Most read stories

Turbidity

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Where seldom is heard an encouraging word

Tribal Elder

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"Look at this," she says while thumbing through the guide book, "look at what we can do on Jooga Booga island. Says here, 'Parasailing over the sapphire blue sea, one soars hundred of feet above water-skiers, boaters, and snorkelers, and the picture is b

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

Hard To Know You Can't Go Back

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The light against the nylon walls of the tent gets me feeling a little down. The air's wet inside, but it's warm. The whole world outside is creaking and chirping, everything that wakes up with the dawn's first tepid blue light does so and starts making n

Backwards

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One of her favorites was of an old axe asleep on a desert floor. She told people the axe had the western lips of September. That it held the song of the ocean and the dreams of a scarecrow. Some thought she was mad to talk in such a way. Others believed h

Discuss

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... her hair spills like spinach all the way down to her backpack, the top pocket where the bowl and the cinnamon estrange themselves from the coffee.

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

Better Days

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I peeled off a hundred. For the screwdriver, I said. The kid shook his head, made a pushing-away gesture. You need it worse’n I do right now, he said.

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.

Men Respond to Women's Tennis Grunts With Armpit Farts

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An armpit fart is a simulated sound of flatulence produced by creating a pocket of air between the armpit of a partially raised arm and the hand, then swiftly closing this pocket by bringing the arm close to the torso.

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

Phil's Last Stand

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Phil was scared. Not of his own shadow, but of the three men from ConAgra who'd dropped a duffel bag of green outside his den the week before.

Motherly Advice

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Her mother told her once: "Don't be no whore, Fe-fe."

Toward a Critique of Everything Existing

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You got a lot of people, out there

Biography

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There is a price. It's on the back. If you turn it around you'll see. It isn't expensive. Everything's okay.

Residual Sulking

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I know I know how many times you want me to tell you I’m sorry, okay?

Out of Uniform

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Between the wars, I hung around in an air-conditioned room. It was tiny, and I was shoved to the back, but after living outside on another man's back for months of bullets and bombs, I welcomed the stuffiness. White paint kept close walls from reminding me of the trenches'…

Albert's Mother

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The stern tone of the chairwoman made him miss his mother, the snap of her accusations, the sting of her belt on the backs of his legs.

Will #17

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I want crazy at my funeral. I want clowns, a petting zoo, fireworks, craps tables, male and female strippers, and a three-person band composed of old men wearing striped vests, black pants, and straw hats: one plays a banjo, another on tuba, and…

MONSOON

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a beautiful cool quiet day

From the Found Notebooks of Homer's Writing Group

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Oh, also, had no idea what the whole visit to the Kingdom of the Dead was getting at. Interesting, but seems unrelated to the larger story. I'd cut it. Remember — this is a story about one man's attempt to get home. Stay focused on that.

Stupid's Rising Up

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Stupid's rising up, I see. Melting all the intellect. I before E, except after C, but that's not how the alphabet goes.

A Vicious Deer

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A Vicious Deer The man came across the hall to talk to us. He was buying some paintings. He had a white deer on a leash. Fosca (our Malamute) said: “That's a vicious deer.” She kept putting her paw on its shoulder. I said: “You bet

Rock-a-Hoola

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She wears a green and pink bikini and walks real slow, poking her chest out so people will notice her.

Wounded Knee

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“They picked me up in their spaceship about noon,” Austin Grantham says to me while pulling up an apple crate to use as a stool.

How To Train Mules

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“Mules don’t like to dive, Esther.” “I said maybe, Hugh. Maybe.”

Light Shot Water

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Where I grew up, you did not venture casually into ocean waters.

Prompts

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Write a poem in which your father is a dog and you are his leash.

Not Lao-tzu's Magna Carta, xlvi - liv

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the Great Way itself is very smooth and straight,/but folks take to the challenge of rough, wild roads.

Scents

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"Ah, finally the rain stopped pouring!" She opens the window to let the sticky air out of the house. The colours outside have changed. The air is clear and the sky turns into light pink while the sun is drowning at the horizon. She takes a deep breath. The…