Most read stories

Books

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It sometimes happens a student remains a friend long after you both have abandon academe.

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.

Bones of the Amazon, Part I of a Novella

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Lulu Petite was sitting in a lounge chair by the side of the pool when she heard the man splash into the water, almost unnoticed by the guests milling around the backyard of the palatial estate. Everybody, seemingly, was involved in a balancing act of one

PIGEONS

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Ellen decided to soft-pedal the one month to live thing. Really, there was barely time for the patient to read Ellen's brochure.

The Piano Player’s Dead Rejoice

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Requires one of those leaps.

Rwanda Suite: The Congo in Me

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I scratch a red welt onto the inside of my white knee. The knee itches like crazy. Pain too, down to my bones. The Congo calls.

Blind Observer.

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I sat there, observing the city people. Frowns upon all our faces. The rain moistened my heart and journal. A blind family; a trio. They used their wands to lead the way.Their faces read joy but, most importantly, satisfaction.My envy filled the damp page.

Victoria Gate

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Maybe she was crying before she got on the coach at Marble Arch, settled in the seat across from me, but by the time we reach Victoria Gate, tears stream down her face, mouth open to receive her own sacrament.Indian, ageless in tasteful floral, a blue sweater despite summer…

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…

Linear Critic

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8) An exercise online calls for the first sentence on page 45 of the book nearest you as a suggested description of your love life. The book 9) nearest me still is _The Quarterly_, 1, spring 1987, that I have on my desk in preparing to write an essay.

Flash'em Tag'em Bag'em

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On a hot summer day in downtown San Francisco, a flasher gets more than he bargains for when the woman he flashed at a coffeehouse pulls out a gun.

whip

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under a laughing moon

Our Names Are Written In Water

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Passing us in a delicate swirl of light perfume and healthy girl sweat, three bare midriff elfin, baby dykes with pencil thin eyebrows, and chic art hair cuts, swaggered in like cool young gunfighters straight off the cover of Bad Baby Butch Vogue

Talk To the Bionic Hand

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Talk To the Bionic Hand “Scientists have discovered how to program intention into a bionic hand so that it will react to impulses from the brain like a normal hand” Man found being choked by his own out-of-control bionic hand after han

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

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.

Short Cuts

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The shop is swarming with little women.

Poems I Wish I Had Written

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Parsimony, Sage Advice, Alimony, and Time. That would be one. The Waste Land. The Hollow Men. The Red Wheelbarrow. There are others, But I have definite shoe anxiety dreams and can’t get over them. Do not Go Gently Into That Good Night. Alone

Appeasement

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No, I’m not at the junior high bus stop. I’m at the dining room table with my parents.

Plucked

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I walked to work back then...

Portrait

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Hers or mine? You figure it out, jackass.

Proud Military Wife

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Back when they were younger, David was always gushing about every little thing in his head, and his openness appealed to her as much as his muscular frame did. But after that year they spent apart, he was always ... smiling. Smiling and vague.

Ages One Through Ten

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Age Eight: Custody battle. Reassure your worried mother that it’s alright, this will give you something interesting to tell your children one day. Until now, life has been very vanilla.

Brian Wilson Says

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There is only one other person in the pool, in the adjacent lane. I stop to adjust my goggles and notice his waterproof ear buds.

The Letter

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I knew nothing about the letter at first. When I came in that morning and smiled and said good morning, it was a genuine smile and a heartfelt good morning. But the letter, which had arrived the previous afternoon, was already doing its corrosive work of

Cogito Zero Sum

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When you encounter a body laying on the road, drive over it.

Sed-a-give

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The way she once felt for another, naked mornings in her bed, and Young Frankenstein. Sed-a-give.

If You Have to Have an Ism

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This is a lady who never got a break.

Writer's Envy

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You may think you've tasted envy, but yours was just a sour sip of wine at a civilized wine-tasting. Mine is bottom-shelf, well-brand gin in a biker bar with miss-the-urinal piss stains on the floor.

Vienna

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I remember thinking the seasons are arriving later every year, as if the world has been slowed by the weight of graves.