Most read stories

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

Heather.

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

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.

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

Emily's Letter to her Husband's Lover

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I almost kept him on the shelf with all the trophies.

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.

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,…

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....

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…

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…

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. …

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.

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,

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.

Collision

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That black hole isn't really a hole.

Water, Water Everywhere

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Later I asked Mark if he wanted to watch, but his wife wouldn’t let him. She didn’t like kinky stuff, she said.

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.

Dark Heart

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

Florida

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Now, at last, she finds what she's been searching for. Worms. Like bitty pale larva, like half-moons of air trapped under fingernails. She thinks she sees one twitch; she blinks more furiously and hates herself for it.

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…

The Tapeworm of Selfish Mammon Eats All the Good Will in the World

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She caretakes, he takes care