Most discussed stories

Topsy the Elephant

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The handler found Topsy as docile as a woman being fitted for a shoe.  Each time he tapped his cane against her ankle, she lifted her foot and held the pose, allowing him to dip his sponge into a bucket and pull it wet across the thick ridges of her skin. It was…

Wipe Your Feet at the Door of Sex

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Jackson ran his sweaty hands over his vintage cowboy shirt hoping testosterone would iron it.

Box Set

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Isn’t it funny how a mosaic of neurons in our heads receives sensations from the outer world and grows into postulates and letters?

Breakfast in Prague on 9/11

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I was sitting in Prague having breakfast on 9/11 near the Astronomical Clock while the world was bombing ISIS the sons of ex-Nazis sitting at a table nearby and old apparatchiks leisurely eating sausages while the world took a moment to

Suspenders

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As soon as I got the suspenders adjusted I felt different. I felt like Wilfred Brimley.

Parallelogical Circuit

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{A} So I think maybe I am a robot. If I was a robot, I would do lewd things, metallic (cold, hard, shiny, heavy, malleable, loud, acrid, industrial, immovable, unstoppable) things. I would do the things I do in my dark powerless dreams. People would understand and…

skull of a sheep

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You are in a car speeding through Dublin towards the West year after year the journey uncoils past the same landmarks Kilmainham Jail strapped to a chair bullet to the brain on by the Rowntree Mackintosh factory where the black and yellow and orange and r

Coyote Captured Outside Lower Manhattan Café

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I heard the patron yelling, “Hey, man! That’s my cappuccino!” when the young female snatched it and got away. But the police cornered her a few blocks away, licking the last bits of foam off her wiley whiskers. That’s how they knew they had

Fat Cats, Happiness and Laptop Love -- What I Learned From Magazines This Week

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The Utah State Attorney General's office recently stated in a court filing that there is no constitutional right to marry a laptop.(Time, 6/19/17)Smartphones are spreading head lice.(New York, 7/10/17)People are less helpful when it's hot.(Time, 7/24/17)Online virtual…

Valentine

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XO

February Fifth

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We've worked silence over / Like pros, our best work together.

Victor Krowchuck Gets Dressed

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He puts on a choir of prepositions, 142 adjectives, 317 ramifications of cotton... and 177 semicolons engorged with cabbage.

" I Know Bernie, I Can Get You In."

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* Dedicated to Bernie MaddoffThere was a long line at the men's room.You know,when men reach a certain age,there is an urgencyto their frequent trips.So I saw an opportunityI said:" I know Bernie I can get you in.""Really?," they saidbut I played it coy"It ain't easyBernie…

Hollywood Sugar

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No pain is private. How can it be?

She Could Have Given Him Strawberries

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She lets go and it slides back too slowly.

Left On The Scrap Heap

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Daylight and cold sensed as an abstract, a number in my mind. Air thin, polluted, lacking oxygen. But the Recyclers are at it again.

Experts Say Planning Key to Spontaneous Sex

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Priscilla Mainwaring has a little surprise in store for her husband Dan. “I’m going to greet him when he comes home on his 50th birthday wearing nothing but Saran Wrap,” she says. "The Cling Plus kind, not the Premium."

ATF

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A father's soft neglect has repercussions.

Locked in a Small-Town Cage with My Superheroes, and Having No Way to Get an MFA... (Memoir)

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...I grew up in a provincial town which at the time had no bookstore and no library — no library even at school...

PERSUASION

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A story about convincing people to do things they don't want to do, written entirely in dialogue; originally published by CHEAP POP.

Pilot Wannabe

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We were both looking up at the rainy sky, while the big jet barely moved through the clouds, coming in for a landing at Oakland between storms. It sort of reminded me of 911, the way they just seemed to hover above us, barely moving, like they were poss

Settled

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Zusman snored on the sofa as Motel gathered his belongings in the dark. He moved quietly as had become his custom in the mornings. Initially he had tried not to wake his nephew on his way to work in the…

Maximus and Kimchi

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The dogs shit on the roof and then, every two weeks or so, the man in Apartment 311 climbs out the window with a plastic shovel and scoops the shit into a white plastic bag, which soon grows heavy with dung, dangling from his black-gloved wrist.

The Book

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The following is a true story, or rather it is a true experience from the story of my life. Some say that just because something happens doesn’t really make it “true”.

The Writing On the Wall Has Been Covered by Graffiti

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The graffiti has grown so large It has covered everything we know and love It has covered the windows, shutting out the light And it’s all about leaving your mark The ones who are living outside your walls Have grown worried about leaving th

Bums of the Bird World

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Yeah, okay, so pigeons are the bums of the bird world So what are a flock of crows working over a wheat field while the artist Vincent is desperately trying to live with his bleeding ear or to sell at least one painting during

Against Nothing

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To be free of pain. Is that what we all want?

The Signal

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I take the plastic off of the last videotape and stick it in the VCR. I make sure the channel is on 6. Still a commercial. I get my notebook, turn it to the next page and write today's date on top. I get ready. I don't really like the back and forth banter the other news…

A Boy Who Looks Like Horses, or A Horse Who Looks Like Boys

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He nuzzled the breasts with his face for a moment, his leathery skin and tangles of hair tickling her in the process.

Supernova

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Ben had us over, me and him and his boy, Benji, to look at the supernova. Ben was always coming up with these things with the telescope. Jupiter's moons, Saturn's rings. On his wedding night he made everybody stop dancing and run out to the golf course so he could show us…