A New Kind of Literary Pulse

Building materials in Ali's city told a story. Mosques and churches were always made of limestone, so were some old stock Arab homes; the old city hall was coralstone; new money bought multistoreys ...  [+]

Hope is the killer that perches in the soul and slowly hacks away at the heart and never stops at all.   I met her while working for the university newspaper. She was an aspiring journalist, and I was ...  [+]

It was October of 1992, and Betty had a horrible cold.  She was coughing constantly. It was so bad that it would keep her up at night. Worse than that, though, was the fact that it was keeping he ...  [+]

She is clothed in a dreary, dark shade. Little wrinkles paint her face, long and needle thin. She is weak and frail, yet undeniably mine.    Perhaps the others like winter, but I don't. The sky ...  [+]

Tears stream down her face as she tries to finish a paper due at midnight. An overwhelming sadness consumes her. She's finally found the one she wants to keep forever, the one who signals to he ...  [+]

What a packed schedule I have had this year. My last stop today is in the aftermath of violent protests. There are so many names here that are on my list. 
Just two days ago, these streets still ...  [+]

i've never fixed a flat tire before i told everyone i knew how to
i told a girl who was the most beautiful girl i'd seen in the last 5 minutes that i knew how to fix a flat and i told her this ...  [+]

8.21pm:
Roughly three and a half hours till midnight. My fingers hurt from all the typing and the use of the trackpad on my laptop this past week. But above all else, my eyes hurt the most. I would ...  [+]

"Nobody said this was going to be easy, Robert," Anne said, locking her stern gaze on him.   Moving closer, she continued in a softer tone, almost as if echoing the voice in his head, "Think about it ...  [+]

It was just a fun bet between his drinking buddies and him as they sat at the coffee shop, staring at the screen above and the football match playing on it. Jack had placed 10 dollars on one of the ...  [+]

My grandmother's mind was a bank. In the wage against age, words eroded to snow, the soft slough of rivers. Her love dove in circles of code, floating figures homed in red spaces. The wordless ...  [+]

"I saw something last night."   The Marooned didn't stir at these words. He remained crouched on the shore, hairy feet burrowing under the same sand as the crab he was hunting. The Englishman ...  [+]

The rain-slick rooftop makes Ige's boots squeak as he runs. The thud, thud, thud of the guard's boots behind him matched his heartbeat. "Don't get caught." Her words echoed in his head as he leapt ...  [+]

He says it's like watching skin under a microscope, or mushrooms fly. 
"I want to see mushrooms fly!" Anya bounces to His words, her mushroom-stem fingers reaching for His hand. He smiles. His grip ...  [+]

There once lived a girl named Hope, in a grand house that never felt like home. She lived with her mother, stepfather, and two stepbrothers. People who filled the rooms with noise but none with ...  [+]

"You do not have a choice in this matter!"
 
That was the words said to me by my parents when I was 12 years old, and when I was on the crossroad of choosing my junior high school. Those words has ...  [+]

She'd fractured his ribs trying to save him. The chest compressions were useless now. Her breath was shallow; she'd dragged him out of the water, pulled his shoulder out of its socket. She hung ove ...  [+]

The already barely audible sounds of at least a dozen shoes crunching against dead leaves in the distance became more muffled than before, even drowned out one might say, as he heard a familiar voice ...  [+]