Most read stories

Employee Review

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Resting bitch face strikes again.

Waiting for the Voice on the Line

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

Home Health Care

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But what if it grew into a nasty tea party-ish bimbo right winger -- a little Michelle Bachmann nubbin?

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.

Godfrey part 2: Marjory's bag

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

Landing

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She’s witnessed her mother’s terror on the day of the hurricane, and she demanded for the first time in her life that her mother do something her mother did not want to do.

Boxes

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I am long of tooth, too, and when I go, maybe a box with my ashes inside will join the boxes containing the cats’ remains.

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.

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.

Dessert Buffet

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“Your husband is an asshole, isn’t he?” he asks.

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

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.

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

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.

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"

Liquid Sunset

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After work and wine, I Take some red food coloring and empty it Into my bath water. I submerge myself and open my eyes Like looking backwards at the world through A liquid sunset. I push myself under water, squeaking Feet…

blanck (1?)

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

the swan drives a car

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

Pretending Veracity, History Winks

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Mosaics are a trick of the eye, seeming

Indulgence

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I crave the confines of the convent

The Nude Pianist: A Novel: Chapter 5

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When the cab dropped Frank at his address at seven that evening, he noticed the lights were on in Michiko’s apartment.

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.

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

Texas Weather

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

"Poverty Line" from "Alligator Stew." Originally appears in The Writing Disorder

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Jenny knew never to mistake sex for love. Jenny's mother, who couldn’t stand the way her latest lover looked at her daughter, gave Jenny to the Department of Human Services, where Jenny celebrated her twelfth birthday as a ward of the State of Arkansas. J

Moon Over the Downs - excerpt

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Each drip off the corrugated plastic sheeting made a tinny sound that he could hear from deep within the damp sleeping bag and layers of blankets where he was trying to sleep.

empty

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

Birdhouses

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That year, if you asked Al, was truly the best of times, the worst of times.

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.