Most discussed stories

STIFF NOW! The Early Embalming Craze Sweeping the Nation!

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Originally designed for para-morticians and pre-professional undertakers, the Protocol has now been certified and approved for over-the-counter purchase and is completely safe (check local regulations for sales to minors: not approved for veterinary use).

In A Lightning Storm, Sheep Run Through Barbed Wire

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I used to fear things. The lonesome wind come through the clapboards. Dry hillsides rustling. My own skin in the summer heat. Rattlers. Lurking. Abandoned coal pits. Pa said I was afraid of desolation. I didn't know what he meant by that. How can you be…

A Beggar's Welcome

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. . . it's all we ever want -- the holding.

Bug Water

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Milton Berle bought a hot dog at the Stucky's snack bar once. True. I wasn't there, but I believe it.

Destiny Narrowly Avoided

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Then it started extruding tendrils and tying them all into intricate knots.

Hurricane Shutters

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The thing that really gets you about the house is the hurricane shutters. They're up already, even though it's the end of May, because Buck's uncle is back in Rhode Island for the summer and he's prepped the house on Key Largo like Armageddon is coming.

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The signal sets the faint young boys into motion

Pictures of Mona

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Jersey's ex-girlfriend calls him on a Saturday in the fall and asks if he'll help her find her cat. She says it ran off on her while she was taking it for a walk in the park. He thinks for a second about asking her why she was taking a cat for a walk in the first…

Please Don't Pass The Salt

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The only silver lining? The man in my life and I are in this together.

Mr. Seale Goes to Antioch

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Black Panther Founder Bobby Seale has come to Yellow Springs, Ohio—a leafy village east of Dayton-- to carry his message of "the continuing human liberation struggle" to the 2002 graduating class of Antioch College.

Defender

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He had what was commonly referred to in junior high as the ‘bullshit mustache’.

How We Open Doors

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-- as if I had / only rung the rusted bell --

Xmas Story

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The conspicuous police car was conspicuously just ahead.

1992, What I Wanted

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To be a backup dancer for Billy Ocean; that's all. I had chubby legs like a baby. They turned out akwardly as if I had broken hips but mum said it was just the way I came out and I would grow out of it.

Nocturnes

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You go out on a night with no moon, when all the stars are flush in the sky, when all of everything, even you, is just a shadow moving softly, and I swear, you can hear it, if you listen hard enough. The music. It’s like it’s coming from under the ground.

Fairy Tale

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Ey’, it’s where I followed him down

The Case for Mashed Potatoes

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Steam rolls out of the bathroom as Mr. Larson opens the door with a white towel around his waist. Pepper strolls up to him and purrs as she rubs her long, gray tail against his tanned legs."Hey, girl.” He runs his coarse, scarred fingers through the cat's soft coat.…

Axes

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You think about the first time you saw an axe

Flesh

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Here’s to flesh:

Left to our own Dvices

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No one knew why DVices were so hard to find. No one knows for sure anyway.

Benefit

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I'm an artist, baby. We make our own rules.

Rest Stop

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Wicklow sat in the handicapped stall, pants down and straining, fed up to here with a world in which he couldn’t even take a decent crap.

John Brigham's Dog

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Every day from my window I saw John Brigham's dog making its way across my field. The dog picked carefully through the shorn corn stubble taking the same route, I'm guessing, it took when the stalks made a shaded rustling forest. There is a narrow path…

The Power

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the silence of the hardwood floors blisters into fragments

Dada- Age 1

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He keeps saying it, babbles the term like he knows what it means and we wince and interject with mama, mama, mama,

Automatically Writ between Meals

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The misspent effort reposed spontaneously, a prank worth ending with the dog letter: “GrrrrrrrR!”

The Night of the Day the Khoi-Khoi Meet Bartolomeu Dias and Crew

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It keeps coming back to the end of the world. Dogs sitting on roofs, birds flying about indoors, clattering locusts.

The New Girl

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She’s new, with the enthusiasm of a new person. And everyone wants the new girl.

Real Heart

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A heart which is alive despite everything in the world that wants to deaden it.

Almost There

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On the phone I asked my mother how she was doing. “I’m getting old,” she said. “Going slow. But getting there. I’m ninety-four!” My mother was always 94, when she was really 93. I remember she was 93, right after she turned 92. And 92 when she was