Most read stories

Automatic Writing: A Cure for Writer's Block?

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Knocked off around noon, drank some retsina, checked Olympics results. Can’t find Medea’s motivation. Why would she kill her kids?

Work Room

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the constant inner jabber

Mt. Hood

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To what better worlds remain.

The Martians Are Coming

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"I read a cute animal story yesterday," I tell them. "And I was filled with rage. I can't live like this. There must be no more bears, or hamster-bears, or manatees, being hopeless and depressed. There must be no more cute animal stories—ever."

Nourish

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The mouth on my breasts is hungry, searching, needing...

When Kids Complain

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They say, we have hangnails. I say, I have a bruised leg.

Wild Dreams of Reality, 7

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7 We sat in Darrell's truck in the deserted silent world of the down-trodden industrial area of West Berkeley, where no one in his right mind went at five in the morning. "Put the gun away, Darrell," I said. "I mean it." "I can't help but keep

Monster Truck

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In another lifetime the loft had been a shoe factory and I joked how in the dark of night I could hear the ghosts of lost soles speaking in tongues. There was the rolling of eyes, and when I repeated the joke to my therapist, who was actually sitting acr

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.

My Lucky Tooth

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At that point he would leave and listen to the scientists as they debate as to why the moon has organs and why they are covered in a thick fat.

God Wants a Sandwich

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Two cars smashed together, the sky started to look like a foot infected with gout...

To All the Lights

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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…

Dos Equis

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dos equis ambar sits cool and dark by my side

Machine-Gunning Butterflies

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I was making good bread as a New York studio musician and jingle writer, anonymous back-room jobs.

Wesson

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I'm not. I am.

Highway Robbery

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I knew her face but not her hair, at least not the right way up.

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.

The Color of Faith

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My best friend Khaled’s idea was, he’d set up a pool tournament. Nine-ball. Each church would send a player, and whichever church won, he’d join. Any church that wouldn’t shoot pool, he wouldn’t want to join.

five discards or less

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weep or go stark mad your amanuensic fool will bury your words

Scandal, in Eight Parking Arrangements

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4. Hers blocking driveway, his diagonal in grass

Fear the Future: 25 Brief Tales in Various Keys of Woe, Fear, and Loathing

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The three were up early to await the deer with rifles, ammunition, and coffee.

Brown and Blue

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She was in love with a boy whose eyes were so brown that she sat stopped in the restaurant at the anniversary dinner with the spoon in her slow chocolate fondant. Out of the corner of her eye, around the back of her head, under the table knees knocking

Three Houses Down

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I walked on hot coals. She got ahead of me. (228 words)

Death

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Do you think we die when we age?Or when a car runs over our hearts?We die slowly, minute by minute, every secondBy the time you read this, you've died a little

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

Snapshot

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Behind them all, in the background, a tray of vodka tonics waits on a glass table, the limes losing color as they drown.

Buzzkill.

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Fable Of The Alicanto

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There is nothing so obscure it is not enhanced by talking, nothing so dull it cannot be coaxed into brilliance, nothing so deep it cannot be dug from an abyss and brought to the surface in paroxysms of red.

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

Three Thirds

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"I was hit by an Amtrak train and dragged a hundred feet, and I'm going to die from smoking cigarettes."