A New Kind of Literary Pulse

January 26, 1906

Forty-seven days have passed and the bananas in my kitchen are still green. They remain untouched and unmoved since I brought them home from market. To my eye they appea ...  [+]

My new neighbor was a hoarder. She hoarded everything. Crystals, pink bakery boxes—she even took in children. Each one was flawed: too restless, not bright enough, a daisy-shaped head. The sound of ...  [+]

The seventh day in my new flat, I found a worm in the fridge. It was flat, black and dead. I quite like interesting animals, but not this one – it looked remarkably like a leech. Where had it come ...  [+]

It had been nearly fourteen years, but there you were on my morning commute. On your way to work like nothing had happened. Both of us on our ways to work as if nothing had happened.

You looked ...  [+]

Our new house really felt like a home, with cockroaches and two pit bulls and a palm tree and a chain-link fence. On that first day, I heated up a can of kidney beans for breakfast and ate it ...  [+]

The garbage can is full again. I drag it inside and empty it over the floor, adding to the foot of water already standing in the house. The bathtub and the sinks have been running nonstop fo ...  [+]

On his way out the door to a meeting with a client, the husband said, "We should have a baby," and the wife, pointing to one of the windows that overlooked the driveway, said, "We already have an ...  [+]

When you are a competent old man who lives alone, you can eat what you want for breakfast. This morning I had noodles, or rather noodle soup, a favorite of mine for colder weather. Broth with ...  [+]

The doctors, explaining the consent form, referred to him as an allergen. That's the only reason he could figure they prescribed Claritin. Well, technically they didn't prescribe Claritin, being ...  [+]

"Voicemail. Faaabulous. Anyway... Good morning. I've arrived. And let me tell you: There's nothing like heading to a job interview and praying to God that you don't get it. (Oh this is Amelia by the ...  [+]

Ain't no such word as "slomp" Jessey had scolded me just yesterday. But a crawdad pokin' outta the deep mud ditch alongside the river always made kind of a slomp sound to my ears. That's how you ...  [+]

Melody jostled a dust-coated box into the backseat of her car. The box had remained untouched for the three years she'd been at Harvard. Why had she insisted on bringing it to law school? She'd just ...  [+]

It was dangling there, hanging from a nail in the wall on a little copper-plated hemp string. It shone softly with a crystalline silver reflection, almost translucent. Sometimes, when through the ...  [+]

For a long time, I went to bed early, always reluctantly, grumbling, cursing, and dragging my feet. The time to go to bed was suffering, a break from life, a phase that nothing or no one would eve ...  [+]

"The baseboards can always be painted over."

The sentence played over and over again in Margaret's head. The real estate agent had muttered it innocently under her breath, but it stuck with he ...  [+]

The wind was blowing in gusts, buffeting the car, which swerved dangerously towards the precipice. Down below, the waves broke with deafening noise on the rocks. It was magnificent but terrifying. I ...  [+]

My father used to say that butterflies only land on the prettiest flowers. And on people who possess a beautiful soul.
When I was a child, butterflies often used to land on me. And that made me ...  [+]

All adults have, in their memory, the places which defined their childhood. They just have to shut their eyes to visualize them and the feelings associated with these places come flooding back. When ...  [+]

The intense yellow sun was high in the sky. The fields were hot and the earth burned the feet of the men running in front of him – they wore no shoes and no one knew why.

There were fifteen of ...  [+]