Most discussed stories

Playing Boggle with Lowell's Mind

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lewd sinew swine

Suburban Snomance

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rump-a-rump, bat-a-tat, barumpabumbum

A Hole In The Bucket

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In 1978, a computer program became privy to my grandmother's most secret thoughts.

Freakuccino

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The bus was almost empty, just me and an Asian girl who'd cleaned up some since I'd seen her. She was wearing a too-big T-shirt that said Freakuccino and writing in a notebook. If she remembered me she didn't say so I didn't either. Everybody sheds some…

Happy New Year's

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Start white flour diet.

Slice of Lifeforce

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I, the energies moving through this body, in this particular parallel reality in this multiverse, am standing out in the middle of the night, under only stars, and surrounded by the soft, organic shapes of a tree line.

The Rest of the Story of Mom

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Easing her hand with her other hand.

Happy Christmas to my quantum mechanic-

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this elegant silver wrench/ which from the opposite side/ becomes a golden Phillips-head

You Write Books?

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“Somebody told me you write books.”

Goldfish

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The guy stretches out his arm as he rounds up the herd of ducks that only want to bob. He pulls down his sleeve over a heart tattoo, faded from being seen so many times. It’s a skinny sort of heart tattoo, an askew heart from where I stand, an arrow fro

The Miracle

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On the way to the drinking fountain, Elysia Martin, a third grader at St. Michael's Parochial School, heard a voice calling her name. When she turned toward the white plaster statue of the Virgin Mary that sat between twin hedges in the rose garden, she

Memory

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Jessica's face was so close to mine I had to focus on her left eyeball to keep my eyes from crossing.

Barely Spring

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On a business road

Rubber-Band Requiem

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“Now we lay you in your grave There was no way you could be saved You hate our lord Jesus and he can tell Which is why you will burn in hell.”

Love Songs for Kandahar

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You worry that the mullahs suspect us, but that cannot be. We never touch in public. You weep and I shake when a neighbor knocks on the door.

I Am Not A Careful Reader

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What's the weirdest thing you've ever used as a bookmark? I work in a library. I've seen that, and more.

The Crickets Try to Organize Themselves Into Some Raucous Pentameter.

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A secret search rolled from Odette's eyes. A gulch split her down the middle and she had the world believing this was the way she liked it. Odette was a woman who spent entire days bending backward within herself, never letting on that she was…

Who's Going To Defend the Love

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we feel entitled to, so unwanted, afraid for, from the billions of stomping oafs, leaping onto our hearts like squishing jelly sandwiches for fun, bullies in power out there? To be brilliant onits tiny behalf? I forget, exactly whyare you still here anyway? Don't…

The Heart

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My wife and I were looking for a "fixer-upper." We were strange that way. We were leaving a rental which had cat tunnels built into the walls. One villa we toured had a heartbeat. In the basement, in place of a well pump, was a heart made of fibrous roots which had…

Beautiful Plague

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Jacob Obrecht, you are beautiful. Everything inside your head and everything you’ve ever made is beautiful and singing.

Too Early, Too Late

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Things don't always go to plan. Gem knew what people would have said back then, of course. She wasn't stupid.

A monkey puzzle rocket burst

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The things we do for books, she thought.

Suky Tawdry's Cab

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yet fiction, despite contrary reports, from two ends of the American spectrum, does not mean lies, in my HUM

A Cameo (for no-one)

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I bleed my heart into my computer, peruse The fact they have proclaimed my root unfit for use But it is I! This manhood, this tower Extending up toward the heavens like a miraculous flower, Purple headed warrior of generation, See it standing…

Encore

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...something in her raw vulnerability and daring beauty drove these men wild...

Milkmen

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I can barely pick out the numbers on the houses

The White Dogs Of West Emerald Street

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I wondered if Mr. Slane even knew/ how many dogs he owned

mnemonic haiku

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skies electric blue,/limpid dewy air, the world/framed by a small farm.

Scattering like light

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He had long since quit listening to the incessant clanging of the bell. He stood, ringing the bell, squinting into the setting sun, nauseous from the car exhaust, his body aching for alcohol.

Estate

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In the kitchen they discovered the instruments. A flute under the sink tucked behind a rusted silver pipe. An oboe on the floor in the pantry. And a violin across the ice tray in the freezer, now dark. "Not ice," sister said, holding it up by the neck.