Stories tagged narrative

In the Hole

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In the summer of 1995, I found an old photograph of my father and his third wife in a shoebox under my bed. That started the whole thing. I think it was taken around the time I severed ties with him; his new wife had mailed it to me, she…

Europa

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The sink spat its water in a most erratic and vindictive fashion, with varying temperatures of discomfort and a nefariously mechanical nonchalance. Her arms are elbow deep in the misbehaving appliance, it looked to us as if she was drowning a small rodent

I Don’t Understand ?

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SHE: I hate you, don't leave me. Let me drive you away so you will stay. You ask about the worst of me, what I've told nobody and hidden just out of sight. I'd say it's hidden below the surface, but I wear it on my sleeve or just under it -- so you wil

Magic X

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I twisted the nozzle and lit the alcove in yellow light. It was somber light. The light of alleyways in Brixton. I was in shadows, as I liked to be. An empty egg shelf split the yolky top from the dark underneath.

Minnows

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I combed the ocean for my minnows while Hattie's giraffes multiplied like spider plants, all yellow and brown on the dry yellow savanna, propelled by their gauche necks, awkward in their bodies, bodies rooted to the feet of the humming planet.

pickup truck

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The first time we fucked my face was squashed between a seatbelt buckle and the right-side door.

(5) Forgiveness

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“Charlie was right about you, Nan,” she said in a voice of pure defeat. “You are a gentle spirit. And probably too good for people like us.”

i can't have

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Hey there little hippie girl, smilin’ to the ears and dripping with scarves, I cherish our friendship. However, every time you take off your shoes to dance at a rock show, hair swingin’ like silk vines in the paradise that is your shaking ass...

Am I Anna Karenina?

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You’re often photographed at Martha’s Vineyard at sunrise, Key West on New Year’s Day, Coney Island on Christmas, and variously at dive bars in Montauk. You’re a woman of a certain age and you are also a woman of the world. You’re a 21st century

The story is not this poem

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The story is not my life.

Ed, Dick Allen, Me, and other Sexual Things

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Lust lobbed sideways every Tuesday from Ed's tongue; skimmed the blackboard and passed under the desks to land squarely in my crotch.

(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."

The Trouble with Hope

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It's so fragile anything can kill it— one cold night, the smoking chimney too far off in the distance, another drought, everyone at the table either drunk or estranged; but like a fisted bud, it rides out even the deluge …

Frida wonders if there’s a better way

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She’s changed leaves to emeralds. Worn a shawl of inked birds’ wings.

Lesson Plan

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Maybe tonight, maybe next week,/ maybe only in my waking dreams,/ I’ll teach another lesson-