Most read stories

Middle Age

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There are no city-chewed streets,/ only white and lilac blooming dogwood trees.

Jelly Doughnuts (from The New Yorker)

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Simmi's only been in New York three weeks, but the second night she was here Buck took her to a coffee place he knew, and now Simmi makes sure he takes her there every night...

Starspeak

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So if we all have an idea what goes down when the young person at the cash register (the registerista?) asks, “Can I help you?” then we all know there’s a different way to habla at Seattle’s gift to the world.

Me And My Liberal Friends

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“Thank God The Yogurt Store Was Open!”. I knew this would cause cynics to seethe about me and my #FirstWorldProblems. While those less with the times or from many years of vanilla ancestry, might become racist themselves, indicating that I was suffering f

Exasperation Management

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We honor fierce, quick, cunning/ thought-in-action types

Tortoise

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Seven black and orange Tortoise-shell kittens nursed in a crate the day Sue returned from rehab, to her parent's Atlanta home.

Awakening

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What? No, no, where did my world go? I was in the middle of… something. What's going on? What's stroking my face?

GRACE

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The sand felt warm, the way it usually was on Saturday afternoons in Seaside Heights; face down on the beach under a hot July sun that burned my back and shoulders

Arcana Magi Cross - c.5

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They stood before the opened door, where cold vapor seeped out along their feet and chilled their bodies. The Avatars figured this was what the necromancer used to get inside.

A Little Fishing

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Harpo sits and looks at something I can't see. I drink beer and ask him questions. I ask him how they found the cancer. Backache, he says. He went to see a doctor.

Frieden

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After each piece cancelled the other the generals folded up their checkerboards,

Alone

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It's not loneliness I'm afraid of. It's how I would be happy to be alone too much.

Confiding in the Airsick Bag

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In row nine, there was a lady on the window seat. Seeing the potential of space between us, I asked, “Mind if I take this one?” “Not at all” she said as if she hadn't a friend in the world, apart from the poor bastard now sitting in seat 9D.

'The Good Life' Not by Bud Smith

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I'm trying to read a Poetry in Motion poem on there wall of a crowded electric train

Sufficient

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She used to think of him as someone to entertain with charming lies, but things evolve in unexpected ways.

WE NEVER

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No news spreads faster than news of a death. Word of the death of a child can be heard simultaneously in a thousand places. . . the word spread by telephone, in back yards from clothesline to clothesline, with whispers in grocery stores, in the looks on faces stunned into…

Universal Theory #1: The 3-Step Secret to a Good Life

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1. Think up problems that don’t exist 2. Realize, suddenly, that they don’t exist 3. Elation

Coffee Shop

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He wore his hip in his hips, his lipsShe wanted to know if he would lick the edgesWhen he pulled the coffee cup from his mouthA bit of foam clung to his moustacheShe watched it there, wondering if he wouldTwirl it off with his fingersOr lick it, his tongue darting out like…

Treading Water

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I can tread water like this for months maybe longer

This is Why We Can Never Have Nice Things

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At age eleven, I murder the coffee table. I gouge with every available implement: thumbtacks, Lefty scissors, the plastic hand of my Barbie accomplice (who really should have known better). It is a slow death. In the end, there is nowhere to hide the body. When I am…

Brink of Extinction_Chapter Two

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The year is 2110. The earth is no longer habitual for human beings. The oceans are gone, the sky is red and irradiated and the last vestiges of human civilian are located within the confines of massive barrier cities. For a century mankind has been at war

They Take Those Most Willing to Endure, Write Them Off the Map, and Leave You to 'Resign' Yourself to What's Left

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[DO NOT READ BETWEEN THIS LINE ... CITIZEN!]

April Haiku

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A sardonic moon/ surveys our plight and cackles.

Breakfast

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Wake up, stretch. Check the curtained windows for sunlight or that dreaded grey frame that forces the covers to come back up and the alarm clock to be set to ‘Snooze’.

A Time for Peace

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When she opens the door, I say hi and introduce her to my friend, a bottle of J.T.S. Brown. She laughs and tells me to come on in before I fall down.

Ghostriders and rainbows

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Ghostriders in the syand rainbows in my mindor was itrainbow in the skyghostriders in my mind?I can't remember ...And apparently this body is not 200 characters long, so I add some text so this pearl too can be read (ahum) My body is only 170 characters long, snif,…

How to Forget

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Refuse to go to the church service, even though you already missed the funeral. Tell his mother something came up. Call his phone over and over, just to hear his voice, until his mother asks you to stop. Make a recording of his voicemail. Delete it an

Rust

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We lived in a white and mint green trailer in the woods. I was 23. The hanging of the clothes on the line made me feel kind of famous in the eyes of nature

Lethargy

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‘Your hands are very clean’ she said to the furniture salesman. His name was Morrison. "After Jim" Morrison Pentworthy. His father specialized in Doors.

Muslin

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Outside I see the daytime moon, and it is faint as a fingerprint. My cousins have up-turned the biggest rocks and removed all the Sow bugs. The land is damp and red, and the trees feel wet to the center.