Most read stories

Hungry

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D'ya have to be so rough?

Floater

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Just because I’m suicidal doesn’t mean I don’t care about whacking my head on some service railing ten stories down. The fact that I’m going to jump doesn’t lessen my fear of propellers or a broken back.

Suburban Snomance

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rump-a-rump, bat-a-tat, barumpabumbum

Dublin

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My swinging purse sent saucers tinkling to the tile and the copper-headed waitress flew over, swooping on the shatter, clutching clean forks like a handful of flowers.

When You Don't Believe

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I told you that I have homicidal urges that alternate with ones of the suicidal kind. You flicked an imaginary speck of dust from your fat, fleshy forefinger with your ultra-flexible, wimpy thumb.

Migratory Mistakes

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Unadorned tragedies pinpoint the worst angles of the road; simple crosses or bouquets line boulders painted with car crash smoke or skid marks that tiptoe to the edge of cliffs and then, apparently, leap.

Hysteria

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On the birthday before he started school, he received a pencil case from his paternal grandparents. The violet, oblong pouch contained a pencil and a pencil sharpener in the same color. He didn't remember what had happened with the pencil or the sharpener, but he had…

January 2, 2012

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You always complained that Christmas/ ruined your birthday/ sister.

I'm Dying! And I Didn't Make The Bed!

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Five years ago, on January 15, 2009, Flight 1549 took off for Charlotte, North Carolina and, 3 minutes later, made an emergency landing in the Hudson River, with no serious harm to anyone but the geese who caused the problem. (They were liquefied into something…

Moment of Creation

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Before he knew what happened, Shelia ran out of his life forever with their baby in her belly.

Flashes

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The thunder rolled like an old Bob Dylan tour...

Lost In Space

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He was jolted awake from his light slumber by his pod crash landing. Landing? That means he found a planet. He opened the pod and got out to stretch his legs. He looked around. "Wow, and I thought Aleria was advanced. This is amazing."

Two Poems about Edie Sedgwick

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Occasionally, I look down and spit. Not caring that it originates from the deepest hole in my lungs,

The balloon of you

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and the mass exceeds the buoyancy/ and gravity pulls you back,

Three Houses Down

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

The Little Things

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When the world is quiet, all your thoughts demand attention.

When Kids Complain

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

Didn't I always let you have one of my cigarettes?

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I liked the taste in my mouth, mint and cigarettes and fresh and filthy.

Let This Be the Beginning for I Have Sin to Spread

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A crash, a loud tear screams through the house. A coffee table continues its dutiful life as a bitch.

ANYTHING FOR JOHNNY

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After nine months, I was granted early parole...

How To Break A Toe In One Easy Step

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Life is hard and toes are fragile, which means that by the time you reach middle age, you've probably broken one. Or two. I recently broke a toe when I got out of bed in the middle of the night and tripped over a shoe. When friends and family consoled me with…

SHE HAS HER REASONS

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It is a well-known fact that my wife sleeps around. There. I said it and now everyone knows that I too know about my wife. Let me just tell you this one thing; she has her reasons. You ask me how I know that she has her reasons, but who would know better than…

He Spreadeth Sharp Pointed Things upon the Mire

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My uncle looks into the bleached eye of his cat and asks "What happened to my ear?" The meerkat’s eye replies: "You had cancer. Remember? They had to cut off your ear to save you."

Simurgh

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Some say the simurgh is an enormous bird with four wings, teeth, and a human face, able to carry off an elephant in her talons.

Coins

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“Have you ever thought what stars are made of?” “No,” he said. The man nodded seriously. “I hadn’t either. Not until I met the Star Catcher. He told me all the stars in the universe are actually coins. Coins! Big coins. Small coins. Different colors

Ancestry.com

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Ancestry.com The Liverpool census in 1851 lists him:Thirteen years old, Irish. Occupation: beggar. Only that. I will do more for him.I will see him in torn jacket and too-short pants singing all day of the fields, the cliffs,…

My Worst Nightmare

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A Body Divided, 6

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When I finally went back to school in the fourth grade, after coming down with polio, my classmates were very welcoming, though I couldn't go outside and run around like them yet at recess or lunch time. That would come, just not right away. But it was th

Taking a Job

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Teaching never occurred to me in college. I took workshops and wrote often. Friends and classmates, meanwhile, switched from studio majors to Art Education, or from English to Certification. Not me. Teaching high-schoolers would be all wrong. Briefly, I…

The Distance of Advice

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She has a mercenary way of doing business and she's pretty shrewd. I make her stand outside to smoke her cigarette. I stay inside watching her stance as she violently tugs at the barrel, tearing every ounce of smoke out of it, then stamping it out as I wo