Most discussed stories

Shade to Shade

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Cathy told the boy to sit in the seat behind her, and gave him her scarf for his face. He nodded and plucked the scarf gingerly from her hands, suspending it between the clean thumb and ring finger on his left hand.

A Letter to Saint Francis de Sales – Patron Saint for Writers

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I've been struck with a bout of writer's block, struggling to get pen to page or finger to keyboard....So I make paper airplanes.

Without Knowing It

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If this isn’t Paradise, what is?/ Your own eyes wide with/ the imagination, the knowing,/ the not-knowing of it all.

Take Two Llamas and Call Me in the Morning

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A nursing home that doesn’t believe in antipsychotic drugs uses alternative methods to calm patients, including a llama named Travis who walks through the halls.

No. 6 Kleingemainergasse

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As it was, she was on a mission to get back and either close the chapter or re- open it on her former lover. Something was curiously drawing her to him. She was frank with the man on the plane. He understood. When they deplaned on the tarmack in a snowsto

Broken Bulbs - Chapter One

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And here I am again. I chew my nails. I tap my foot. I chew my nails. I sweat. I bleed. My nose bleeds. It drips. I drip. I'm dripping through my chair.

One Cent Baby

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Yesterday, I ripped off Dollar General. Today my baby died. Tomorrow I will file a lawsuit. After all, someone has to pay.

Reciting Verse on the Toilet

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He is the kind of boy that is so handsome / you already expect there is something wrong with him

The Fourth Prague Defenestration: 6

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My grandfather rode with the Czar’s army. He was abducted from a village in Austria, trained to pillage and drink, plunder and rape, and ride the best horses that could be had. They were given the best vodka and the sharpest swords. They were all just b

Mirror Mirror

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At night I go into the forest to look for her, to strangle her snow white neck with her own dark hair. She is seven and soon to be married. I am brier hearted. I am old.

Wild Dreams of Reality, 8

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Darrell and I pulled into my driveway after being out all night long. A slash of sunlight fell across the purple Mexican sage beside my front walk. Except for the birds in the trees, there seemed to be an odd serenity to the air — until I spotted one

615 Pharmacology & therapeutics

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Somewhere, a mathematician is going mad in a box that decreases in size at the same speed it takes the mathematician to find a way to get out. At least he’ll die with an epiphany, which is more than we can say for you.

Guramachimachi

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The carnival passed through this hotel one time only, its boarded guests pretending to ignore the smell of outdoor whore in their bedding.

Call Me Naked

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[He] practiced aromatherapy and licentiousness, in no particular order.

Pecking Order

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My first time all started with the girl on the bench. She had those perfect eyes, you know the ones, where you see them and you just can't help wanting to take everything she has on her. Those kind of eyes. And I saw them first. I was the first one there that morning at the…

Dump like no other.

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Their dump was like no other in the country. It was bigger than the rest. And, unlike their innumerable competitors, this dump—which sat packed with trash on the surf of an ocean—was organized with care.The Elks took pride in their dump. Three…

There They Are! Here They Come!

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“Help us, help us,” the children are saying. “They’ll come back. Help us. They bite.”

Atticus

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His name was Atticus. Yes, exactly like that other Atticus you’re thinking of. Though it was more to do with his mother’s unnatural obsession with Gregory Peck and less to do with a love of classic novels (because Lord knows she scarcely read a thing

Improvisation on a few lines by Mark Strand

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I am tripping on poetry. Purple ink drips from my eyes like ergot of rye.

Traffic, I'm in no rush.

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Traffic, no need to be in a hurry.

Music in Berkeley

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There I saw a woman with dyed long red hair Dressed all in furs and a short tight skirt Way too young for her age And she was banging a tampon on her leg At the performance of Ramblin Jack Eliot And no one got up to throw red wine on her Ful

Morning in Louisiana

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Sunlight slaps the asphalt hard. Steam rises. It looks like thought. The sweet vapors of rumination.

specter in transit

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at the front of the bus/ sways a white-veiled woman:/ gnarled hands upon/ a bag of palms,

Fire

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She left the bathroom and slammed the bedroom door. He heard the lock close.

A Flap and a Flutter from a Belfry

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After our visit to Phoenix and following our inspection of the Grand Canyon, our seminary octet continued its twelve-thousand mile sojourn across the country as a quintet.

A Tinder Ghost

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Do you know if you were actually speaking to me there?

The Astigmatism Of The Human Genome Project

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G 20/200 …

Bitter About Pay, Poet Laureate Strikes Catty Tone

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Duffy struck an adversarial tone from the outset, offering up a first poem about improper expenses submitted by members of Parliament that ruffled feathers across party lines.

Anticipation

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Two minutes later Alicia Morgan stepped out of her car. Her smile faltered momentarily and he saw that she assumed the mistake was hers

Eve in the House of Mirrors: 13 fragments

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1. On the morning of her eighteenth birthday, Eve woke to find herself transformed into a gigantic chess piece made of zeros and ones.2. Eve gazed so long at her smartphone that she found herself falling into it.3. She fell for a time that may have been short or long or…