Most discussed stories

The Secondhand Life of Uncle Ray

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Between chapters, he trained my dog, Buster. He taught him to fetch bottle caps, roll over for no reason, and to play dead whenever someone raised their voice

The Great San Francisco Poetry Wars, 2

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A large crowd of students began to gather around the base of the building that housed the administrative offices, where my hearing was being held. The meeting room was up on the second floor.

Revolution

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Suppose a bowl of mushroom soup. A table and a chair. A woman arguing against the uselessness of war. A bomb ticking in a man’s groin.

Molasses

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My T-shirt read BOO HOO.

Mr. Wucky

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"Hell - whoa?" "Larry, it's Margot. Is that you?" "Yeth." "Why are you talking like that?" "Ah bit off the tip of my ton."

From the Cradle

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Loss and awakening are irrevocable. Love and grief are one.

Lester Young, Grand Daddy of Cool

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Young is credited with the first use of “cool” as a expression of approval, and he embodied the concept in his life and in his playing. His only problem was he was born too soon, in 1909.

Life Sentence

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“I believe it is some form of primitive recreation with a board and wheels,” the one and a half eyed orange blob said with an Australian accent.

Psychics or Ouija Boards - Who Ya Gonna Call?

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Madame B would come once a week and tell me things that I needed to know in exchange for some free items. She would come and grasp my hand while telling me the same thing week after week. Madame B always told me to relax and things would eventually come.

Bad Boys

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Her name was Carrie. And yes, it was love at first sight. Yes, she was a client, and you were supposed to keep your hands off the clients. Everyone in real estate knew that. She came into my office and took a seat in the reception area. I had a listin

Journey to Malta, from the novel "Grok"

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The journey to Malta would take almost four days. Both men, with knapsacks and sleeping bags on their backs, stepped eagerly onto the train in Zürich. A whistle blew and they were off. In his knapsack, Grok had brought pictures of his family

porcelain

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And then, like all those nights before, she just fell asleep seducing me.

Cat crunch

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I barely scraped the sleep out of my eyes when I heard the shrill crying from outside the kitchen window, and I recalled one of the many reasons cats can't be trusted. You see, they're evolutionarily wired to imitate the sound of a crying human baby, so when they…

Shim

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better than being dead

A Silent Scream

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She hated the noiseless dying sound they made as he stuck the hook through their eyes. She always wanted for them to scream, but they never did. They didn’t even blink.

I, Betty Crocker

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I was born at the age of 42. Some of you might regard that as a handicap, but at the time I assumed everyone was born fully grown in a corporate test kitchen. In fact, I still think of it as an advantage; like being born with a silver spoon in my hand.

Short Blonde, Long Red

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Natalie blushed the vodka with an almost pointless twist of the fruit juice as I fought in my inside jacket pocket for my wallet...

Aria

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It will only be minutes before I can slip out of this shelter, but time has suspended itself like a web over the sky. I look up and see a break in the clouds moving north from the furthest tip of Lake Erie. Rain turns to drizzle, other guests arrive toget

Catching Forks

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Last night Jim taught me how to catch forks. Meaning, he taught me how to throw them. But he called it catching forks. It was late, and we were low down 3rd street, south of the Bay Bridge, the baseball stadium, all the people and cars, on top of a warehouse. There were a…

Autumn

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I have never known how gold this time of year, With its palladium arcade, was, of the trees That do not sense the pleasure of their silence; Trees are egalitarian, they do not speak But concourse among themselves, consent to join us At this moment breathing…

Extract from my Fantasy book

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Lucien ran through a burning vortex in desperation ignoring the cries of his friend. It was a flux of Satanic majesty. The floodlight of the fire was incredibly grim, but it did not hurt his eyes. Have you ever seen painted glass windows in a cathedral built by the…

All Seeing

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Our Core Values define evil as the concealment of information. And those who conceal information are evil.

The Glass Bowl

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I caught a fragment of a charged argument as I passed them. The young man said, “Well, I am talking about love.” And the young woman with equal volume checkmated with, “Well, I am talking about money.” Though their lives were none of my business, this exc

Aluminum Canoe

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"Don't stab me with that," says John.

The Sticking Point

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I felt dark, dark...

The Big Cross

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I hope you and asshole are having a good time.

All Wet

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the small break of consciousness that is my dreamswaterso much wateri can never forgive the watertoo many tears

Splitting

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The promise felt heavy in my chest, made it difficult to breath. It was scary to set out to change something that felt so engrained into my own wiring, in my ability to survive & cope in the world.

A Night at the Plywood Palace

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You find a wall to lie down against and focus your eyes on an orange light. You no longer hear any music. You are lying down at the bottom of a dark, green, filthy pool, holding your breath and looking up at the sun.

Measures

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Pascal would let something slip now and then. He was sharp and spoke excellent English, with a beautiful Spanish accent. He corrected speech among the guys, but he exercised his lessons in grammar with an eloquence that fascinated all of us, not letting a