Most read stories

Bad Luck and Trouble

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Jake goes back inside, turns on the TV, and sits down. It is the end of the world! A lane of the Bay Bridge has fallen into the bay. A building downtown has lost its skin.

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

Mayweather

19191919 views2020 comments1818 favs

where I'm from

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.

On Work

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From my resume'.

Quarters, Pasos, Arabians

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Sometime that night I heard one; you get so you know when they’re coming in low down the valley or set up high over the coastals and I was sure about it.

Gemma's Story

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I respect mom, she survived cancer and all while she was pregnant with me, but something about getting through all that crap made her heart tough, like an over-cooked piece of beef, and no one likes meat you have to chew forever.

John & Jackie

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By the time I learned how much I loved my family, I was 3 years and eight-hundred miles away from them

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.

The Charm of the San Joaquin

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They say ehmand for almond in the San Joaquin Valley.

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.

Harvesting Brains Pastoral

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A bawdy secretary languishes behind the farmer, translating the squealing gray matter and scratching her rectangular nose obsessively.

Semi Tiresias

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I knew my mother would die by the weekend

Down on the Pharm

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I found my patch by accident whilst out picking medicinals ta cover a load o' dead constrictors. I tested the patch in the traditional way an' got a bit stoned on jes' a nibble o' a fresh sprout. Course, everyone knows the sprouts 're more concentrated t

Sea Floor Fever, or The Note that Came With the Stone to the Head

19171917 views1212 comments1010 favs

I'm dying but that's not to say what you think it says. I've crossed the river of myself many, many times before and wandered to the shore, broken and drenched and full of the fever of dyingdreams. Each time was a kind of ritual mask, drying off the beat ofmy newly…

Arcana Magi - c.27: Hard Battle

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A burst of mud spilled out over Jonas and scooped his body up like a raging river. It spun his body over in a rebound rather than pushing him through the door.

The Great Bank Run of 1912

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She bought her first gerbil at the age of nine. She wondered if he would die from endless logrolling. When he died from natural causes, she refused to bury him and kept a distance from the first boy who kissed her--Thomas J. Hobbit. The next year a twister swept…

In Portland, Where It Rains

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So many opportunities for mud can be found in these hills,

What the heart is

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The heart is a toothed hole that cannot be filled.

profanity

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@#$!

Ribs

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The moun­tains of humil­ity went silent, / the rain of regency dried its eyes

halloween haiku

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a dry bony voice/from a desiccated soul/coughs up its own throat.

Melancholy Happiness

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It's only 4 lines.

Why They Cried: Roy

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“Where did it go? You don’t know do you?” he teased the dogs as he adjusted the bottle rocket he had twisted into the ground at his feet, trying to find the optimal path.

Black Widow

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Hair as black as a Raven’s wing. Dark eyes. You wore a black dress, too, my favorite color.

Her Side of the Story

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I can't even tell you when it all started to come apart, but I do know that they're just nervous tics, responses to stress. We all go through it.The fact is I wouldn't even be bringing up any of this if it wasn't for the fact of the… incident… Shit, I know I wasn't…

Following Questions

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4. If the property line is a symbol, what about the neighbor girl's window, the flickering candle in her room, her black cotton panties?

Better

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... all my friends are girls; I like opera; I can answer all the questions about male and female ejaculation – without stammering – in sex ed. classes. And Braydon? In boardshorts, tall and tanned and naked from the waist up ...

Bunny Ears

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Word traveled fast at school on Monday. Emma Jakowski had actually captured him. He was being held in her dad's tool shed. Anyone who wanted to see him had to be in the Jakowski's backyard by 3:15 that afternoon, chocolate bunny ears in hand. It was no…

Only a Memory Away

19151915 views1414 comments99 favs

When Uncle Dan got sent to the Alzheimer's ward, the ladies licked their lips. Fresh meat.