Most read stories

Permission to Go

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

Librarians! What Are We Hiding?

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Librarians are hiding something. What is it?

All there is

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You need buttered broths and to copy old writings by hand by very poor light.

Gabbie Zombie

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And it whispered like any wood. And the blade moaned when he got too deep and tried to cut too much. And as the dead parts of him came off, in tendrils and dust, the man's chest began to move, like the hands around his heart had let go.

Made in Japan - 2

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My motivation as a filmmaker for traveling to Japan was economic and opportunistic. American military occupation had accelerated westernization and, when Japan regained its sovereignty in 1952, their economy was rapidly expanding. Led by manufacturing and export of items…

On A Highway Somewhere

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When I think about love, I actually think about life. And when I think about that, I wonder if we’re really who we used to be.

Halfhearted Objections

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The old man behind the counter recognizes fear and anxiety in the boy's face, and sees the brown paper bag clenched in his other white-knuckled hand.

A Clean Tent

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“No,” he says. A simple lie. “I -” He pushes the sleeping bag off of his legs. Their getaway reset was a mistake.

Worms Shouldn't Drink Whiskey

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I have two memories of my dad. The first is a story he liked to tell: So my old woman came home one day with a worm. She sets the worm on the counter and goes into…

Charlotte

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Half way through our cigarettes she told me her name was Charlotte.

MYTHO-THERAPY ON THE BLINK

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Once upon a time, not so long ago in Los Angeles, Jack and Jill Woodman’s father remarried.

Me, Butterfly Hu, and the Damnable Season

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When the city froze and the darkness began to arrive ahead of rush hour, my pills worked; Butterfly Hu’s did not. In a double blind trial, you can’t know who gets the miracle, and who gets the sugar.

Laughingly rejected by The New Yorker

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...and we laughed.

Mescaline Blues

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This is about a mescaline trip that went wrong. It happened back in the '60s and I know, the '60s have been done quite to death and nobody ever gets the trip right but--you'll like this one. Joey and…

GRANDMA FLYNN

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She shoved a small bottle under her aprons and came towards me, darkening the passageway from “Ancestor” by Thomas Kinsella The night I heard the Banshee she passed away. In my screaming fear dada and mama woke. …

Police Mistakenly Release Murderer: An Analysis

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He has no plan, he needs a plan, he has no plan, he needs a plan -- the two thoughts bounce around inside his skull like racquet balls.

Autobiography of a Head Bully, excerpts

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On Saturday nights, they dream of you. You are the gas station they can’t own, the lottery they can’t win. You are beating up their boss, giving him a headache that will last through Wednesday morning, keep him home half the week.

Future

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Just thinking aloud, really. And by aloud, I mean typing for someone to read haha.

Your Horoscope

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Sagittarius (Nov.22 – Dec. 21) Listen to the voices inside your head. They speak to you for a reason. Now is not the time for debate.

Matisse, in the Jardin des Tuileries, 1904

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The World's Worst Mime stood there next to the iron carousel, portraying something, and the crowd understood none of it, except that whatever thing he was trying to portray was not being portrayed well at all.

Ninja

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She catches my head in a leg scissors and says for me to say Ninja Uncle. Instead, I bite into her flesh that only remotely tastes like a soft salt pretzel.

2006, What I Wanted

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freedom from my mind

Ripening

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My face turns to promise more, but my insides are browning.

Auden at Swarthmore

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So I went to see the wrinkled and rumpled poet, who insisted on reading from memory, stumbling through his sheaf of poems.

A Tale of Two Writers

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A famous author and an inspired writer meet at a coffee shop, both looking for inspiration. The patrons there don’t know if this meeting is by accident or design, but they are in awe of Fame.

What I wanted 1976

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turn my Dorothy Hamill into a golden shadow

In the Path of Mary

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She walks ahead, dropping matches as she goes. Grassland is consumed by flames and when I arrive all is wasted.

Good intentions, and all that.

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There was something in the pressure and the urgency that made her smile, and then laugh. It was like carrying heavy furniture while someone made a joke--the effectiveness of the joke seemed directly proportional to the weight of the furniture. What was it

Laundromat

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Who am I?

The Nudist Camp at the End of the Rainbow

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What did they even invent clothing for? I asked.