Most read stories

Ambitious

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Why do men become explorers? he asked. Because they want to cannibalize the unknown; to leave the chemicals, the furniture (and, yes, the shrew) behind; to make their way hi ho into the brush, whose weeds and lianas remain empty of the exhortations of Jesus Christ, whose…

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…

The Book of Punishments

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"Not a fan?" Beth asks, feeling a sliver of happiness move through her. He furrows his brow. "Then what brings you here?" "I'm here to pick up girls," Steve says simply. "Want to hit the buffet table? Want to run away to Mexico?"

The Monkeys and the Gun

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The young male sat off by himself and nursed his wounds and a grudge.

The Killer

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It don't knock you down to the goddamned ground and push your face into the mat and dare you to get back up. Just so it can knock you down again. They don't have real dreams. Dreams that make them wake up in the middle of the night. Hurting. Wanting.

Jack and Jill went up the hill to fetch a pail of water (the update)

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tough noogies

The Celebrity

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"He doesn't have a parish," I said. "He works in a hospital in the East Bay. He told me that if I were in that hospital and I woke up and saw him, I was in big trouble."

Mayweather

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where I'm from

Kitchen Knife (n.)

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Kitchen Knife (n.)1. A standard kitchen tool consisting of a sharp blade attached to a handle intended for cutting, peeling, chopping, slicing, and dicing.2. Used primarily for food preparation (see also BUTCHERING; BACKSTABBING; JACK THE RIPPER; DEATH BY A THOUSAND…

The Tree is Farther to the Man

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I am constricted by rings. The weight of self crushes me.

Lunatic Fruit

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wild eyes open your iris sunrise

The Man Whose Wife Lived in His Neck

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This is the story of the man whose wife lived in his neck. Every morning, he would turn to her and say, "Hello, Sweetheart. How was your night?" and she would answer, Brilliant! What else?

Mabel Constructed the Quintessential Boundary.

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Mabel constructed the quintessential boundary. She carefully boiled down her pots and pans, her jewelry, her copper kettle, and the foils from forty six bottles of white pear cider into a silky metallic stew. Mable smeared the mixture onto a burlap…

The Gospel According to Teeny

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Then I heard it -- a sound like an oboe being strangled. Teeny was farting onto the cement stoop through her jeans, a tripple flutter blast.

Gateway Love

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Gateway Loves are lethal. They do not discriminate between bot or flesh, primary or clone.

Wednesdays They Pay Us, But Now It's Thursday

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fire rolls through the drive-thru

Departure. Arrival. Return.

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Put down your bazooka, Marianne.

Half-and-Half

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Terry worked in a factory out in Northlake where she added a little squirt of milk and another little squirt of cream to those tiny half-and-half coffee creamers you find at every motel in the country. The owner of that factory hired only women to work

Hummingbird hearts in a breadbox

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We married in the ruins of a pachinko hall, the tiny bones in the pocket of your tracksuit luring a pack of wild dogs out from the underpass.

Mercury Unbound - 4

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The music, Antonín Dvořák's 'New World Symphony,' the second movement, 'Largo,' immediately alters my mood.

Peach

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"What's that smell?" Osama glares at me from the front seat of the Trans Am. "What smell?" I say. "You smell like a diaper. Are you wearing a diaper?" Osama and Peach both laugh at me. "No... maybe, its my Baby Soft perfume. Is it too strong?"

Your Old Untrue Love

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This is how we catch up. I write something down, and you read me quietly. In a year's time you will remind me, though I would have forgotten. I check to see if maybe you have put up a new song, every once in a while, but you don't sing as well as you used to.What has…

Marry Me

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My mother told me never to trust girls who speak from the side of their mouths. But Kat, with her rainbow bracelets and flat vans, can't speak any other way. A creature of A.D.D. and zip up leather, studded belt and the next No Wave, has mistaken me for the last…

The Club

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Even the stinging warmth of the Grey Goose wasn’t fun without Lisa whispering into his ear, telling him stupid little confessions that he would recite to her in singsong the day after. And she would beat her small fists against his chest solemnly with a

Gracious Have Been My Years of Late

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Gracious have been my years of late; The windy drifts blown soft. Truth be told, such luck seemeth bait Eliciting doubts and wonderings.

All The Right Steps

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"I didn’t take my mother’s denial of my dream lightly. I wanted it desperately. I cried and pleaded, nagged and begged. On several occasions, I temperamentally got out of the car at a stop sign and walked. Once, my mother said that I was nagging her so mu

77 Words About Last Night

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Blacked-out out on junk, I bet money on a sport I hated just last year.

Terror of Nod

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onward, soldier

Maximus and Kimchi

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The dogs shit on the roof and then, every two weeks or so, the man in Apartment 311 climbs out the window with a plastic shovel and scoops the shit into a white plastic bag, which soon grows heavy with dung, dangling from his black-gloved wrist.

Christmas Morning

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Dad woke us up and said it was time to go.