Most read stories

The Adventures of Tequila Kitty: Chapter 3 - by Brian Lepire

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I’d made it to the motel parking lot when I heard the footsteps. A sombrero may make me look good, but it does shit for my hearing, so the bastards were able to scoop me up real quick. The first one gave me a hard slap on the top of the head with an opene

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!"

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.

Happy Valentine's Day From Your Librarian

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Is every librarian a poet at heart? I don't know, but a group of librarians recently put their heads together and came up with these library-themed Valentine's Day poems: Roses are red Your book's overdue You've had it for months Which is…

Do the Funky Penguin--With T.S. Eliot

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True story: T.S. Eliot introduced Virginia Woolf to new dance steps including the Grizzly Bear and the Chicken Strut.

A Black Cat

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And then, and then, and then! After all that, this. After all that bullshit with her Dad, the Associate Principal, the idiotic counselor, and that psychotic police officer, after all that, this: a dead black cat. Blocking her path! Right in the middle of the street! …

Annals of the Naked Rowdies #22

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As they left, Roddy kicked over a statue of a blindfold and half-naked goddess of justice. "I piss on you Justice!" he yelled. The bailiff pushed him out the door as he continued his rant, inaudible.

entwined

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you and i exist outside of the chaos and noise entwined in eternal embrace

The Birds

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My wife goes away for a few days to the little town where Hitchcock filmed The Birds.

A Body Divided, 1

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A Body Divided: Memoir 1 When I came back home, after coming down with polio, everything had changed for me. I'd been gone for forty-five long days and nights. But it was Halloween, a time very nearly sacred for children in the Midwest, and it broug

Prologue: April 16, 1970

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The muster zone was south of U.S. 119, off the Halleck Road. The search began on a large parcel, some 75 acres of farmland, property of one Mr. Shakelford. Shakelford had allowed the earth to go wild; brush, thistle and small…

Building

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he told me to be careful,my feet may bleedI watched him walk up and down the path,occasionally bendingwhy?carpenter nails, pieces of broken shinglesall along the pathnow I know why

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

Scene from the Clinic

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No way to know why she's here, but scars and scabs can hold more information than a file or chart.

MY WAR

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In May of 1982, my daughter and I planned a trip…

Maritzer's Axiom

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We were just as bourgeois as Bloomingdale’s, one generation past canned ravioli dinners with cheap white bread.

The Room Below

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The closed door swallowed up both voices, and all I could make out afterward were muffled pleas and angry answers that died completely.

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

The Red Suitcase: (Conclusion)

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—You must be joking, he laughed.

The Moral of This Story Is

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Always take the train.

Having Read the Poems of Matt Dennison

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Having read the poetry of Dennison I hereby give up writing.

Pharaoh

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Altodog was dressed in filthy chef’s trousers and a long-sleeved purple dress shirt, somewhat dignified by a tattered black vest.

Some People

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But those burning red numbers persist in my mind and I can't rest 'till they're gone They always come back Like the cat in that childhood song.

Twin Lakes of Whiskey

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not that we ever had before

A Clue Found Aboard a Zen Mind's Floating Iceberg

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I do so want to bring you into the sacred linguistically eternal loop of all ordinary things on earth, but it can so easily turn into a very sudden unsparing trapdoor, or a hissing angry knot tying up itself into even more tricky sorts …

Driving Old

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I drive old now

The Celebrity

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I love reading about myself. There's nothing more gratifying than seeing my name in the paper, knowing so many people are interested in who I am and what I do.

Keep it, Curt

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Just move out.

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.

The Signal

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I take the plastic off of the last videotape and stick it in the VCR. I make sure the channel is on 6. Still a commercial. I get my notebook, turn it to the next page and write today's date on top. I get ready. I don't really like the back and forth banter the other news…