Most discussed stories

(lost love, and longing)

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As has happened many times in my life, I heard his voice in my sleep and I saw him, though only briefly. Over the years I have seen this man I thought was him clearly and known when he was in danger – a car wreck at twenty (I was correct on everything b

Night Raid

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The president snapped awake at three AM. He realized he was a serial killer. Highly trained and equipped killers on his orders were summarily murdering thousands of raggedly dressed people in the name of Democracy.

Will There Be Cliff Notes?

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The new members were asked to stand up and say their names. One obnoxious, pushy woman from L.A. stood up and said, "Ama Torrent, and I'm an alcoholic." The roomful of people started murmuring. Suddenly a man in his late fifties shot out of his chai

Cow & Fly

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If I can eat a cow...

Love’s Course Is Full of Stones

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Come with me to a place where the sun and moon are quiet, and day and night are equal to the point they are no more. Deny at last the springtime in its most false of promises. Reject that life is death, accept that death is life, ignore or embrace love's…

The several stages of grief

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Robert was not in any sort of metaphysical or spiritual sense seeing himself, as in the scales falling from his eyes and seeing himself as he was. He was a long way from that kind of insight. He was literally seeing another himself.

The Arrival

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Everybody knew it would happen. It didn’t happen exactly when or how they thought it would, but nonetheless it happened. “I told you it would happen,” a bearded man told his wife.

A Way of Place

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There are people walking, not knowing where they are, a way to peace is just that-- a place to go.

Five Million Yen: Chapter 3

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Now you are a raving bare-forked fool madman with nothing.

Salome Danced

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After we'd been on the highway about an hour, it started to snow. Sammy leaned down to pick up the roach he'd dropped, and we skidded off the highway

Walking To Gibraltar, Chapter 14: In Which 500 Fucking Words Appear

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This was before the cancer, years before. He did this every day: up at five, before Astrid and Max. Four cups of coffee in the machine. A bowl of granola. Five hundred words. Five hundred words no matter goddamn what. Five hundred words on Sunday and Chri

"We Are the Last Minority" Say Surrealist Poets

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"My sister's parrot admires your armpit," X-Lautrec says. "Would you be so kind as to nail an avocado seed to a cup of black coffee?"

Two.

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...how he wished the will to live...

High Notes

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Jazzy midnights twisted like DNA

Filtering Grace

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...She was my first, my only, she broke me in then brought me down. Alone now, I cycle through hundreds of variations of her image like a flip book narrating some abstract story. That’s all she is now to me, an incoherent melange of tints, saturations, an

The Boy at Feeding Time

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My legs hung over the bed as I leaned over the food tray. Under my left arm was Adele, my toy cat. I wondered if the staff told the boy of my ritual of always feeding Adele first before I gave the spoon to myself.

Honey Nut Cheerios and Chocolate Milk

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Charley calls to say he hasn't heard from me. The blinds are gone, so I take a lipstick off the living room table and draw a circle around his head. I make a half-circle for his gut, a squiggle for the telephone cord. He can come over, he says, just to …

In The Place Between - Part Three

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“I do not know if you can hear me, or if you can talk to me. Some people do not believe in people like you, you know, spirits, ghosts or whatever you are. I do. I know you are here because of what happened here.” I could not speak. I did not feel I could.

The Poet's Mark

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Often I want to kiss their lips Drink in every word they have written

Five Million Yen: Chapter 73

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The pawnbroker sat behind bulletproof glass at the rear of the display area, a veritable potentate of hope and cash, exchanging expendable items for derisory cash.

July 4th, Austin, TX

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It is July 4th, Austin, Texas, just after nightfall. On the bridge, downtown, I sit against the curb with my husband, his best friend, the best friend's wife, whom I have recently become acquainted, and their baby, Sasha. We're waiting for the fireworks to…

Cheap Date

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Lady, if I were going to hire a whore, it wouldn't have been you.

Time Travel Telephone

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And now, the weather. The Cloud Wranglers have roped three solid clouds this morning, preventing the clouds from raining iron bars onto Human Brain Storage Center #17.

Hook

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“What the fuck!” Duke muttered, amazed at what he was seeing in the darkened store. A thin curtain of smoke was rising from under the baseboard like an inverted waterfall. It stretched the entire length of the left wall. Holy shit, the joint's on fire! I…

Sequins

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A person is entitled to what she thinks and feels. A person can have all the thoughts and feelings she wants.

Winter Hawk Jack

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Jack, man in black, sporting manicured talons, his smile an iced knife.

Ricky's Condition

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At first it was just holding hands and talking about Ricky's condition. Then it was leaning into each other on the sofa, Ben whispering my name into my hair, me wanting to put my hand on his thigh.

Googling A Ghost

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My buddy had been in the computer business, a systems analyst. Surely there would be some mention of him online. But there was nothing. Nothing, that is, until I saw the obituary.

An Account of my Dwelling (for Kamo no Chômei)

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[B]y fleeing the city to live on the outskirts of nowhere—a place so far off the beaten path that even Duras’s aging Mr. Andesmas would have felt isolated—I was of course trying to escape from none other than myself.

You're Never Going to Break My Heart

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Like any lovable lump of hidden rocks, these hills she breathes life into, blinking existence, are all well worth jumping up and over again and again. Just ask the little kids. Their endless landscape of discovery…