leaves it until then: Shouldn’t she look for an apartment in a better area; shouldn’t she try for a job with some future? “And, you know, someday you could get married, Carmen.”

Flashback

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Most of the deer around here have a higher IQ than the hunters.

Thanatos Collective

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the cocksucking of strategic death planning

Three Easy Steps:the little genuine things in life/sauteed whole peppers/easy roof repair

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So, once, we were all like sitting around the kitchen table, and it was so kind of like an okay sort of day to begin with. We were all like a secret theater of strangers, a living children's secret circle, meeting right in…

Anthony

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ANTHONY I decide after Jill and I have dinner at her flat and smoke an enormous joint that I need to call Tyler, a conversation I'm not particularly looking forward to. I leave and she's not happy, but I tell her I have homework and we kiss a little bit…

That Dark Spot

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A week ago, Lina had felt a pain crack over her right eyebrow. It was there every day, creeping from her ear to the middle of her forehead.

A Bum and his Shopping Cart, Giving Up his Ways

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A bum leaves his shopping cart in the middle of the intersection at 7th Ave and Perry St and walks away leaving everything behind Shopping cart gets hit by an onslaught of yellow taxis whizzing by The contents flying out into the hum

The Kicker

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She had plain features suggestive of a Native American, which in fact, she was, partly, and she rarely wore makeup of any kind. She easily might have been indistinguishable in a moving crowd except for her loping gait and a tendency to move her hands arou

Rot

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Peach (2)

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He has stubby, rough little fingers. Good.

She lets her intentions guide her

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“If 'neighbor' applies to women who covet—'deliriously desire'—husbands from Angers, then one day he'll be your husband's neighbor," I say.

Good intentions, and all that.

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There was something in the pressure and the urgency that made her smile, and then laugh. It was like carrying heavy furniture while someone made a joke--the effectiveness of the joke seemed directly proportional to the weight of the furniture. What was it

Monsieur, Monsieur, Nous Avon Pamplemousse!

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He came running out of his narrow little shop, Berthillon and chased me down the Ilse St. Louis street, saying, “Monsieur, Monsieur, nous avon pamplemousse! It’s ici, Monsieur. Your pamplemousse. They just come in this matin, morning and I’

Brave New World

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awoke in confusion, fear and hurt never seen before that day a year past

Novel excerpt: "Home Cure"

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He picked up the bottle of gin, looked at it. "Not a lot left," he said. "There's enough," she replied. She took the bottle and lifted it to her lips. "Are you ready?" she asked. "For what?" "You'll see."

We call them the Removal Men

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They came early and parked up, under cover of the night and the giant oak. I only know this because people told me afterwards. Watching us, they were. It was six o'clock before they smashed their way in, scaring the three of us out of our wits. Baby Billy screamed the place…

Tabasco Revenge

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Avant-garde morning sun floated through bay windows, the illumination cascaded and curled and descended the air ripples which emanated from the oscillating fan in the corner. Gathered on the rug the light hovered in anxious intensity. Suspended dust- jelly was…

The Widow's Morning

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Whispers flew, like wild darts across the room. I didn’t know what I was supposed to say. Right then, it wasn’t my job to figure things out; it was my job to cry.

Rubber-Band Requiem

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“Now we lay you in your grave There was no way you could be saved You hate our lord Jesus and he can tell Which is why you will burn in hell.”

Tingles

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Your steering wheel is hot.You don't feel it though, I mean,It tingles some but it doesn't have that crawling, stinging feelingLike the way you'd feel it if they hadn't called.Not the way other people in Arizona feel it.You don't feel you or her or anything in…