Most read stories

Mind Your Inspiration

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Be careful when you choose your muse, for she may be a siren.

Somnambulist

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Although still uncertain of whether she was a she fish or a he fish (she definitely hated being an it fish), the fish liked what she saw of Nags Head. Finally, a world that gave her a choice. And felt no need to verify whether she was a real she fish, or just a he fish…

Flight

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Fortunately, when the bird hits the sliding glass doors in our den, I know what to do.

Submission guidelines

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Somewhere in her the name triggers/ a grainy chain of Cheech & Chong

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…

Istanbul

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They are plastering on lipstick in pay-to-enter toilets around the corner from the mosques, where old men sit on back streets selling toilet seats, spices by the shovel, flashlights, and Audrey Hepburn t-shirts

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.

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 …

Snow Angels (after Sandy Hook)

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The weatherman can't predict accumulation. He can only tell you it will be cold. Expect ice, wind, snow, expect delays. Your daughters play outside, dancing around the Evergreen, its branches bearing the weight of snow, its branches

Metastasis

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I am eternal/ as long as the power holds

Snatch 8 (the zombie flash sequence--it never dies)

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Oh, gracious mercy, oh...

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."

Blip

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‘They will follow, but we have to go now’ ‘Wait , I can see something familiar...’

So Many Questions?

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“Are you my neighbor in 3D?” Was she?

Rwanda Suite: Buzzed

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They'd taken so much: ivory, rubber, copper, gold. Wealth for the grabbing. No remorse.

Summer Waters

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A lifeboat came by in the night, And I finally saw we were sinking.

Four Out of Seven

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Four nights out of sevenI will lay with youFour nights out of sevenIt's the best I can do In the day, we will bake our breadAt night, ha, we will break our bed!Four nights out of seven, I will be with you

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...

Optimism

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I paused in case she said more. Then, “He’s very faint but he wants to talk.” She leaned forward, chin almost resting on the grey-haired woman in front of her. “Tell him to shout.”

Thin Flame

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It was impossible that you wouldn't love me

Boom Boom Boom Boom

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“Man, that Fats just nothin’ but a powerhouse, nothin’ but ‘Jesus Rolled Away the Stone’ and them Cats his apostles.” La KeeSha replied, “Ya’ll a real Blues Daddy now.”

A Butterfly For A Married Woman

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A married woman requests a butterfly tattoo that won't please her husband from an old tattoo artist.

The Glass Shop

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She burst Into the glass shop

The Blue Pear

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The pear is a bruise. Feels like desperation in the light, it looks soft and blue. She wants to touch it and doesn’t want to. How the blood gathers under the blue and the body grows tender. Swells. Slowly.

Nothing At All

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The ice in my drink provides ample cooling. The brew strength of my tea is just such that it combines in a pleasing fashion with the melting ice. My mind is clear and my belly absent hunger. I am completely sated from any physical desire at this very mome

f**k xmas

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Christmas Eve arrives with a relief that the season of joy will soon be over so I can feel the pain I am denying myself. Rosie presses her face against the kitchen window, leaving ghostlike impressions of the tip of her nose and her lips on the glass tha

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…

Pitspits

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a perpetrated fraud

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.

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.