Most read stories

Just Do It

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He is sitting in his bedroom trying to decide what to wear. He has an appointment at five. If he wants to make it he has to either catch the bus, which comes in about fifteen minutes, or drive in. If he wants to drive in he needs to put petrol in his car,

blanck (1?)

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① / empty space / not black / not white / not noise / blanck

Don't Mangle the Mongol

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Back in the Dark Ages, the Mongols invented the first hamburger pattie. They put slabs of beef under their horses' saddles and after a few miles of rough riding -- voila! a flattened piece of cow meat. They then proceeded t

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.

Disappearing Dirt

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The mulch vendor is a crook but we have no choice, not with the shortage of soil. Have to guard the stuff, put alarm wires around the garden, leave a friend in charge to spot the thieves if you go away overnight. If you…

Black Hole Me

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my fingers vibrate magnetic/ a humming void/ where my brain was

Freddy in the Future

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“Me try anything,” he says, then laughs a little. “You’re fucked.”

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…

Librarians Love Me!

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Librarians love me, you want to know why? I don’t dog-ear pages, I don’t even try.

Still Crazy After All These Years

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Dr. van Roos reminded the group that trauma is trauma...

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…

Suicide - The Failsafe

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Yesterday morning I sank to the depths of hell and barely crawled out in time. There is no answer except possibly death that will find me relief from his distant presence. I am free but yet I am not and I slowly sink into a hollow world where nothing hurt

Vera's Nemesis

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The dog was there before Vera was there, so she supposed she couldn't hate it too much. It wasn't like she had to live with the thing, either, though she might as well have hosted it in her ear for the eight months it took that particular batch of neighbo

Portrait

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Hers or mine? You figure it out, jackass.

lent (valentine's day challenge )

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the names / she carried (within)

O'Arlo's Journal: About Myself

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Every morning if I don't have to go potty....

Independence Day

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Not long ago, Owen the Second showed her a skull. He kept it in a brown cardboard box in the top of the closet. "My first wife," he said, and sneered, his lip bunching up around a scar just under his nose.

You Can Wear Skinny Jeans

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He looks at me again, this time glancing down at my skinny jeans, “And... are you a single mom?” he seems to think he has it right, taking a last look at my aquamarine colored pants and the tapered area around my calves.

A Brief, Protracted Reflection

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...Loves and fights and retires; / And dies.

For the Woman Who Has a Hundred

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“What would you get? What should you give a lady who’s one hundred for her birthday?”

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.

blink

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far from this time

Dad and the Red Light

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The light turns green.

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

Assiduity Four

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Her clothing style varies from grunge to glamor and . . . she always looks good.

der Morgenmuffel

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I sat on the corner of her desk ... Angela Merkel can be a sweetie when she wants to be.

Lost

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I can't find my way back to the library. I've heard of this happening, that if you leave even for just one day and for a very good reason, as good a reason as mine, you may not find your way back. Now why should this be so? I do not understand this library. It houses…

The Yellow Room

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...the knives she laid out on the porch before her husband left her, washed and dried, set neatly by copper pennies.

On Socks

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There’s a hole in my sock, just large enough that my big toe keeps slipping out.

Flight Path

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Those who love aluminum bellies and landing gear and ailerons... that ilk... settled at the western edge of of LAX 24R 6L and called the encampment Flight Path.