Most read stories

To My Students, After Paris

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I will not tell you that your anger is wrong, child.

The Little Dog from Outer Space

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I looked at her, shook my head and tried to smile. She smiled back, beaming a radiance that pushed away the chill.

If I Was A Bum

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If I was a bum I’d risk everything for a drink or a smoke I would beg and curse and steal if I was a bum If I was a bum I would cuss out the Pope I would not vote for anyone because I would know truly they’d be telling gross lies

Girl Friends

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Two women grab a table near a window in a coffee shop. Outside, the sky is the color of dulled aluminum. It is early spring and pollen assaults the air with a tint of sulfur.

The Dog

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They stood at the intersection waiting for the light to change so they could cross the highway.

Commute

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Fred's ruined face stared back at him from a fractured, mold-spotted mirror. The remains of breakfast pooled around his feet and a pair of lace panties clung to his shoe, glued there by God knew what. Bits of flesh were stuck between his yellow teeth, alo

All About the Tumor

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Stupidity is not a mask; it is the face / and it is the face that betrays us / always.

The Unpublished Writer and His Love Interest (The Painter)

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When the writer expressed with subtle alacrity that he adored the painter, she was flattered and didn't raise objection. The writer-in his aloof manner, with experienced caution-pointedly wrote a poem directly for his muse. She never spoke of it, and hi

Novel excerpt: "Home Cure"

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He picked up the bottle of gin, looked at it. "Not a lot left," he said. "There's enough," she replied. She took the bottle and lifted it to her lips. "Are you ready?" she asked. "For what?" "You'll see."

Assay the Assail

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No one is a Puritan under all that powder!

Curb Appeal

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He kept the lawn mowed at the perfect height. He mowed it twice a week to one inch. Some weeks he mowed it a third time for good measure.

Here Comes the Sun

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I watch my brother carry her into the hospital, and I love him with parts of myself I didn’t know were capable of love. I love my brother with the space behind my eyes, the skin between my fingers, the ends of my hair, the crease in my neck. I love him wi

The Big Game

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The vampire donated floodlights so the children could play ballgames at night. The lights came on but the dugouts remained vacant. The vampire sat alone in the bleachers. “Sometimes I am less than the sum of my parts,” he said to the sum of his parts.

The Sky-What Limit?

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Lighter-than-air flight was back. The skies of the coast were alight with colorful balloons, dirigibles, and zeppelins tethered to their docking towers along the beach, the huge aircraft bobbing in the breeze up and down the coast for miles,…

Did I Tell You I Have Stripes On My Socks?

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Kids are fascinated by me. Adults look the other way. Maybe it's my size. Or maybe it's the stories in the newspapers.

Things I saw before and after I broke into my neighbour's apartment

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Before Plasma screen TV Futon Underwear (brief style) piled on kitchen chair Unopened mail from funeral parlour Water in the sink coloured orange with grease Desktop computer (flying toasters screen saver) Cigarette butts floating…

All I Know About Grandfather

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There were days in my youth when, through no fault of their own, my parents could not drive me the seven mile trip to my elementary school. When I got older they bought me a bike and that proved duly adequate as conveyance. But when I was six years in age

When the Witness Calls

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Here they come, those witnesses.

lament of Liu Ch'e . . . while elsewhere--

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in her silk sleeves is silence sheathed.

Stumptown Mary

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so one time the Holy Ghost come down to Stumptown

A Christmas Tale

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leaning over the banister, her Christmas waist making the wood swoon and creak, a warning sign if there ever was one...

Conversation between Young Men

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It was stubborn early winter, when everyone was cold but went outside anyways, rubbing red fingers and shuffling feet.

Missing Letter

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It's so far to get to where we aren't inthe way of someone's destructive progress.I'm only walking in my own gardensnow, but the big blue house is like an emptiedout envelope. I guess that makes this themissing letter. I don't know your heart's newaddress, but I once…

Thursday

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Every Thursday, around 11 am, right after the cemetery where I work receives the daily shipment of cremated remains to be interred, a frail nonagenarian steps out of the driver's seat of his Lincoln Continental and walks, unassisted, up a flight of twenty granite steps,…

The Road Trip Trilogy

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...It's my advice that this Fourth of July the Office of Homeland Security post the following instructions on your web site www.Ready.gov — people should act like my dog Lucy and just stay inside under the bed and tremble...

Twister

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The rain pelted down, it got dark, and they couldn't see a thing. The wind roared like a thousand locomotives.

March Madness

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“I’ll be damned,” he said. “I never knew where that was.”

Cut

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Effluvium is such a lovely word, so hey surprise it covers rancid butter, vomit, fertile gingko fruit trekked in from the pavement.

Antigone Détente

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Tan my hide. Feed me to rabid / macaques.

Casting It

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Truth came out of it, a little bug that hovered there...