Most read stories

Genesis Serpent’s Skin Found

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This may be too religious for you, as at first it was so with me. But I assure you, on my scholarly integrity, I have found the Genesis Serpent’s skin! Yes, that Genesis Serpent--though just a leftover piece of him,

blink

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far from this time

Escape

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Can’t you do anything right?

Daddy's Teeth

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At night, I wake up, and Daddy's in the bathroom with a hanger in his mouth....

Why won't you lie?

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And out on that lake that day you yelled “desperation please!” And I heard “desperate pleas?” I wondered about first impressions.

Zeus Takes a Day Job

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That's demeaning enough, but not as hard to take as the customers. They're all jaded hipsters, thumb diddling smartphone freaks, pretending their online interactions actually count as relationships and that “tweets” are real conversations. It's sad, reall

Now or Never

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One by one our friends are kicking the bucket. Let's get together. It's now or never, we figure.

Birth Mothers, Seeking

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A blonde girl, her youth evident beneath a cosmetic mask of bruised eye shadow and plum lipstick, claims the seat beside me on a train. A radiant six month-old gazes out from her hip, awe-struck at life, as my own son must have been at that age. I never e

Please Don't Pass The Salt

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The only silver lining? The man in my life and I are in this together.

My dark job history

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Sometime in the late 60s when I was thirteen I had this paper route for the San Mateo Times.

Waiting for the Voice on the Line

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hoping for a happy outcome/ like a kindly voice on the line

Literally Choose Your Own Adventure

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You enter the lobby of the office building tentatively at first - you're a little nervous about this interview, after all - but you recall how spectacular and professional you dressed that morning. Plus you read through the company's LinkedIn profile at least five times…

Last Visit to the Toy Store

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The two walked around, taking in all the classics: the imported Russian matryoshka dolls of varying styles and bright colors; spinning tops, red Radio Flyer wagons, kaleidoscopes, and wooden yo-yo's invoked memories of Christmases past. The hand-stitched

Neactains, Quay St.

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Rarely is Quay Street so clean, Monday in rain, Neactain’s ticking over with Slow jazz and crosswords, Stout and steaming anoraks.

Take the 40 Million Years Without Sex Challenge!

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Scientists have determined that a tiny freshwater organism known as the "bdelloid rotifer" gave up sex 40 million years ago. And you thought the spark had gone out of your marriage.

I Have a Hard Time Having a Good Time

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At the third or fourth discotheque I drink so much I accidentally find myself happy.

Walking To Gibraltar, Chapter 2: In Which Spousal Abuse May Occur

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The separation—the plan—had been a long time coming. After years of fighting and therapy and apologizing and, finally, silence, their marriage was about to die of exhaustion.

The Seer

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The strange bones of language wander the room.

Layover Memories

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It was a pleasant time, my thoughts were mostly good ones, with little effort wasted on regret.

Old Haunts

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“Why do you write filth?” they howl

Written Six Weeks Before

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March 16, 2006 My mail, e-mail, and phone calls go from the ridiculous to the sublime. Apologies for the cliché, but I can't resist its perfect applicability: In my mailbox today yet another catalogue of boob jobs in bikinis and an invitation to explore…

10 cities, 7 weeks, 7 countries & poems

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I'm not sure if this is breaking the rules of Fictionaut, but here's a trailer of a poetry tour of Europe I did earlier this year. We hope to break it down into webisodes soon enough to highlight the brilliant readings, brilliant local poets and such that you can find not…

River Run

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yearning amid the waning

Dinner in Mexico

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If he had not just decapitated a chicken, he was a man I could have loved.

Penny cosmogony

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On his knees he divinates diverging lines with belly laughs he levitates the rebel spheres into geodes .

The Grave of Rimbaud

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I visited the grave of Rimbaud. / It was pale blue

The Preservation of Innocence (through Times of Hunger and Doubt)

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Alicia got to third block early and scribbled down some of the derivatives homework. Others trickled in intermittently, drifting to their seats like impurities getting caught in a filter.

gravelortian part 9

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Unhook the newsfeed

This Is Why I Write

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I do it for fun

The Secret

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It was always your body that told so much -- lips working some secret out