Most read stories

Unseenly

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Over the years, his face began to alter

13 fragments of a somniloquy, overheard by a burglar lost in the basement complex on midsummer night

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1. there's nothing more to say about it and I don't want to be drawn2. beautiful she couldn't hear me anyway I was desperate and there were moths3. they'd replaced his head with a picture of the moon he looked4. none of them were speaking English more like a ticking a…

The Power of Bad Words

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Her skirt is so short, said the teenage girls to each other. I was 7 years old. I said: she looks like a slut. They laughed; I blushed. Later, the slut smiled at me. I tried to find the teenage girls but they were gone. I wanted to say: it's actually a pair of…

Snatch XII

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No. No. No.

Charlotte and the Avalanche of Hope

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”My goodness how that child nurses hope,” Edward’s Grandad would often say, “were it not for her where indeed would this family be?”

The Mish

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So begins your new career in the car service business. In some ways you enjoy it, too. Sitting alone in the cab each day, totally your own boss; you get a surge of excitement inside thinking about the money you'll make in a way that requires so little work. Clearing two…

At the Fair

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You're on the Ferris wheel, and the wind is blowing just a little bit, and the sky is invisible behind a wash of white clouds, and your little yellow box tips when you look down, down to the fairway swinging. In the boxes below grandmothers are shrieking …

Much Ado About Exploring.

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John was sitting at his computer one night after work, when he read an article linked to him by a friend.

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…

Mortality

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The list of things to live for/ shortens with age. The list of regrets/ lengthens.

War and Peace

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War The once shining lake was busy draining itself. All the better cared for boats were looking like disjointed discarded single shoes in a messed up paint chipped closet. No one was thinking well okay a leaky sole is better than a wounded heel. You get the…

Awaiting What the Afternoon May Bring

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Another siege/ with kamikaze fervor.

just a girl on a couch

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behind the curtainof a ballsy fragilitythere lives an easethat was not easythere exists a gracethat is not always gracefulbeauty can maskcheekbones that sometimes look sadwhen they are smilingeven grin determinationneeds downtimethe prize is still thereeven if the eyes…

secrets

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Don’t worry about what went aloud. I said nothing.

Google for giggles

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Why won’t my parakeet eat my diarrhea?

The Good Farmer

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He leans in close then, close enough that when he speaks, his words tiptoe out and tuck me in.

Best Place To Eat in Town

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Often I eat lunch at the hospital. The cafeteria may be the best place to eat in town.

Thin Flame

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It was impossible that you wouldn't love me

A Jungle Tale

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He awoke with a start. This was not the first time he did so. He couldn't afford these occasional bouts of sleep. And certainly not in the land of the Tsantsa hunters.

Takin' a Break

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The place turns out to have a really nice ambiance, and while the pasta is only passable—though I ordered, I believe, the cheapest plate on the menu, so maybe I got what I deserved—the background dinner music playing is "Yankee Hotel Foxtrot" by Wilco.

Hearts

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She thought of an animal checking a scent before mating, and imagined that he said to himself, “All I need is for this woman to be hitting on me.”

Our Terror Closet

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"Honey," I called out to my wife. "Why do we have Spam in the closet?" "You mean unsolicited bulk messages sent electronically?" "No--the canned, precooked meat product made by the Hormel Corporation."

Dad, August 10, 2010

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Satchmo sings a love song over the sound system. People read books, tap keyboards, drink coffee, eat cake. In Barnes & Noble—more a coffee shop these days than a bookstore—I am thinking about my dad and his stomach cancer.The terror he…

Dark Heart

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

FANTASY

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Normally I would have never drank such a wine, but it was late on a Friday evening and the bottle was on the house...

Bootsy Goes on a Bender

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Bootsy awoke with a hangover that only brain surgery could cure, a hangover that caused a seam to open in the known universe, leaving Bootsy on one side while all other matter sped away, away.

THAT KIND OF LOVE

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I've heard of sucessful marriages where there's very little sex. My heart aches for that kind of love.

Motel 6

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He lit another reed - a new score orchestrating in his head - his thoughts swirling around the older man; there was something else going on here…

Metastasis

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I am eternal/ as long as the power holds

Collapsible Horizon

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Mama sleeps in bed with us. The blue of her ghost sleeps underneath me. I love her more than anything. What does she think when we are naked, when we yell, or mimic, imbibe, curse, cry, shake, make love, roll over on her, want to die?