Most discussed stories

House Rabbit

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I would be proud to be your house rabbit. I make this case: I will listen flop-eared close to your every concern and exhultation. If I doze off nudge me. I wake quickly.

A Slick Story

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After Slick Daddy — aka Billy Ray Thompson — gave up driving his log truck and took up with playing and singing the blues full-time he was what you might call a hot property around the juke joints along Highway 61. The women didn't seem to mind…

Like Trial and (Also) like Error

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We sat all in a muffledlittle line up, on theconcrete lips of tomorrow'ssleepy chin, like all the world's good little children should, as the paradelimped itself slowly by, slapping itself against the young day'sexcitement like a damaged flattire, trying its…

Regret

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Every time I read a great line by another writer, I feel fear.

Mouth Manifesto

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I want you to kiss me like you’re listening to my tongue. I want you to hear the rhythm of my heart through my lips. Can you feel what I’m telling you? If you’re entering my borders, it doesn’t matter where - my mouth, my pussy, my ear... you’d better pay

Ilonka's Hagaddah

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So then we had to worry about the Russian soldiers. When they heard we were Jewish, they said “How come the Germans didn’t kill all of you?”

The Street to Here

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poem

Trip the Rime

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politics only add to assault and distract

Window

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Can you write a 250-word story without using the letter "e"? Ruth's back is curving forwards, folding, softly caving into tomorrow.

falling

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I arrange my stones in circles

are you a life force?

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are you afraid sometimes, in the night, in the wind as it beats down your maelstrom thoughts?

Bison

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To make extra money, my father wrote music reviews for the Calgary Herald, and on Saturday nights, he went to hear the Symphony, or into recital halls to listen to the chamber music that was being performed around the city. He took me, once, to a performa

The Wreck of Me

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“You’re a hard habit to break,” I said. My tongue was flaring. Flirting with nurses was my father’s thing.

Happiness

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Can you find happiness in the middle of a kidney stone attack?

I Knew Her

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We met in the theater.

Barn Owl

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I was out of my element. I was on property that wasn't mine. In a woods with mansions tucked away among the trees.

A Team of Horses

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He had coal black hair the day he died. He claimed to be part French, no doubt the offspring of a Swedish girl and a French soldier, although Ole did not mention this.

Tilly Artaud

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After not going out for weeks, I went to a bar and met an electrical engineer, a motorcycle racer who raced in the Black Hills, a Renaissance man, in a relationship with a young married woman, and I told him about the toad.

The Boys

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The Boys The Boys, they call my brothers in the neighborhood, or Those Boys. The Taylor Boys. Sometimes, Mom calls them Thing One and Thing Two, like in The Cat in the Hat. Those bad boys. Nobody has brothers like my brothers, kicked off the school bus, barred…

Fascination

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Lying all over itself...

I Would Make the Worst Cable News Anchorwoman Ever

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I'd laugh, cry, splutter with confusion or outrage. I'd probably say “Duh” a lot, grow pale, flush, and wink at the viewers. I'd furrow my eyebrows, raise one or both, and my eyes would narrow, widen,…

Sloth

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(Insert poignant line here)

Moles & Scraps

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A starved hunchbacked figure covered in blanket gently steers a one eyed dog along with him. A four legged shadow serving as his longtime companion against the all-consuming vacuum of the universe. A friend for all times.A thin scar runs from his cheekbone to…

3 Poems

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We have always been a trashy species./ We study ourselves by examining/ garbage-- a pile of mussel shells here,

Lucky Strike

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...when they entered eager lungs hungry from deep and sweaty love

R.I.P. Ann Bogle

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It is with great sadness I announce the passing of Ann Bogle on February 28, 2023 after a brief illness. Ann was longtime contributor and editor of these pages and a champion of small press and emerging writers.I knew Ann since the late 1970's when she was an undergraduate…

Small Potatoes

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I kiss his sunburned nose, so nice under the beach house. We hear the shower of palm leaves like wings getting ready. We talk about a time we'll no longer know each other, when he'll be sad in a bar in another state, slipping and sliding and petting lost dogs in the parking…

DNA

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my family's Scottish heritage

from: A Body Divided

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When I came back home, after coming down with polio, everything had changed for me. I'd been gone for forty-five long days and nights. But it was Halloween, a time very nearly sacred for children in the Midwest, and it brought out the charity of the who

The Color Spectrum Fiasco

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On the very day I was fired from Penn State, in 1971, I was also kidnapped by a short-lived underground student revolutionary group who spelled their own name wrong. They shoved me into the backdoor of a yellow rusted-out car on Atherton Street, blindfolded me. A…