A New Kind of Literary Pulse

I ignored him until he throttled down. That was not normal.

It was a pleasant night, but an hour after curfew. City lights from Saigon to the east turned the dark a velvety purple, and the sweet ... [+]

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 ... [+]

Near midnight she pedals her rented bike past Checkpoint Charlie. Vacant, but suitably restored, the off-white, utilitarian guard box occupies the middle of the street, protected from a barrage of ... [+]

He wakes with a veil of fading orange sunset falling over his face. Slowly, he raises a hand, twisting it through the shards of light. There are no callouses. No dry cracks of peeling skin. It is ... [+]

I sat staring deep into the flames, listening to voices stirring the wind around me. Soft footfalls pressed through the grass stalks, rustling gently. Though I couldn't see them, I knew they were ... [+]

Aunt Mila was the one collecting the eggs every morning but the chore is now mine. We have an extra daily egg since she has flown off and Grandma uses them to bake a cake every other day. Grandpa ... [+]

We are simple people. For us, fulfillment comes from hammering a piece of iron into a useful shape; from plowing the black soil for the new crop; from kneading the dough for the bread we all need ... [+]

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 ... [+]

Elise finally succumbed to exhaustion just as the plane was circling Schiphol Airport. She was flying from New York to Amsterdam to visit an aging uncle. Elise had never left the U.S. before, had ... [+]

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 ... [+]

McGregor lifted his tired eyes towards the vast horizon. In the distance, a flock of gray geese traced a large black cloud hanging low in the sky. Loneliness weighed down on him, and he felt ... [+]

They note eye color, and measure height and weight. They examine throats, inspect ears, check the state of teeth. They monitor heart beats, document genders, and write down ages. They record the ... [+]

I am a doll.

I was born sixty years ago at Görlitz in Germany, in a hut in Stalag VIII-A.

I am the one for whom a Belgian prisoner of war, number 15825, opened his clenched fists and to ... [+]