Most discussed stories

Best blurb (pitch) -- and thanks, Sally and Prickly

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The author's note explains...

so far from home

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Its colour a spectral silver shimmered in the pale afternoon sunlight which glinted on its small red and blue insignia so far from home. The landing stage of the unmanned Viking spacecraft had broken away from the main section on schedule before starting its descent through…

X Marks the Spot

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I was an only child....

Collect Enough Fragments, You've Got Yourself a Poem

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I. The sun's corona. Empty boxes near the firehouse. Red birth. A bird's lost wing. II. The bitterness of littleness. Apples in a pile.Early love.A spider, swinging. III. A father's harshness.Twelve bills unpaid. Leaves in a crevice. A dream…

The Apostate

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A crone dressed in black pours liquid from a bottle onto the egg. Whiskey. Gasp! The egg cooks before our eyes!

The Memory

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The old lady is losing her memory. She forgets people's names yet so familiar to her. A little sheepish, she takes her basket and walks to the village. Just like when her legs were young, suntanned, shapely and attractive. Along the footpath, by the shop windows, over the…

Holiday Newsletter

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Dear Friends: Thank you for all your newsy newsletters bragging about your children's accomplishments and your exotic travels this year. We, too, have had a wonderful year. Our son, Rick, was arrested for possession of cocaine but…

In the Stream of Space Expanding, Eddies

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Microscopic purposes emerged// with their combinations and permutations

Unleaving

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they'll leave soon for the drive north on the interstate

The Grave of Rimbaud

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I visited the grave of Rimbaud. / It was pale blue

Cloudstopper

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She's the one you remember when there's talk of the blow.

Invite to a Death

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I'm the joker of the pack in our office, although I think a lot of my humour is too subtle for my colleagues

Dr. Nishad

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Sometimes she imagined the piles of Dr. Nishad's medical waste at the end of productive day at the hospital. Stacks and heaps of connective tissue, lung matter, gristle and bone, cancerous clumps of tongue and stomach and ropes of bad muscles like wrung,

Spill

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The beachy slope never draws such goliaths.

The Heart Jar

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The diner on the corner is one of those Disneyfied modern cut-outs trying to mimic the actual thing but failing utterly. The street, a vein of hipness running through an Ivy League campus that is still trying to cling to a time when it all meant something

Runts

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Dead drunks sing Christmas/ songs-

The Graduate

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A sweet fog rises to the rafters. Inhale.

This Story Will Break Your Heart

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The first years of her life she had been owned by a bear hunter and trained to hunt bear, a terrible turn of luck for her.

Assiduity Five

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. . . my situation.

Jimmy and the Ark

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Yes, he'll be quiet. Very quiet. He rocks himself, the ark, suddenly imagining water underneath him, over head, all around. Water, water, water—

Our Love Is Enough

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To stop the world from explodingLike Krypton. It has to be.Like purple flowers we're there on Burnt battlefields. It raises its flag, Too, and continues the march towardThe dreaming sun in spite ofAll the smoke and ash thisWorld has to offer. Our…

Acceptance is to her a phenomenon

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You were given blame for action as experience by cause and effect now. If you take apart blame and even forgiveness is too rigid. She thinks of that purpose as to give men sexual destiny.

Falling Towards Oblivion Avenue

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At some point, you care/ just enough to wake each morning,

13. spring makeout haiku

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tangerine mouthfeel

fork

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xxxxxx

The Case For Foreign Independent Flicks

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I cannot make love to a woman who looks like David Byrne.

Fabric

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My father failed in business in the 1950's when Dutch Elm Disease killed the elm trees in our Kansas town. He owned a fabric store on a brick street lined on both sides by elms, the doomed trees that transformed every Midwestern town into a magical kingdom and sidewalks and…

Mind Games

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Rendine Philips polishes his courage and enters the fray. Not virtual reality, more reality virtuous. He feels the pull and the push. Electricity pulses resistance.

Pillow

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“I was just dreaming about you,” he said, sleepy-voiced. “What's for breakfast?”

You Don't Have to Read This

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I get it. Poetry is an effort. Language is an effort. Words are an effort. Reading words is an effort. A big effort. It takes energy. Attention. Focus. Who has that? Nobody. So truly. I mean it. You don't have to read this. If you're already reading this you can…