Most read stories

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.

Casting It

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

A Girl / An Elderly Woman / A Bear

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A girl waiting at the door, heart in a Ziploc. An elderly woman stopping at the bank. A bear in a screaming contest with a troop of girl scouts.

Dick Be Gone

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One thing about being a musician—more specifically a drummer—struggling against the cost of living—more specifically the cost of living in the Bay Area—is that I will do just about anything to earn money.

Life of Charlotte

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A wall of icons can be beautiful if you don’t look closely at the hands. The hands tell stories of too short lives and unrequited love.

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,…

Suspended

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In the beginning the revolution was all motion and energy. When the President for Life resigned motion and energy disappeared with the sounds of clapping hands.

First the Newborn Birds on High and Then the Awful Climbing Beasts

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"Stop watching the news!Because the news contrives to frighten youTo make you feel small and aloneTo make you feel that your mind isn't your own"--MorrisseyThe world has gone crazy, but please let me make you One of my healing songs. You can eat it now, if you…

Peach (2)

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He has stubby, rough little fingers. Good.

Chicagoo (from Swink literary journal)

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When Kim handed me some of her husband’s condoms—“Here, use these”—out of one of their bedroom dresser drawers, could she sense the astonishment I was trying my best not to show?

Laughing, Crying

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It was Brad, for short; or so he would say. But really his name was Bradford, and he was a writer. He had almost always lived in New York. He was only half-white. His mother had run away with a black man in the sixties. Her father had told her to never come back to…

Golgotha

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They were starting to get winded. The boy, his father and his little brother were hiking up a hill, cutting a diagonal path through hay-colored grass towards an outcrop of craggy boulders below the hill's summit.

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 Quiet Room by Doug Holder

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I keep my life very ordered. Order for me is security. I am sure of some things. Like the fact I work five nights a week, and sleep during the day.

When the Witness Calls

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Here they come, those witnesses.

Visiting Sally

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Buddy was in a garage band. They were pretty good. “Soul Harbor“ they called themselves.

The Queue

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She persisted. “How long have we been here?” A note of anger crept into his voice. “How long? How long? Why …, why ….” He swallowed hard, realized he had forgotten.

Assay the Assail

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No one is a Puritan under all that powder!

Game Night

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We’re all competitive and drunk.

Ashes

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Now, the Midwest was ashes. The oceans were covered with hydroponics plant growth.

The Atlantic

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Phoebe-Lou Adams wrote this of them

Flowers for Our Dead Lovers

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We brought flowers for our dead lovers

Lines with Billie Holiday

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It is almost as if there isn’t a wedge of wood between us – I can feel him inches away from me. I can’t control the sigh or the tears that escape my body.

Folded Up

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Time to pull in the shining teeth, but it makes me so sad, you know I'd rather be holding hands. The others have told me, don't hold back, hit them with every white knuckle, and let them bleed out, I'd rather be kissing your face. It hurts,…

Quiet

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He says, You think too much and he grins a grin that has all of the attic keys on a wrought iron ring, on a chain.

Da Capo

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Their bodies, ripe uncovered flesh, had begun to erode, the edges of their limbs and cores bitten, taken by the wind in small pieces, flaking and tearing, some parts sliding, falling away.

Dos Equis

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dos equis ambar sits cool and dark by my side

If Wishes Were Horses Beggars Would Ride

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Two people are talking. They are both wearing hats.

A Thousand Books

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I gave away 1000 books.

True Vocation

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After lunch it's vocal coaching: shrieking, screaming, crying Oh-my-God!-Oh-my-God!-Oh-my-God!, panting and face fanning. Next it's ‘situational training', where we pretend to be audience members on real talk shows and practice everything we've learned th