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A New Kind of Literary Pulse

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Logo Long Story Short Award - 2022
Creative Nonfiction
 1 min

Tabasco Sauce

Teresa Vazquez

There is no Tabasco sauce on our table. My usual order—the "Just Bacon" burger with no onions, pickles, or garlic aioli, please—will be unsatisfactory if it is not drenched in Tabasco sauce. The sauce ...  [+]
Poetry
 1 min

bodies

Ezra Wegner

I imagine the hands that molded me.
dust and red clay into
child, into partner.
brushed ...  [+]
Short Fiction
 4 min

If Mental Illness Were a Place

Sarah Lindsey

Who are you?

Well, I'm... well my name is Two, actually. It's kind of a long story. Well... I'm broken, you see. That's where my story begins. My brain isn't made like the others. That makes ...  [+]
Short Fiction
 5 min

The Bank of Flesh

Tim Zhou

A couple of miles down the decrepit villages and a few minutes walking along the white gravel path, you will see a weirdly inclined mountain crowned in thick vegetation. If you were to climb to its ...  [+]
Creative Nonfiction
 5 min

The Girl with the Yellow Hair

Harlen Bertrand

The hallways were unnaturally quiet when I left my room. The walls reflected a putrid-looking yellow that shined from the small light above me. The usual thumping of music that came from the doo ...  [+]
Creative Nonfiction
 4 min

Dispatch from the Middle Ages

Denise Stroud

Ten days ago, I quit the kind of job this school is meant to prepare you for. I left the investment bank I'd worked for, to return to school as a full-time student. Why would I make such a seemingly ...  [+]
Short Fiction
 5 min

For the Love of Aphrodite

Teresa Murphy

Some spend their lives in search of Aphrodite. Day after day they waste their hours seeking a goddess to soothe their weary hearts.

The quest for a perfect Aphrodite is a fruitless one ...  [+]
Short Fiction
 2 min

Residue

Max Carter

They were 40 minutes into their 50-minute session and were still stuck in the same place as when the two started. Taran tugged at their collar while they talked, sweating from nerves and the gradually ...  [+]
Poetry
Poetry
Short Fiction
 3 min

The V Word

Lai Wei

The last time I heard the V word was when my dumb friend Will said it in front of my wife. He was coming in to borrow my toolbox and overheard the stupid argument we were having, and of course, being ...  [+]
Poetry
 1 min

Man Made

Cecil May

Gabriel sits beside me and asks if the pain in my chest is worth losing god for.
He doesn't ...  [+]
Poetry
Poetry
Poetry
Short Fiction
 3 min

Cockatoo

Ashley Chang

Grandpa always hated the cockatoos. Called them oversized flying rats, never mind that they were a goddamn national treasure, but nothing came between that old man and his garden. In Iran, he used to ...  [+]
Short Fiction
 5 min

Rust

Kayal Udaiyar

The rain started not soon after the fifth birthday of Zara's daughter. An endless pouring of blood that came from eternally gray skies forced everyone into their homes and afraid for what was to come ...  [+]
Short Fiction
 3 min

There's a Noise in Your Brain

Fritz Ruppert

It was already far too late.
I had never meant to be out here at this hour, but I'd been having trouble sleeping, like all these recent nights. Something about sitting there, awake, in the bed ...  [+]