Most read stories

Polaroids at the Old Place

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Can I still be in your pictures?

Flight

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Fortunately, when the bird hits the sliding glass doors in our den, I know what to do.

Road Trip

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I threw my hand / at the gearshift/ the car glided off.

Carpe Diem

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It's true push often comes to shove

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.

So Many Questions?

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“Are you my neighbor in 3D?” Was she?

Creator

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What purpose other than misery/ can cancer serve? And Parkinson's,/ AIDS, and STDs?

Where I work you cannot see the sun.

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Where I work people use words like leverage. They do not appear to denote anything.

The Galleries

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We invent our beauties// as we find them and engineer/ our horrors

Almanac

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I said, “Marcy, Source Almanac is a guide for the Apple.”

Keep it, Curt

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Just move out.

Toweka: The Vanishing Elephant

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The elephant kept popping in and out of the savannah--which is to say, in and out of existence. It was an African bush elephant, which made this trick even more impressive.

With a Danish

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It wasn't hidden, exactly, but kept in a place where she wouldn't be expected to look: a photograph of Roger, naked and supine, looking at the camera without surprise.

The Tree That Took Brooke’s Faith Away

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The thing was, though, she couldn’t shake the image of that dead dog she had found inside the black trash bag she thought could be first base, right before the twins said, Screw the game, let’s swing.

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.

The Death of Childhood Heroes (or "Roadkill")

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We were pushing ninety down the highway through a stretch of what rightfully should have been called the Badlands. We were both absorbed and coping with the rapidly escalating stages of desperation and so neither of us noticed when the yellow figure stepped…

Halfway Out The Door

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She asks if I only write about men, which I tell her is redundant. I also answer, “Yes, but sometimes I write about them as race cars, hyenas, vaginas, or God.” She smirks like she wants to smile, but it’s stuck halfway out her door. Her happiness has

Book of Genesis

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Almost to the elevation of regret.

Procedural

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Val walks through the world, absorbed in the day to day. A plainspoken narrator drones on in his mind. The nondescript voice marks time to the beat of Val's banal footfall, hums along with the whir of Val's modest, midsize sedan. The narration is loudest in the twilight…

A Message from Your Local Superintendent Concerning Sex in Our Public Schools

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Such behavior will result in no disciplinary action only: 1) if all blinds are drawn; 2) all doors are locked; and 3) loud groaning is masked by appropriate use of the volume control on the classroom’s closed-circuit TV set.

77 Words About Last Night

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Blacked-out out on junk, I bet money on a sport I hated just last year.

Abandonment

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The ideas just came to them. "Nothing On" consisted of a television on a small stand, playing an endless loop of "Jersey Shore." "Shopping Bores Me" was a men's flannel shirt from American Apparel on an otherwise empty rack.

Dropped stones, skimmed skin

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Skim. The stone slipped across the top of the water. The sea was a battleship grey with a liver of cerulean, foaming at the lips its puckered kisses smacking on the shore.

The Perfect Day

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Robbie Lange closed his laptop and leaned back in his chair. Yawning, he looked out the window into the black night. Another evening at the office, he thought. He counted the other lit windows in the skyscrapers around his building. “Goodnight, everyone

Bring a Book

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It would be great if next door to every restaurant, there was a 24 hour dental surgery. Then you could sneak in and grab a few magazines to read if you’re unfortunate enough to be dining alone.

Christmas Magic

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You know what parents have to do to get an Xbox? They don't just stand in line and someone hands them an Xbox, OK? That's sacrifice. They have to sacrifice and sacrifice and sacrifice. I mean, I chase alpacas a mile every night in subfreezing conditions,

A Little Bit of Syrup

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"I made up my mind then, in the backseat, sucking on a cherry Popsicle, that I wanted to be like Ruby’s mother..."

Bird Noises

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Let's buy this robin's egg blue furniture. Okay. Let's buy this album full of wren songs. Uh, okay.

Lost in Suomi

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Wind pummeled me awake, smelling of pine and some quality of newness I could not identify...

Cymbals

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On stage, students from the junior college join children from the community to speak and sing in American-French accents. They are timid, heart-broken, in love, rebellious, faithful, resigned to their fates—and all in the matter of a few short hours.