Most read stories

empty

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feeling empty as the bottom of a bottle dry as a bone in death valley alone

Raw Sugar

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Take shelter from the rain inside the Museum of Sex.

Time Passed to Time Present

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Four Quartets is a slender book which/ can be read with intensity in its entirety

Words of Departure

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Not a fuss, not a stink, The eulogy, deep, will make one think, Grandmother, sat in back, will wink

Dinner in Mexico

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

Sister (pt. 1)

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Slept on a chair last night in the Springfield, Mass., bus terminal. It was March, and a dude in shorts asked: "Yo, you smoke trees?" I said, "Sure. Who doesn't?" He said, "You buyin'?" I said, "Nope, I'm going out of the country." He smiled and said, "Alright." He started…

EMDR

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She called it EMDR, which stands for Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing. Basically, it means training a part of your brain to longer associate trauma with a specific side of the brain. This meant that she had to direct all traffic of the repressed memory to a new…

Fertile Ground

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Miriam forced herself to focus on the kitchen door and on putting one foot in front of the other. “Is everything alright?” she heard Ada ask the family. “Of course, everything is fine,” the woman said. “What could be wrong other than the impossible serv

Cat Tales - a 55 word story

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My spooky cat got out again. Under the deck she ran. Out came the hose that chased her about. Fur spiked, tail pointing, yowling, she hissed at me, and back in the house she pranced. It's been two days now. She slithers out for food after…

John Ruskin doing a Swan Dive

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She used her right breast. Lifted it to her chin, aimed at the can, and shoved it down as hard as she could.

Sleepy Time for Jimmy

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Now comfy is as comfy does, but when sleeping strange, please accept a wide range of cradle, crib, cave.

What the Bay Broke

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This summer they had reached their fifth anniversary, the landmark they’d dubbed the Bacchanal year. Instead of exchanging gifts made of wood, they’d bought expensive wines and champagnes and emancipated their bodies of clothing for two straight days. The

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.

Texas Weather

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I know this: the sky is vast here// and the sun unforgiving/ to any architecture not the best

Nothing to laugh at, at all.

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The house had to be clean - I mean thorough-clean - when he got home from the pit for his tea, or he’d throw his plate at the wall and the gravy would run down onto the carpet. There was always gravy.

Banging My Head Against the Garage Door of Religion

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The villagers smash in a garage door with their heads, causing some to bleed from the ears and mouth.

When the Well Runs Dry

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and the moon shines on like a silver dollar and coyotes in the desert scream and holler

A Small Life in Slices

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It’s Sunday- no need to shave-/ but shave, I do. A little act// of discipline in the discipline/ of routine.

We call them the Removal Men

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They came early and parked up, under cover of the night and the giant oak. I only know this because people told me afterwards. Watching us, they were. It was six o'clock before they smashed their way in, scaring the three of us out of our wits. Baby Billy screamed the place…

Burnab

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Lise started making up words when she lost her voice.

the cold the day left

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in our teens as tough as the cold/we wore denim and flannel with our boots/kicking at whichever wind blew . . .

Rowdy

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Flash’s hackles stood brushlike but he kept his head bowed just enough beneath the bigger dog’s stare to delay the inevitable fight. Flash, Mal thought approvingly, would pick the time and place.

Cogito Zero Sum

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

Indulgence

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I crave the confines of the convent

Assiduity Twenty Two

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Warning: reader beware, there's sex in the air.

Woman On A Bicycle

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And the ocean was black and green and blue—as your dress that clung to your body’s curve. Round as the bend of the water trailing the false line of the shore.

Of the smokers I’ve kissed

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The man next to me on the Shinkansen from Tokyo to Kyoto makes me think of the smokers I’ve kissed.

Frances at Virginia Beach

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My husband waits for him to hurt himself. The boy drinks red wine between movements, Staring hypnotically at the back Of a girl’s head.

A Pill for a Pill

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Some things I reject out right. That is I think I disagree As John put it. You can't play the game. I was never Too good at pretending. It's not that I can walk on water, It's that I don't mind getting my clothes wet to get away From all the…

One of Us

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“We’re starting to get into weather control,” Mark said. “Can you really do that?” Rachel asked, trying to sound supportive and not skeptical. “There are people out on the west coast in Seattle, who’ve been experimenting with it,” Mark said. “Bec