Most read stories

Rough Draft

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fated and cruel, a person I don't love

Cheque Republic

19091909 views77 comments33 favs

Maybe she thinks in Czech, dreams in German, pretends in English. Babylon is a beautiful place after all.

December 17

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When she finally arrived it was like a cello playing inside me

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

The Get-Up

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There was a children’s lit theme running through the party. Aside from Annemarie’s costume, there was a Harry Potter, a Pinocchio, and a Grinch.

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…

Trees Today

19091909 views1414 comments1010 favs

are my only real friends. They don't seem to mind my shuffling down the dirty sidewalks without acknowledging their mere scraggly presences like friendly tombstones. They are growing their hair out again. I've noticed that much. We've got a…

I've Got a Secret

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There's a man sitting in my room holding a jar of my ashes. That's what he claims.

Interstate

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By Jackson, you called and said, I'll be too drunk to drive. Hell, if I do my very best, I could be blind by Shreveport.

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.

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 Day You Told Me You Fucked Her

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I imagined you going at her in ferocious fucking-- / O, O, O, O, O, O, O Immortal Glistening Cock,

A Chaos Theory

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

Watering

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“Sometimes when I feel the urge to create, I don’t know whether to grab my paints, my camera, my guitar or my pen.” “You could have sex,” her friend, sitting in the desk next to hers, joked.

Hurricane Shutters

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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.

Jorge Curioso Flies a Plane

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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…

Park Bench

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Then daylight's lovely lantern/ Dressed in yellow white/ cleanness/ Danced a ballet towards/ Her majesty’s park bench/ She did! She sat on you!

All of Me

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They sat before the fire and played cribbage. He was a good player, but not as good as she was.

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...

Riddle 44 from the Exeter Book: The Key

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Curiously made thing

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…

Working Girl

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Suddenly a hand shot up on the other side of a hedge. “I’ll have one of those!” cried someone who remained invisible.

Letting Go

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Jerrod's lips and tongue were like slabs of bologna someone shook in Kirsten’s face as she hit the turn signal. Kirsten was proud of herself. She'd been taking it well and she was pretty sure her real feelings weren’t poking through.

The Great San Francisco Poetry Wars, 5

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and we got the apartment, which was on a street that backed up on an alley situated, as it turned out, right across the alley from the very first Hari Krishna house, where they would wake up at four every morning and begin their maddening chanting: Hari K

The Haunting

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the ugliness will not be denied

God on Paddy's Night.

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Paddy's night arrived in the manner of finding a half torn fiver, initial anticipation usurped by disappointment before a chancer's edge suggested some craic might ensue after all. A great crowd had gathered somewhere else, for under Hill street bridge…

Slather

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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.

mnemonic haiku

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skies electric blue,/limpid dewy air, the world/framed by a small farm.

We Don't Need a Guitar Man

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The courtroom smelled a lot like mold and it was hot as you could imagine. I sweated through my shirt and wondered if he wasn’t dying under his robe. He looked down at me from his bench and I just knew he was going to call me a commie and sentence me to l