Most read stories

Dog Days

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The air is dry and smoky from a fire some miles away. The air is cool. A pair of vultures is soaring in a circle high above the rising land.

A Bar at the Folies-Bergere. Manet

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The mystery is in the barmaid's impersonal stare It's all there. Recognizable the bottles of Bass Ale and Crème de Menthe. Glazed oranges piled in a bowl Two roses in a small clear glass of water A wide gold bracelet on her arm, halfway up from

Three Network News Ledes on the Death of Jimmy Buffet

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“He spent four lonely days in a brown L.A. haze, and now Jimmy Buffet is dead.” —Brian Williams, NBC Nightly News “Jimmy Buffet—beloved parrot-head singer-songwriter—has given up his search for that lost shaker of salt. He…

Bon Bons

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love notes yellowed through the years

The Art of Joy

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The girl who was me stands in a sandbox with upraised arms, honey hair tied with olive yarn in two ponytails. She says nothing, but wants me to pick her up.

The Fugitive Waits

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The wind rushed by her and she heard the faint sound of barking. And then she knew why she was coming. And she ran.

The Celebrated Jumping Flippit of Tau-Ceti IV

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One day me an' Elvis was down at the riverbank with Huckleberry, chasin' darters an' watchin' barges go by. It was a lazy day bein' a Sunday an' all. We had jest got back from Church an' Mami told me to change my clothes so's that I didn't get my Sunday

Graeme King and the Creature

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Graeme King was disturbed. He sat at his desk feeling his bloodshot eyes rolling backwards, impatient, leaden in their sockets. Could he believe what he had just seen? Surely not. Surely the late nights spent absorbing the relentless pulse of his computer screen…

Game Night

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We’re all competitive and drunk.

Welcome to the Dark Walls

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“No one ever notices everything: but sometimes it happens, when no one is noticing everything, everyone misses the same thing in the same moment . . ."

How I Left Onandaga County

19041904 views1010 comments44 favs

So, like I said. Da. I have dealt with the men, when I was a lap dancer. The men they need the….manipulations. I have good hands. They want me to see them naked, their power. Here it is only the women. The massage, the facial, the waxing...

Root Causes

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 …

Men Are Beasts

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They both have an annoying habit. She talks to him while she's in another room, and he doesn't answer because he can't hear what she's saying.

Just a Suggestion.

19031903 views44 comments33 favs

[testing ... one, two, three ... testing ... is this thing on? ... ok, here goes:]

Jorge Curioso Flies a Plane

19031903 views66 comments55 favs

This is Jorge. He was a good little monkey. And always curious.Like the time he and his friend, the man in the amarillo sombrero, had to fly to Japan. *Jorge sat by the window. Watched the ground get further away. Until they were above the clouds. He looked out…

After Our First Kiss, The Paranoia Sets In

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Your kiss has spread like a fever, persistent and catastrophic for an ill-prepared heart like mine.

Giacometti

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He tells me that only a few things had happened in his life but some of them he had felt deeply.

Molasses

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My T-shirt read BOO HOO.

Riddle 44 from the Exeter Book: The Key

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Curiously made thing

Albatross Antics

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Track One Johnny Burkemeister, lead vocals and flutist of the band Albatross Antics, sits on his bed thinking in silence. His elbow rests on his knee, and his palm on his forehead with his fingers running through his dirty-blonde hair. He is staring at a copy of Paste…

Clicking

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Reining her small hands around the molded handle grips, her bottom bouncing athwart and wildly off the seat, Symphony wrenches her center of gravity inward, commandeering as much control from the road it would allow. With her breaks behaving as stubborn

Hurricane Shutters

19021902 views44 comments66 favs

The thing that really gets you about the house is the hurricane shutters. They're up already, even though it's the end of May, because Buck's uncle is back in Rhode Island for the summer and he's prepped the house on Key Largo like Armageddon is coming.

Slather

19021902 views1212 comments1212 favs

Your soap on the shelf in the shower melts with my every hair wash and I'll miss it the way I should have missed you.

Nobody Steps Forward

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I can only see their eyes in the dark, reflected in the light from my flashlight. It's so quiet. I only hear the sound of my own breath. I hold the flashlight steady. Maybe they will think I'm not a threat if I'm not moving. It's a small hope. Yet here we are, at a…

Jambalaya

19021902 views2727 comments1414 favs

Your writing offended the editors greatly, and we would select certain word choices we disliked, but we truly hated every word, including mere articles, prepositions, and conjunctions.

Bravo, Scrittore!

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I hadn't yet assembled enough pieces of Italian to explain any of this, but it was hardly necessary. The fact that I was a scrittore in a language foreign to her seemed to make me especially fascinating...

Don't Be Difficult

19021902 views77 comments77 favs

maybe eventually time / will erase our time together

To All the Lights

19011901 views1414 comments1212 favs

I have nothing in me but a raw loneliness right now. It's as if someone whirl-winded me out of the sky into the middle of the ocean in the middle of the red faced night. My fate seems immobile, sealed, doomed to a rocking nothingness, like…

Girls with Guns

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"My dear man. We are not friends we are symbiotic."

A Chaos Theory

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—with spinster goddesses in the middle of things / circling looms.