Most read stories

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.

Something Jazzy

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. . . clinging to life in a shroud of winter air. It veered up five flights to a sweltering summer night on the roof . . .

Headstone III

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My only brother. Frantic flesh clings to bone.

Alice

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Alice writes three different versions of the letter. The last one is the most tempered, the most like her, but still it is such an unlike-her thing to do. The couple who lives above her has been disrupting her sleep nearly every night for the past three weeks. The woman's…

13 Halloweens

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1. The Walking Heart Attack Man has two outfits. In the summer he dresses in a short sleeve checkered button down shirt and high waisted Bermuda shorts with sandals. In the winter he wears dark pants and loafers with a gray corduroy coat…

Prompts

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

End of Chapter Questions for an Imaginary Textbook

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Describe how like or unlike a vagina a peach pit is, using no anatomical words.

Summer Reading

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The summer everyone read Faulkner, I read Hemingway. Out of spite.

Vernon, Last Seen In Hawaii

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Dear Bess — I go to the First Assembly of God's church. (a Praising Spirit-Filled Fellowship.) It is in Maui. Dr. James Morocco, Senior Pastor. He has been pastoring the church for over twenty years. My, what a big change I am finding in my new l

Closed Curve

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What the heck to believe in??

A MAMMOTH UNDERTAKING

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My best friend and roommate Eliza woke up one morning with the sudden conviction that she had to become very fat, as soon as possible.

HUSBAND (opening door & shouting): 'Hon . . . WHAT'S FOR DINNER?'

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WIFE (calling back from kitchen): "Dick Cheney's penis!"

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.

Witness

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The violin hung on the wall after that, a witness.

Some Kind of Change

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She was flying back in the morning, returning to a long-distance boyfriend I believed she had cheated on while she was here but didn’t ask about because I thought it would have been too obvious and somehow ungentlemanly.

tears, et cetera

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ghosts are local plagues/of unexpended grief—tears/can't be bodiless.

What The Hell Nationality Are You?

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It’s confusing enough to grow up in a place like America, a country without definitive culture, except for ranch dressing and reality TV, but it’s even worse to grow up half one thing, half another, christened a hyphenation of names without connection to

Toward a Critique of Everything Existing

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You got a lot of people, out there

Woman Gives Birth At Cafe, Refuses To Leave Until Latte Finished

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There was a man crying, walking his dog and a woman drove by on a flat tire They brought coffee to the tables in large glasses on white saucers There’d be long silver spoons with which to stir in strong

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.

A Country of Husbands

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The first husband was young and lovely. He had a little nose and long fingers he used for things like planting begonias in my clay pot. I did not do flowers. So that was nice.

Elegy For the Old Republic

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You call the shit in this paper news? ‘Dog Accidentally Shoots Man With His Own Gun, Swedish Man Bursts Into Flames on Train Platform, The Truth About Elvis's Hidden Extraterrestrial Daughter.' Seriously? Enough about Elvis already.

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

Of Life

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beware the slice of the knife cutting like a curious comet blasting through solar systems down the throat of the bad ass milky way

Breakfast Dance - a 55 word story

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The handsome man at the opposite table swivels his head at the tall cool slim blonde entering the breakfast cafe. The ordinary woman sitting with him adjusts her chair accordingly. She pretends to ignore her husband's distraction, smoothes her hair, licks her…

Aerobics 6 p.m.

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Dizzy but still alive Inside this conversation I ask if you have a sister And if she'll know me If I'm with you.

Life Story

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A man lives with a woman he loves enough to live with, but not enough to marry and not enough for kids. He knows he could love others enough to marry, enough for kids, but he's not the kind of man to find those women when he's with this woman.Sometimes “love”…

Where the ocean ends

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For my Dad Happy Father's Day!

Epitaph N+1

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We die in order to get some rest

Escalation

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Don't fall to sleep.