Most read stories

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.

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.

A Journey of Seven Thousand Miles

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The taste of / what is denied us is always sweet

Razor Wire

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I flip up my hoodie, pull the string tight across my lips until it cuts into them, pull tighter, saw back and forth until blood warms the hairs on my chin.

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,…

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.

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…

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.

Peach (2)

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He has stubby, rough little fingers. Good.

Assay the Assail

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No one is a Puritan under all that powder!

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.

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…

Flowers for Our Dead Lovers

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We brought flowers for our dead lovers

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.

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.

Game Night

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We’re all competitive and drunk.

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?

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.

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.

Visiting Sally

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

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.

The Tombwatcher's Tale

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My name is Lu-chen Wyatt, and I have watched this tomb for seven years with undying loyalty. Tomorrow I am going away, and I wish to set down the story of my leaving and to say goodbye to Set-Yi, whose burial place has been my home for so long.

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

Comes a Little Dog

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Time Holds Ultimately Nothing Dear Except Reunion

Yakkety-Yak

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Last night, the station played me a dream of sexual promiscuity that included -- but was not limited to -- imaginative acts involving....

The Atlantic

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Phoebe-Lou Adams wrote this of them