A New Kind of Literary Pulse

"So, you're happy, huh?" he says in disbelief. He asks me this question several times during our two-hour get-together, trying to understand how I could feel so much happier about my life than he ... [+]

We bought the land to build a house, even though we knew it would be years before we could afford to build anything. We thought of it as an investment in our future. The land gave us something to look ... [+]

They sat alone in the back of the sweltering Chevy, their plump pink thighs stuck to the seat. Suzie glared at her brother's hand crossing the sacred middle line, slithering forward like a snake. "Get ... [+]

If he's being honest, he wishes he was at home with a Bourbon and a good book. He's never been one for pageantry. But the party is to honor him. The other retiring faculty members too, of course. But ... [+]

"Mrs. Crump?" The man frowning at Madge through the screen door had stolen a letter from the mailbox earlier in the week, so he knew the surname. "Yes," Madge replied. "I'm Harold Bates from the Debt ... [+]

Working toward sainthood this summer solved some of my problems. For one, my daily-Mass-going mother got off my back about getting a job and moving out permanently. Plus, it gave her something to brag ... [+]

My mother taught me to knit.Back then, knitting was a necessity, not some artisan craft like it is today. She would get patterns from women's magazines and cheap wool from the market. She knitted my ... [+]

There's a ghost in my house. I hear her singing. A little girl. Why is it always a little girl? The light through the window is barely enough to see by, but the sky outside is very pale. Clouds slide ... [+]

Each morning his face flushed as he remembered the boy's words, "I want that shovel. It's just like yours." And each morning he fell to his knees, extended his arms, then plunged his hands into the ... [+]

He had earned the stamp of "loser" in his father-in-law's eyes. Worse, he was less a man to his wife Jean. When a possum tried to move in a few months after they purchased their little two-bedroom ... [+]

Jude always ordered hot coffee when he was falling apart. He leaned back in his booth and pressed his hands into the porcelain, trying to drink in the heat through cold fingertips. He couldn't taste ... [+]

After I left Tom, I rented a house next to a cemetery. My mother offered to help me move. Standing in the gravel lot where I parked my car, she regarded the one-story clapboard partially hidden in ... [+]

I saw them once, when I was little. Maybe age four or five. The tree on the other side of the fence had branches stretching over our garden. It was too tall for me to reach the succulent, juicy plums ... [+]

My friend Matty believed he could fly. "I have the cape and everything," he told me one afternoon. We were playing knights and dragons in his backyard when he pointed to the roof. "You want to try?"I ... [+]

Harold Gates slowed the snow-topped yellow taxi and edged it along the slushy curb to a stop where she stood, shivering in a tattered wool coat in a January blizzard on the steps of her unlit ... [+]

Fred tiptoed into his room and slid into his desk chair, casting a worried glance over his shoulder as he opened his laptop. Typing as quietly as he could, he logged onto Artium Obscurorum and ... [+]

The kitten-shaped egg timer on the corner of the mattress beeps and they switch positions. Now she is cradling him. His head rests on her slender left arm; her right arm she drapes around his waist ... [+]

I heard it before I saw it, a jingling of bells like the soundtrack to a corny Christmas movie. Then out of the mist rolled a small carriage, round and bright as a converted pumpkin. Florescent ... [+]

August brought with it a new easy-swallow scheme by a new self-improvement mentor. Luna Rojas had measured out her life with the likes of them – detoxes, spiritual awakenings, fad diets. She craved ... [+]

When she left, Anita took Mom's valise, the round one with the wooden handle from Eaton's department store. Mom was furious. She'd had it on hold at the store for weeks while she earned enough to pay ... [+]