Most discussed stories

Phantom head syndrome

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The Bird King suffers from phantom head syndrome. Ever since his decapitation by a critic, he has felt pain where his head used to be. Sometimes it wakes him in the night. It's so excruciating, he fumbles for a saw. But alas! there's nothing to chop off.He's seen every…

The Case of the Phantom Paperclip

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I was sitting on the steps in the entryway to our apartment building taking off my running shoes when I spotted a paperclip on the floor. I assumed it had fallen from the mail that my wife had just taken from our mailbox. Once my shoes were removed, I went down to pick…

Stevie Wonder

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Like Prince said one time, parties aren't meant to last. Guys who don't get the message are guys who die by the inch.

Cocktail Pianist

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It seems the law of gravity will exert its influence even in such mundane matters as the afternoon rush hour.

3

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1 is another.

I Kissed a Shirelle

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What do you do when a Shirelle asks you if you’re in the mood to dance?

Forty Two

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The gate squeaked, the gravel shuffled and the letterbox clattered as February 14th's mail cascaded to the ground.

“Kait” the homo sapien

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I am an animal on display in an old fashioned zoo - trapped & violent, violent, violent

Sprouts

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I feel more like sprouts than cucumbers. Oh, hey. Icame here to tell you something you already know, butmaybe can't remember. Or maybe it's me who is rememberingsomething I meant to say, but didn't. Oh, hey. There's alfalfa and mung bean. I love those skinny little…

When it Gets Dark

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The world—the natural world—was terrible and beautiful in wartime. The leaves shuddered off trees. The pockmarked fields. The fallen brick chimneys. The way the birds heaved together in enormous flocks like rescue missions and then just as…

The Inconsequential Leaping of Rabbits

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If someone were to place a rabbit in her lap right now, there would be nothing she could do to hold onto it. It would leap. Drop. Hie its powerful body elsewhere. At the end of her life she would have nothing to show but a collection of rabbit-shaped empt

Curiosity

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They call me Curiosity and I am curious. I am also a robot. Please. Don't judge me. Robots are not all stupidly obedient, bubble headed twits with whirring gears, lithium batteries, and nanocrystalline electrodes. I have a temperature. I have self-monitoring…

Ghosts

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I see ghosts. They accost me in their sleep. Hundreds of them. When I wake up (after a long night of half-waking), I think, What wold ghosts want with me? I have nothing for them. But at night they're there again, watching, tapping my shoulder as I lay awake. Sometime…

A Conversation between a Dead Man, Himself and His Alarm Clock

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He was dead when he tried to wake up. “Wake up,” he yelled silently to himself, although it didn’t sound silent to his voice. “Brr, brr, brr,” shouted his alarm clock as it glared two red fives, a colon and a seven

Bird Noises

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Let's buy this robin's egg blue furniture. Okay. Let's buy this album full of wren songs. Uh, okay.

An excerpt from "Goodbye, Baseball"

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The boys were his biggest nuisance. The unwashed guttersnipes poured into the park early, all shoeless and half shirtless. He only imagined how thick the fleas must be in their thick tangle of hair, of which only two didn’t have covered with a cap with an

Oneiric

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- Of or relating to dreams

April

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Well, hello hunger: what a sweet surprise.

Those Things

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For me, it was that kind of moment. I got to come back. I had been here before and now, well now, I could come back. I had a chance to do it all again, bigger, better and well, just better. I hoped I could remember all that I learned the first time.

The Night Shore

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Somniloquies rise like the drowned . . .

An Unlikely Rapture

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Chills begin on my hand where his cool lips meet my skin and ripple through me. I try to focus on the road and cock my eyebrow. “Not bad for a 15-year-old.”

IMPACT

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He sees how he could release the duck, imagines it winging low over the water to where the others have made it safely.

The Shield

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The girl has big tits for only being fourteen. She leans in the passenger side window of my car and asks me for a bag of ten Oxycontin.She has no clue what I could do to her right now, that I'm a cop and could bring her ass up on charges if I wanted to. I want to do…

It Ain't Berklee College Of Music

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“You know who Neil Peart looks like?” Gram said, ignoring Aaron's outburst.

Like Jeremy Irons

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Usually, you shop around carefully before condescending to see a new doctor, but this time you go to the first gynecologist who would have you, who has time available. Usually, you refuse to see a male doctor (you hate having male doctors!) but this time,

How to Be the Most Hated Person on BART (London Tube, Tokyo Bullet, or Any Public Transit)

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The daily slog on public transit is a battlefield. Tensions are often higher than a presidential debate, but throw a wrench into the gears (or a tree branch onto the tracks) with any “severe delay,” and add in one or more of the below faux pas, and we’re

Why They Cried: Deano

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When it came time to sell the agency—when the papers came for him to sign—it was a very bad deal. But he did not cry. This was business. He had gambled and he had lost. He signed the papers without a hint of regret and even pried open a case of champa

lepidoptera

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The little butterfly struggled against the wind. As little butterflies sometimes do. Tossed and turned around by relentless, uncaring gusts. The little butterfly would make progress, but then be pushed back. Tantalizing close to where she was heading. A…

A meditation on mint tins

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And I am reminded of river eyes: The summer we slumbered, Like mummies in the sand

I'm Going Either Way

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Will you join me kneeling in a Homegoods parking lot