Most read stories

Visitation

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My mother looked up and began to laugh, it was a nervous tittering, but there was delight in her eyes at the crazy spectacle of our small black puppy eluding, probably taunting all these armed police.

Redacted.

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Almost on cue, Xavier emerges and is in the vendor’s face. “X,” as he is known around here, is indoctrinating the obvious newbie on the merits of showing up earlier and the logistics of placeholders and markers.

Martyr

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The waitress says, “That’s a memory,” as the smoke dances around her head.

When the Songbirds Went Silent in Cheerytown

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What happens to a town when all of its songbirds go on strike?

The Weaver's Tale

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‘Hmph! Dream indeed! “Past the wit of man to say what dream it was” - the man's a knotty-pated arse.' The old master-weaver spat into the fire, his rheumy eyes bright with contempt, then looked round furtively; Nathaniel was not yet returned,…

Mutants

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Elin and I had religious differences about the garage. To her the garage required regular sweeping and organization--it was an extension of our house. Elin believed dust and mold to be manifestations of inner sin. I insisted that they were agents of evolu

ROAD LESSONS

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"Do you have to call your brother a loser? He is not a loser and that was just uncalled for"

Forgive Me Mamma

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His footing unsure and his clothes covered in vomit, he grabs the railing and stumbles up the three steps. He pulls off his shirt, finds a cleaner area on the puke-covered garment, wipes sweat off his forehead, dripping wet from the humid, stormy night, a

Beyond the Wire

19381938 views1212 comments55 favs

Thistle and cracked corn were thrown to us each morning and the occasional live chicken...

Polaris

19371937 views1010 comments77 favs

Things get lost in Big John, too. I see the other guys throw jokes about his size at his body that wedge their way into his armpits or into the wrinkles of his laugh lines and disappear. I’m not sure if it all disappears to remind us how small we are,

I A Dog

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I am a dog – four legs, a tail, a carefree enough manner, I do this, I do that, get into fights, sniff the ground and so on

77 Words About Nothing (Triad)

19371937 views1515 comments77 favs

My mind has started to finish thoughts at 77 Words. These are just a few.

3 Kids

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There he was, naked and covered in green mud

Letter to the Bean Factory

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The figure was covered in a light blue chenille bathrobe, splayed out on her back on the floor by the glass door, her hair done up in large curlers, a slipper lying askew by her left foot. Richie crouched near the face and the rancid flame of bourbon lea

Prairie Rose

19361936 views77 comments44 favs

Every Friday night she gets liberated at The Haymarket Square doing a bunny hop or a do si do with ex-members of The Saint Augustine Women's Choir. She remembers how as kids, shy or awkward in dresses, their voices formed the harmony, the flight of something V-shaped…

Trio of Found Poems

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Paper Bird, Devotchka, TV On The Radio

Things I Will Miss Once the Apocalypse Is Done

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The scent of fresh cut grass./ The idiot sense of accomplishment/ mowing the lawn can bring.

Cripple

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"I know," Timothy explained, "he can't use it. He's a cripple." No one else seemed to understand.

Aloha

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It’s a little known fact that eels are often lost in translation – only the spotted variety, not the striped or the common and certainly not the electric.... I think about that lovely hippie girl and her knowledge of eels, sometimes.

Diptych for Saint Gertrude of Nivelles, Protectoress Against Mice, Rats, and Mental Illness

19361936 views88 comments88 favs

So she set about eliminating the problem, all the time recalling some newsmagazine program she’d seen as a child: a discussion of hantavirus, nasty and deadly and spread by mice.

Mom’s Blue-green Eyes

19361936 views88 comments77 favs

After school watching American Bandstand with my two best friends, all three of us lusting after Bunny Gibson who’s all of sixteen, stacked, and very fucking hot.

Thunder at Midnight

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I’ve had it to here you see.

Days of Thor

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Mars' circled state is slain, no bird of Jove That roosts protected in its green youth's flush; Its storms no more bring moistness from above, From blue beads cradled in one thunder's flash. The god of War was husband once to Love: Her arms were …

NAN : A Novel-In-Stories

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My novel-in-stories, NAN, is now available as an ebook for $6.99. Thanks to everyone who read the first 7 published stories here on Fictionaut.

Zhou Yu’s Train

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Are we like a poem, a short hand of words curtained together, evoking a mood, but in the end, impenetrable? We follow the clues to our lover's heart and what we find isn't him at all but ourselves. We fill every part of his life, every part of his past and even become…

Old Photo, 1948 or so

19351935 views99 comments66 favs

I’m maybe only four. Not smoking cigarettes found in street gutters yet. That will come the next year, when I’m five. Maybe when I’m six, and Andy’s five, my pal from across the street. That’s my tricycle parked behind this pack of kids that look to be ne

Where Have You Gone, Honey Bear?

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When I wake up and look to my left, will you be there with me, snoring like an asthmatic bear?

"at 'night' any night is can't"

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“In the process, I’ve created this memory track. Yet had the sense that I had to make fixed memories move as illusion, that they move as illusion.”

Beds

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Called in sick at work for a week straight when I first met Tony.

Fear in a Handful of Dust / National Poetry Month 2015 30 Poems

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Fear in a Handful of Dust