Most recent stories

Traveling North

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TRAVELING NORTH Though you are dead now. Though I walk covered in dust through this strip mall in Iowa. I remember the collection of tendencies that led me here. The flat landscape. The blazing heat of cornfields. The landscape and body are one…

Meteor Shower

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A rain of stones . . .

Robert B. Parker we’ll miss you.

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Summer nights in Boston, old cast iron streetlights.

The Great San Francisco Poetry Wars, 11

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When we were on the road coming back out to California, along the Lewis and Clark trail somewhere near Cardwell, Montana, I remember thinking life was like leaping through flames while reading poetry and drinking rotgut red wine. This was what life was, a

We

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We all got married — Suzanne, and Virginia, and I — and it was all we ever wanted to be at the time.

An MFA Creative Writing Essay Question

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7. Using Cohen's Method of Structure craft a piece of fiction featuring unexpected conflict. (12 points)

shakey

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You held my hand when I hit the ground and told me the shakes would start soon.

She’s Dead

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Hank: Yeah, the way her head was bashed in, it looks like someone really had it in for her. Did you call the coroner? Bill: Yeah. Boy, you couldn’t pay me enough to do the stuff those coroner and medical examiner guys do. It seems like

Orbit

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And it seemed that, just a little more—and the solution would be found, and then a new, beautiful life would begin; and it was clear to both of them that the end was still far off, and that the most complicated and difficult part was just beginning.

B00bs

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They stride the earth of their own accord, knocking down bridges, buildings— obliterating whole towns with each pendulous swing...

Detienen a 271 conductores en un Stop.

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Un consejo esconde un futuro desastre. Es como si Mar le dijese a Desierto "amigo...impresionante. Dejate elevar por la atracción de Luna y verás". Y Desierto le replicase "está bien, y tú Mar, deja que Viento lleve tus olas hasta el nacimiento de los ríos, es brutal". …

The Fly On Our Pickle

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I think I know that fly That fly followed us from our apartment on W. 11th St When I opened the door he flew right in and when we left, he flew right out again Followed us on the subway to Times Square Took the Shuttle apparently Followed

Tilly Artaud

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After not going out for weeks, I went to a bar and met an electrical engineer, a motorcycle racer who raced in the Black Hills, a Renaissance man, in a relationship with a young married woman, and I told him about the toad.

Henry and the Hungry Hamper

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  Henry's had a messy day. He splashed, he jumped, he rolled and played. He wrote in books, dressed up the dog, And on the wall he drew a frog. He's wearing dinner, seconds too, And for dessert some fruity goo. It's come to live on…

better than perfect

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i mean the perfect setting is great and all the right lighting very little the right music she says kings of leon i say broken social scene with nothing but time and a large bed with balled up sheets and us but i love early morning fluorescent bathroom light…

Let This Be the Beginning for I Have Sin to Spread

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A crash, a loud tear screams through the house. A coffee table continues its dutiful life as a bitch.

Security

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Her preferred post-coital activity is to pant, to suck in air with urgent greed.

What She Remembers (Annie)

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The first thing she remembers is sunshine, then her own dawning, and feeling the lumps on her head and bruises on her face and pain in her heart and aloness of her soul.

Yeah Yeah I Will I Promise

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After we have sex I slip cash into your purse, just a few bucks, without you knowing. You're not a whore, but I'd like to buy you lunch sometime without having to be there.

Noah's Ark, NYC

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Two by two they come walking down 7th Ave girl with girl boy and girl boy and boy two pigeons strolling side by side two robins two crows walking stiffly like two pieces of anthracite coal two spiders two dogs sniffing each oth

Leave Off Doves

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Midway through the fall semester, an unremarkable girl in Professor Woody's Advanced Fiction workshop dyed her hair an unnatural shade of dark, changed her name to Tasmina, and turned in a story filled with made-up words.

intensely interested (but repressing it)

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whenever i see youit feels like birds are flyingin and out of my facemy head is ghost-like and birds flythrough iti want to hold the birds insidemy head and turn them intosex maniacs

The Game

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Cammie Richard's house was just like all the others in Wilchester. The exterior was vaguely reminiscent of the Dutch style; gray stone with cross beams of dark wood, with two stories and a bay window. Her yard was fertilizer green, with a giant STRATFORD FOOTBALL…

Saving Grace

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It essentially comes down to this: If you have nothing left but paper, all you can really use it for is wiping your behind if you’re in a jam.

Don't Mangle the Mongol

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Back in the Dark Ages, the Mongols invented the first hamburger pattie. They put slabs of beef under their horses' saddles and after a few miles of rough riding -- voila! a flattened piece of cow meat. They then proceeded t

Reportage 1

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But oh my goodness ladies and gentlemen, out from under the vast reeking field, under this generation another generation has been rising and they are bursting up out of the soil of corpses they were boiling under there all along and they are bursting up o

Peace and Cribbage

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Some things are meant to be repeated

JOSEPH YOUNG

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JOSEPH YOUNG Joseph Young You might start with the top of the head, where the heat goes. This is first, first from the womb, the first word. Joseph Young There might have been a faith that placed it in the mouth, not the…

Broken Vase

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Once was when we were in Vegas on layover from L.A., I told her I thought we should go to the Elvis Chapel and get remarried.

Ecce viator : Behold the Traveler

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The snake glides unhurriedly through the garden one warm July afternoon looking for a schmoose. Or barring such pleasant daytime passage, a shady snoozing spot. He twines himself about the gravid apple tree’s trunk caduceus-like, slithering his handsom