Most read stories

Bread

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I am standing in the kitchen, kneading dough, because this is one way to say sorry. This is way to say, things will be different now, look.

Every Day Away From You Is A Gift

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People suck. They suck you down, and if you're not careful, they'll ruin you.

The Serious Writer Tracks His Stats

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The officers carried him away in cuffs as he yelled "I NEED STATS! PLEASE! JUST GIVE ME THE STATS!"

Local Man Makes Good

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A junkyard Bison seems an odd choice over the usual dog, but it did the job--trampling trespassers, vagrants and unautorized salvagers with a violent and admirable efficiency

Burma

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Our mothers died in childbirth. Taken in by the village, our new mothers taught us to wave at the river boats, to sell our trinkets to tourists. They offered us coins of a foreign currency and little pathetic smiles. By nightfall, our fingers bled. Then came…

The Great San Francisco Poetry Wars, 3

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That put a real crimp in our already crimped sex life. Actually I didn’t mind as much as Allison minded. It made her real grumpy when she didn’t get laid. I could never understand how she could bear so much pain, because she was so small that it was l

Trophy

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I remember ...all the teenagers offered no-longer favored CDs, last year's cell phones, third-place trophies, team jerseys, played-out videogame cartridges, and candy-colored miniature stuffed animals...

Graduation (For My Mother)

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I know I’m slipping into my mother’s skin. I answer the phone with her voice; her hands grind the coffee beans. And who is this listening to NPR in the morning while the fresh-faced girls in the neighborhood trudge toward school,, peonies han

Mark and Alan

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They knew every word. They knew EVERY word!

Potsdamer Strasse #2

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Beautiful kids in sunglasses dashed around as colourful as jars of mixed fruit in the warm air of a midsummer’s night drinking on the riverbank, the bar sheltered under a crusty wooden shack, the sight was stunning in the twilight before the sun rose.

Octopus

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My ride, my good friend Morning was due any minute, but of course, he/she was always late. My costume was a dog. I was stuck to another dog, in the act of passion. A stuffed one. A basset hound. I said my name was Lightning.

Fear Us, Oh Yes.

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Start now. Make lists. Call long-lost friends. Say what needs saying. Raise hell.

Her Hair, a Braid

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She’s there, in a tin, loosely wound beneath sepia tissue paper, a braid to worry in your fingers.

A Tragedy In Three Acts (St. Petersburg Blues)

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His thought was shattered then by the horrible grind of the telephone in the hall. Surely not for me, he thought. One of the other tenants has a friend who’s landed vipivka, no doubt after 39 straight days of hunt. Booze is so damnably hard to find

Oversleeping & Getting in Trouble for It

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A few people bristled and looked at Jim, but since he was avoiding their gaze, they had no choice but to return their attention to their own table and pretend to pay attention to the conversation they previously had been pretending to pay attention to.

Fascination

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Lying all over itself...

Knell Quarternion

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The Jester sat down on the edge of his mattress. He laboured to bring one gout ridden leg up to lay across the other. The jingle bell at the tip of his pointed toe mocked each serrated movement of his limb with a jaunty tinkle. He grabbed his ankle to arrest its…

Self Portrait with Google

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Try it with and without/ middle name or middle initial.// Try different keywords.

Corporate Zombie Voodoo The rantings of a middle aged male against the corporate culture of America

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This seems to be what happens to the Corporate Zombie Cowboys. They get eaten by their own Zombie Kings. The hardest part is I can see them coming, I am on the menu, and I cannot avoid them.

Ibby's Falafel

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Dark hung over the night like an occupation force. Across the street a Cuban diner fought it off with green and yellow neon lights, Latin rhythm beating through the air.

The Scarab

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He thought the scarab was bad luck. I knew too little about omens to argue.

Movie Star in a Mental Ward

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He was a beautiful older man, late sixties, who reminded me of a movie star with a thick mane of silver hair parted neatly from left to right and eyes the color of that stretch of Pacific Ocean between San Pedro and Catalina Island, the calming blue of a carefree weekend…

Jim Shows Me Twelve Jesuses

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in cinematic snippets, ten-second scenes of twelve Sons …

Meander

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Things are a little out of hand. Information fills room after room after room. I have no bloody idea where I am. I have your photo, but the navigational coordinates are difficult to interpret. Where the hell are you, anyway? I don't like mazes — too much like…

Just Kidding

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Your place is extra. No it isn't. It is, baby. The man was as aroused by her discomfort as he had been annoyed by her laugh. She wasn't laughing now.

On Being Bald....

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Hair today...gone tomorrow The sun beats down on my balding crown.

Early Decision

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Melinda said forget the kegger last night, what we’re about to do will help you figure out whether you want to apply here.

The Great San Francisco Poetry Wars, 8

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I saw it all, in a flash. Holy shit! I thought. This is good. I have to sit down and begin writing. This is serious. Dead serious! I would rather be doing this than eating, or fucking, or anything. It was exhilarating. If I could only keep this up, who

Invasive Species

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Except, something about Margaret was a little off. She would stop typing suddenly and look up at the plant, studying it, almost as if daring it to cross her. Then, she would go back to her computer and start pounding away again.

from Flatlander's Suite

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Under nervously flickering fluorescent lights / your name will grow / fed by the tongues of Those Who Never Leave