A New Kind of Literary Pulse

The old man is watching a seagull eviscerating a crab. The decapod crustacean probably was handsome in his youth but not any longer. Does he wish he could scream? Or is it better to be stoic and ... [+]

Freddie left the red and white cannon at speed. He whizzed over the open-mouthed crowd in a graceful crescent arc and was quite frankly bored, bored, bored. 
The large frayed net loomed up ... [+]

The moments of lucidity were rarer and rarer, but when they came, he regaled me with tales of swallowed teeth, basement brawls, and AIDS tests administered at midnight in ramshackle midtown health ... [+]

Mamma always had a love for other people's possessions.
One of my earliest memories is walking to the park, my hand firmly tucked into hers. I was an impulsive child, and likely would have darted ... [+]

The liftoff is like an elevator.
You know that feeling you get when you're going up? Like your stomach is getting left behind? It feels like that. Remember when we were kids and we were staying ... [+]

A woman who claimed to be a chimera called the library most Tuesdays, on the old line they never got around to disconnecting after the renovations. The call went straight to a yellowed phone hung on ... [+]

There is no cheerful clatter of pans, or old Beatles records spinning in the living room. No warm cinnamon smell fills the air – only burnt coffee. For a moment, I'm half expecting Papa to swoop ... [+]

"You're in New England," the man in front of me said with a British accent, so my mind—which I knew was not running completely clearly—assumed he meant that we both were in a new version of ... [+]

Fred is an arsonist—and, Fred is not an arsonist. Let me explain: Fred has thought of fire, its power and grace, for a long time. Perhaps since he was a child. He often watched fires, mesmerized ... [+]

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 ... [+]

The old priest considered the cast-iron oil pot sitting in the corner of the immaculate kitchen. It was heavy, and his back hurt.
The trees growing on the canyon walls whispered to him. "Prepare ... [+]

When I get home from Sunday Service, I strip my pressed white shirt in the living room. I step out of my slacks. Peel off the tight black socks. I fumble naked for my dive skin, the black and blue ... [+]

There is a story and it goes like this. There is a tower of brick and stone, raised up like a mountain. Its peak puts holes in the bottoms of clouds. A princess sits by the window at the top, and ... [+]

One March afternoon in 1969 I was on the deck of a Chinese junk listening to the water clop against the wooden hull and enjoying a breeze that blew toward the South China Sea. The junk bobbed ... [+]

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 stallion pounded the ground with its hooves in a wild gallop, its horsewoman leaning over its neck. With no saddle or bit, the mount flew free, its mane in the wind.
Nighttime enveloped the ... [+]

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 ... [+]

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 ... [+]

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 ... [+]