A New Kind of Literary Pulse

Sarah feels bricked up, even though she's riding her bike. She feels caged, because of where she's riding her bike: to a coffee shop to meet an ex she's not sure she wants to meet. He called her to ... [+]

i. Rob and I were down the pub, drinking Guinness. There was a woman in there with a face like a fox. The whiteness of it, along with the red hair, only strengthened the impression. She shot out ... [+]

I watched one of those old movies the other day—you know, from when nobody wore masks. It was a little disturbing to see all those naked mouths, and sometimes it was tricky to tell what was going ... [+]

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 ... [+]

They did it for the hell of it. They knew they wouldn't last. Their friends knew; their families knew; even their dog knew, though it wasn't invited to the wedding.It was fun, especially when they ... [+]

Long ago, an incorporeal god of light named Belgrin flew over the face of the earth searching for new and interesting objects to illuminate. When he found a young woman named Isil, he stopped. He was ... [+]

There was no sunlight that day, and flowers with banners naming the giver had no aroma. The Godfather theme music played in Maria's head while a cast of characters, like sepia photos in her mother's ... [+]

Across a wood-grain bar in southern Minnesota on the way to Buddy Holly roller coaster in slower Iowa, I lay a few dollars on the bar for the sixpack of Blatz (cheapest they got and straight from ... [+]

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 ... [+]

This job is a grand. We're supposed to deliver the piano from a suburban chateau into a self-storage facility. Why doesn't matter. Pick-up address, how many floors down; delivery address, how many ... [+]

"She's a difficult pleasure," I said of my ex-wife. I was standing at the front door of her house, talking to her new partner, Sammy, a woman. My ex-wife, Lily, was not there. We both took in the ... [+]

Straight out of high school Mick's uncle landed Mick and me second-shift jobs at a textile factory. I asked Mick what the company manufactured. Gigantic rolls of something, he said. From three until ... [+]

In front of him, for nearly every minute he was awake, there was a screen.He tried to recall a time when it wasn't this way. He couldn't, so he watched old movies to try to remember."Yeah, but this ... [+]

She sleeps like a dead weight now beside me, lowered into the night, the ropes of the day swaying around her. We know nothing about each other really. She does not know how often my ex-lover visits me ... [+]

This story contains adult themes and is not appropriate for young or sensitive readers.I met Sarkas at a club called Pose. Rolling on molly, eager to swallow the world, dancing with our hips and ... [+]

On the days I visited the care center, I'd walk past this used bookshop on a quiet sidestreet. There were these four books in the shop window that always caught my eye. Other books would come and go ... [+]

Not long after she moved – ties cut, no looking back, he'd never find her on that side of town anyway, if he bothered to look – she found a string of Christmas lights at the thrift store when she ... [+]

The weather was good today, you answer whenever I ask how are you, how was your day. I don't know when we stopped talking about what mattered the most because you won't tell me. I ask are you ... [+]