Most read stories

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

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.

A Thousand Books

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I gave away 1000 books.

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…

Trees Today

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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…

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.

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…

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.

Dream Girl

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There was something wrong with this picture. Was he the man she had slept with last night?

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…

The Olympian: A Tale of Ancient Hellas ....an excerpt

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“You have run for your life, Astylos, and won. All Hellenes share in your victory.” The crowd bellowed and thundered as an attendant tied purple ribbons around the winner’s forehead, arms and legs. These would mark him as a victor for the remaining days o

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…

Pumpkin Patch

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Artie invited me to go with him to pick out a Halloween Pumpkin for the house. I had recently moved into a communal living situation and we were still getting to know each other. Artie was the kind of person who made a special occasion out of ordinary life. Why…

Thumbs Up Jesus

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Good buddy Jesus./ Life coach Jesus. Enthusiastic// and optimistic Jesus, no cross/ or crown of thorns in sight.

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...

Rough Draft

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fated and cruel, a person I don't love

Cheque Republic

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

Permission to Go

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Now that I no longer sleep to see you, propelled by this motion that is not magic

A Chaos Theory

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

Five

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". . . with the impact of a 18-wheeler jack-knifed into a Mini-Cooper as it hits the surface."

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 . . ."

Molasses

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My T-shirt read BOO HOO.

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

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.

If Wishes Were Horses Beggars Would Ride

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Two people are talking. They are both wearing hats.

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.

Duck Sauce

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In principle, Sergeant Brock Lumley resisted superstition, but if you were to stop him on any given day he was patrolling Baghdad streets with his rifle squad and ask him to open the front left ammo pouch on his flak vest, he’d get this look on his face..