Most read stories

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.

Searching for a poem

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Each person in each car could be poetic/ Duende, but they look at each other and ask/“Did you fart?”

Clockwork

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At any moment, she'll come outside to pick up the day’s newspaper. He can see it resting beneath the blooming crape myrtle, its plastic wrapper glistening with dew.

So Many Questions?

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“Are you my neighbor in 3D?” Was she?

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....

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

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…

The Boss of Bosses

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The one thing my father told me that I want to believe is true . . .

The End of My Second Life

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

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. …

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…

The Arrival

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Everybody knew it would happen. It didn’t happen exactly when or how they thought it would, but nonetheless it happened. “I told you it would happen,” a bearded man told his wife.

Please Take

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I have a ball-pein hammer in my coat pocket.

Heather.

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Gone Heather, with her hands in her hair, silent for help, over-involved now scared.

Home for the Holidays

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Deployed to Afghanistan for more than half of his two-year marriage, Trent is coming home for the holidays. But which holiday, exactly? And will he make it?

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,

For the young couple in the stairwell passed on my way to teaching Medieval World Literature

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I have/been you/years before/of course

Not Sure If You're Actually Having Sex? I Can Help.

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When I stumbled upon evidence that the man I'd loved and trusted for 20 years had a secret girlfriend for the past 10 of those years, he tried to deny it.“We never had sex!” he told me. And I believed him. For about two minutes.“You never…

Collision

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That black hole isn't really a hole.

PTSD

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My therapist told me I have post traumatic stress disorder My uncle had that He fought in the war I guess I fought in my own kind Not between countries Between children and father Between husband and wife Between addiction and sobriety When my father got…

Sounds

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They try to incorporate a little of Ravel around their edges, the ones where their molecules bump off into other parallel realities, into other non-localities, into other potentials. She isn't buying it. She's tuned in. And she can tell.

Kai (excerpt)

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Kai,
 
Oh the mathematics of solitude. I wish your father there. I read your wanting subtracted between the lines. He is almost gone. Hallucinates, not awake even though eyes are open. Yesterday he saw the baby brother you never met. I light four ultramarine…

Colors

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Frowning, loosening a purple tie, Tony pushed through the golden revolving doors of a skyscraper. He drifted into the crowded midtown street as if in a daze. He was roused to his senses as his cell phone sent out the melody of his wedding song.

Human Kind Can’t Bear Very Much Reality

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Particles flung by the sun pierce us through, undetected

Daylight

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not to free ourselves// from suffering// but become the window// through which it sees//

The Dilemma

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Scribble something basic with traces of spectacular,pen every pint of pain spilled during the massacrewhittle the convoluted down to the vernacularboiled the whole story, now you got everybody crackin' upnow step back from the business like, “man, that's wack as…

Zorks

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The way things are looking, we haven't got long on this earth. The whole human race is in trouble. And forget global warming, the ground wars all over, the death of the oceans, Pat Robertson, that shit. Those are annoyances,…

Nexxus Products Company

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I think fat will just appear, like a narcotics cop at my door, or something.

-And Lurking Behind Quasar 3C295 . . .

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“Let’s see that great big telescope of yours,” she exhaled hotly, “I want to grind your lenses!” The doctoral candidate dutifully stood between her and his massive telescope so her hands would encounter some instrumentation with no optical components.