Most read stories

Saturday Housekeeping

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but I pretend again I've kept the prairie/ out, have battled back the smoke and dirt

Mercury Unbound - 3

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I've been mostly positive since joining up with Sister Helen. My previous pessimism involved spiritual degeneration, moral decline and decay, weak and weary instincts. I clung to life, afraid to die. Then I read something by Nietzsche, I'm not sure where but, like a seed,…

Parallelogical Circuit

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{A} So I think maybe I am a robot. If I was a robot, I would do lewd things, metallic (cold, hard, shiny, heavy, malleable, loud, acrid, industrial, immovable, unstoppable) things. I would do the things I do in my dark powerless dreams. People would understand and…

Understudy

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All young and loud and big and I swear her face like a lighthouse lamp, glowing—I remember thinking, ‘She’s drunk at nine in the morning.’

song of the dog: Degas

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With her head thrown back and mouth open she howls into the dark green night, letting her gloved hands droop like the front paws of a dog. A large orange corsage attached to the bosom of her gown. Around her thick neck, a ribbon of black velvet. Her p

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,

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…

The Drone

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"He turns in his bed, and reaches for a body, like the blind to braille."

The End of My Second Life

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We are moments away from the end, and it feels like it.

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

Preparedness

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In the boat on the way there I knew we'd see something spectacular, and was prepared.When the glacier dropped large pieces of ice into the Arctic ocean and sent a long wave at us, I screamed and screamed.My parents had their backs to the glacier and missed everything. …

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.

Security

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Her preferred post-coital activity is to pant, to suck in air with urgent greed.

Dark Heart

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When we take Vengeance,/ shave and shower him,/ deodorize and scent him,/ clothe him in a starched shirt

A Thousand Words

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Photographs can create, both good and bad. They can create a way to make a living, but they can also create opportunities for black mail, divorce settlements and most of all they can create power.

Her Own Age

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He had a country house, she said, but it was near the city. She said the house was about as old as he was and she loved it— from the wood-framed windows to the heavy wood doors... to the garden on the side of the house

Storage Access Framework

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At first we thought metadata rich, non-hierarchical, network based, multi-provider filesystems were our future. An arduous journey but well worth the efforts for the beforehand unimaginable user experiences enabled by new technologies that thereupon displaced the…

To My Children, With Apologies

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My apologies also for those crowded roads you and your families have to drive on. My generation would have built more public transportation but, in all honesty, we just didn't give a damn.

When it Gets Dark

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The world—the natural world—was terrible and beautiful in wartime. The leaves shuddered off trees. The pockmarked fields. The fallen brick chimneys. The way the birds heaved together in enormous flocks like rescue missions and then just as…

Footnote

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Weddings, engagements etc.

The Tale of Gary Von Gross

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Gather 'round children, For it's high time to tell, The story of a strange man With a horrible, awful smell. For this is a story More disgusting than most. This is the gruesome tale Of Gary Von Gross. With a house made…

Employee Review

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Resting bitch face strikes again.

Refuge

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cotton balls in your ears do not deafen you to the rocking of your mother's bed...as she and the new uncle set forth on the turbulent sea of their maiden voyage.

Sign of the Times

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As I go by I see five, six high school kids standing on the corner waiting for the bus. They are huddled together like a bunch of ducks....

Sweet Pigeon

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A small poem

Movies and Songs

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But I am quite sure, in my loneliness, there is nothing that aches inside me more, than a desire to persist.

Tuscaloosa

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a Ferris wheel gently rocks its last riders then dumps them to the ground.

The Cry of Freedom

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"Only the gods in heaven can do such things," he shouted back, his voice hoarse and parched from no water for two days. "Wouldn't your God have saved you by now if he had the power?"

Truth Or Consequence

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Mass media thought control, from consumer advertising to political sloganeering, is creating a new generation of irrational thinkers. If this trend continues, one day soon we may find ourselves under the control of some genius gone haywire.

Our Graves

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But no matter how we died, we all end up here, in the Meadowlark Children's Cemetery.