Most discussed stories

I Beat Myself at Chess (revised)

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There we sat, myself and I, at a small folding table in the middle of the lab beside the main, l-shaped workbench. The lab was empty - always was - except for the two of us.

Tsunami

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Tsunamis are quiet at first: not one big wave but many small injustices, so chaotic all the pressing all the weight of the noise, like a stone holding you under.

Motel

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Brody was standing against the wall with one hand in his hip pocket, as if he was holding a gun. The motel was set in the undergrowth of several weedy small towns, but a flashing neon sign made it impossible to miss from the road. We used it as a safe hou

Better than Chocolate

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Teddy laughs like a machine gun. People back away when they hear him. Every time I see him at work, I try to make his skinny body rattle. I would never back away.

How To Make Potato Salad

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Boil 8-10 red potatoes and 6 eggs in heavily salted water. Remember that the first chef you worked under taught you to salt egg-boiling water because the salt breaks down membranes between shell and meat, making the egg easier to peel later on. Decide tha

Lifetime

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"Why didn't they just elevate the drug levels and kill her off like that?"

Hobby Lobby

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In human rights, a man and a woman may marry and bring forth a family. It is a civil right in the U.S. but not a human right (as far as I know) to raise a child singly without the knowledge of the other parent.

This Rubbery, Unsure Thing

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The sea is transparent rubber, and peering down into it I recognize the shiny fish in suspended animation, their partially exploded bodies obscured by their own blood.

Masters

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"... he with much to teach, I who had much to learn..."

After Detox

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When detox-man drives away, the windows down, the radio playing on the classic rock station (The Eagles), he thinks about moving out of town.

Residual Flashbacks

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Residual flashbacks; just tiny bright lightning bolts that flash in front of my eyes, just like standing watching a soaring bonfire on a cold and frosty November night, pinprick sparks flying up into the endless darkness of the night.

Cathy

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"Merry Christmas, Willie."

Chancing the Moonglow

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It's become sort of a habit now when Elsie's husband is away on business two or three times a month that we take the afternoon off and drive nine miles across the river to Marginalia, Arkansas and the Moonglow Motel with its red, neon vacancy sign and although to some, two…

pop music till yer brains bulge blue!

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every color of sound turned to green / human beasts’ treadmill tastes must be trained: / we may yet starve to death, but we’ll die de-brained!

Girls with Guns

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"My dear man. We are not friends we are symbiotic."

Lost In The City

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They found it naught however as it was lost at metro stops, canceled appointments and in ever dimming light that failed to reflect what was instead of what could have been.

It makes no difference

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So I'll throw in ten.

Happy Birthday Sian or How to Fall in Love

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I learned how to fall in love, in one hour, watching The Waltons. John Boy fell in love with Jenny. Jenny fell in love with John Boy. It taught me the right way to fall in love. It taught me the right way to let love go. I was 12 years old. It was a lesson I…

Lives and their rivers

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The pristine Hudson's/waters dance in the dark of/the East River's rinse.

Rescue

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I wake up with the taste of mud in my mouth. Ashy, sulfurous, charred, with traces of rotten shellfish.

The Way is Dark, the Road Long

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The day I got out of prison the sun was shining.

Shadow Play

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I read it all wrong. In writing her novel, I thought Marilynne Robinson was writing about twins — writing, in some way, about me. Instead, these characters, Lucille and Ruthie, were standard sisters, one older than the other. In fact, Robinson explains th

Fiction with Teratoma Preserves

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In Nebraska, we found a dead man lying between the furrows of a field. He’d been there awhile in the heat and the sun, the only shade provided by a cloud of flies. The dead man lay on the ground, decaying, disappearing into the dirt:

Afterglow

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The drone of radio seeps into the car’s back seat… I hear only bits and pieces of information –

Not Lao-tzu's Yellow Brick Road, xvii - xxvii

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—indistinct and foggy, my eyes lost at sea, confined to a horizon not close to land.

Abre La Puerta

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My daughter, now four, can count to 15 in Spanish. How old are you? Cuatro. How old will you be on your birthday? Cinco. She likes Dora and thinks Diego is weird.

Ribs

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The moun­tains of humil­ity went silent, / the rain of regency dried its eyes

fake letters in reply

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I did do one nice thing for you

Me And My Liberal Friends

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“Thank God The Yogurt Store Was Open!”. I knew this would cause cynics to seethe about me and my #FirstWorldProblems. While those less with the times or from many years of vanilla ancestry, might become racist themselves, indicating that I was suffering f

Ghoster

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Ross, I've been a ghost hunter for almost 10 years now and this is a place I said I WOULD NEVER NEVER EVER go to!