Most read stories

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…

Concubine on the Ginza Line

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so I tighten hands with my castaway and say/you failed to impress in your folded peacock dress

The Shadow

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"Did I have a dream, or did the dream have me?" - Rush, "Nocturne"

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

River Run

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yearning amid the waning

the swan drives a car

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the swan drives a car ( window down; wing half hanging out ) …

How To Build A Drunken Sandwich

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Kick your employer in the ass. Emotions are strange experiments in honesty.

A Brief, Protracted Reflection

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

Time Capsule

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He pours another shot and says: Then I buried it in the yard. The time capsule I mean. You have to plug it in to see. I wonder if they’ll know.

Out the Window

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she lifted and threw her legs out the open side front window of the speeding auto

Godfrey part 2: Marjory's bag

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"when I say bag, what I mean to say is…"

The Rising Tide

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I'm just a rental dog myself looking for the guardian of starlight peeing on the expired parking meters and barking up all the wrong trees.

Old Egg

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He must have been pleased with his composition, as he repeated and repeated and repeated it. Paul joined in the song. Then the children at neighboring tables joined too, until the song rose into a dining hall chorus.

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

Confederates

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I knew I spoke out of turn when I asked my father's old friend Charlie Jobe what he thought would come of moving to the veterans' camp, or "Village of the Deranged", as the newspaper has since taken to calling it. That was their description after all the

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 . . .

Light Eyes

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Once, when he had been married for a year, she sent him a card which said, "If you have seen a cat smoke a pipe, you have got it made." There was an illustration of a big, black panther, standing up on its hind legs, smoking what looked like a big tub of

Waiting for the Voice on the Line

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

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

blanck (1?)

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

Pretending Veracity, History Winks

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Mosaics are a trick of the eye, seeming

The French Revolution

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Judith was a bed wetter. Judith was a first-year college student and she was embarrassed that she wet the bed.

Stillness

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You were sitting on dark leather meringue, wearing slit ivy, epilated thighs sliding through, roots showing beneath your anaemic skin, fighting with the pale bluegreen of your veins. Quills extended from your left hand, bent about 10.2 degrees or so.

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

Read Me

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I won’t be eating much anyway if someone doesn’t start reading me. I’ve got to get a hook so people will be drawn to my work. I’ve got a few concepts I’d like to share with you. See what you think.

Gold Digger

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Sophie hoped that Ryan would just stay in the bathroom and never come out. Her stomach turned just thinking about him, but wealthy nerds were easier to work than wealthy regular guys. No self-esteem, no experience with women…no problem.

TWO STEPS

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It turns out I know a thing or two about momentum. I know, I know. Like the crescendo of your bicycle wheels. Like the force the florist put on the stems the day Linda died. The way my fingers spin between planetary mass. This is how I know I’m not real

Happy Birthday... Mr. President

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Her dress swirled around her as she stepped into the ballroom, looking every bit as sultry as her recent Playboy cover...

You Can Go Now

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The summer when I was six and my sister Audrey was eight, she'd walk around our house pretending to be in a trance, fingers strategically hovering over my mother's vases and lamps, leaving smudges behind on my father's heavy oak desk and rocking chair. She'd lumber past my…

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.