Most discussed stories

Jen the First

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"kissing her with every muscle in my neck."

WE SHOULDN'T HAVE BOUGHT THE FIREWORKS

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My chin is half-eaten. My chest is gone. There is a rhythm to how each flame licks me. Like how you used to in the mornings before work. Before the coffee. Before the toaster. Before a rose clenched between your teeth and dancing.

The Thousandth Day

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She pictured the President leaving the hospital a few days later, hobbling on a cane. Jackie beside him, Caroline and John-John dashing from a waiting limousine. He couldn’t die. She’d looked into his eyes. John F. Kennedy spoke to her.

Hanging

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Hanging was back and thriving - twice a week at half seven in the evening.

The Perils of Open Hand

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There are worse things than getting your ass kicked by a 12 year old Puerto Rican kid. This was exactly my thinking as he stood over me, his pre-pubescent screams sounding like a baby Bruce Lee, preparing to finish me off.

Carlos The Impossible (Part 1)

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And so the deal was struck. It was arranged that the empresario for the Plaza Mexico would buy the giant bull from Button for Hernando to fight. Come the Fiesta de la Fuerza Irresistible, the Great One would meet the bull that was born of a thunderclap at

LAST CALL: A Memoir

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We see o­nly the results which a man's choices make out of his raw material . . . when his body dies all that will fall off him, and the real central man, the thing that chose, that made the best or the worst out of this material, will stand naked. All sorts of things…

Christmas Presents

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There’s something Dad’s been telling us that I don’t think is true

Heavyweight

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That afternoon, after I'd swallowed that weight. Felt like a sinker, one of those weights that fishermen attach to their line to make sure the line goes down far enough. Go down far enough there, and I'll find it. That's what I was on about, that I had…

September Morning

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Helen’s mind is not on business. It’s on a pinpoint, a potential, a something so microscopic it’s more a nothing. In her center, it hums.

Exceeded

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I am exceeded / by a leaf

The Rider

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"The rider rode his bike in Arizona just about every day and for all the usual reasons....."

My Cousin & I

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My cousin and I walked around the village at night. It was beginning to rain, but we walked on. She had a jacket. I didn’t because of course. She said: “Sometimes I just want to know if he’s settling or he’s really in love with me.”

Really Beautiful Skank

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She really was a beautiful skankFeral coated and dusted with sugarAn inked up divining rodTelling us on earth what God thinks

Serving Up Apathy

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"Did you want that with the shrimp or the chicken?" the waitress asked. "Uh, shrimp is fine" the old man replied. "I'll be right back with some more bread" the waitress plasters a fake smile on as she walks away. 'What the hell am I doing. I've got a BS i

Sacre Something

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My first abroad journey completed. A picturesque way to end it all, really. I’m into that, I think to myself: making things play like movies or dramas or as beautifully as I can make them.

The Shredded Carcass of a Small, Helpless Animal

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It gets eaten.

Anxieties of Absence

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On beach trips with our families, there were bumper cars, jet skis; flash enjoyments, beach-themed distractions.

My Period Blood.

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[CAUTION: IF YOU ARE UNDULY "FIXATED" ON GOD, AMERICA, MOM, APPLE PIE, AND/OR BASEBALL ... YOU MAY WANT TO AVERT YOUR EYES!]

Oyster

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I used to love myselfin hidden burstsforbidden momentsof pleasure in my morning bedlater, I numbedmy senses and stumbled blindlyinto wild sensationsof releaseand called itecstasyintensity is a drugfear, grief, anger,as seductive as joy,makes the heart pump,the blood rush…

The Abstracted Man

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The abstracted man lacks an inside. He is a body. A shell. An exterior that encompasses nothing.The abstracted man yearns to fill himself with adjectives. He lumbers through streets. No adjectives fit. He finds adjectives where we discard them. He carries them in his…

Shutter

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Background foreground life in the middle

Five Million Yen: Chapter 5

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Then he took the tune out to Ben Clarone land. The horn was beautiful, if leaky. His fingers flew over the keys.

5 Things I've Learned After 5 Years of Reviewing Small Press Books and Writing 2 of My Own

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In today’s print-on-demand and digital world, there are unlimited avenues for aspiring writers to circulate their work, but deregulation and limitlessness often leads to chaos. Writers are more inclined to release unpolished work that fails to rise to the

Frankly, I'm Not Doing Well

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TW: Self-harm. I wanted to write a mental health essay that wasn't all rah! rah! and with as little sentimentality as possible. Out of everything I've published, I've gotten the most feedback from this--people telling me it helped them understand a loved one better, etc.…

The Runaway Train

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Me? I was a runaway.

WILD

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Most days you couldn't win; the constant nag from the fact that it was all a game was your only comfort. I was at the unemployment office again. The gal at the counter'd seen me enough to know when the printer was out of ink so she could walk away.

Not Here and Therefore Everywhere

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Sometimes I try to hum / along with the air conditioning, / and pretend I do not exist, but am merely / the space that fills the room.

Key Cutting

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City cars packed with eyes

The Mate

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It sits there, watching, waiting, multiple cycles over.