Most read stories

A Conversation With a Ghost

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This must never get out in the press, for it would cause widespread panic. The priests would surround my house, not to mention the police and possibly the army. Castor Desayuno has come back from the dead!

Crash

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My God. It never ends

The Plunderer

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Bill (Gunnery Captain of the Left Hand Gun, HMM Plunderer), while not exactly obese, nor could a disinterested observer call him him rotund, was nevertheless the sort of man who'd never be caught by a famine unprepared. And because of this more than regulation…

Heartlong

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... reason never lies...

Family

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For instance, my sister's husband. If I say brown socks, yellow boxer shorts, fishnet undershirt. If I say plastic bag and two tepid beers. And a voice that glides to falsetto when he: you're a tad too obscene for my taste, Julia, while he tries to light the filter end of…

Familiar Things

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After lunch I left my office and trickled along like a slow leak, a notch above meandering; gravity had become a lateral force that pulled me forward.

Can't You Tell When I Get Lonely?

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“Can't you tell when I get lonely?”, she asks. “No”, I say. It gets awkward because she wants me to know when she gets lonely. I don't give her the attention she wants without realizing it. She moves away and stares at me for…

Bye-bye Love

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Barbie wore only her clear pink heels...

Daily Bread

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A little poem about prison

from Presence

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facts are facets are / things in the act // the truth speaks softly // as time saying amber / to the enduring sap // words come and go / like leaves like men // we the tree remain ...

The Dark

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Outlined against the thinly layered darkness of the room, there is a silhouette of a small boy with his feet pulled up to the chin, failing to hold its own against the thousand stares from the deep violating the stillness of his room, their long familiarity with the…

Rio, 1946

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Now his daughter was an American citizen and Max wanted only the chance to board the SS Maua and disembark in New York.

Axes

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You think about the first time you saw an axe

Ransom

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The Snowman grinned malevolently as the Sugar Plum fairies shook in their tiny powdered boots."Santa has one more hour and then you're all marshmallow toasts!" the Snowman said. He laughed and he laughed. His evil plan? He wanted the key to time delivered to him personally…

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

The Celebrity

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Mr. Blumberg and I sat side by side on a small couch in the family room. He was watching a football game on TV.

Hey! Where? Georgie Girl!

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Starry, Starry Night we slept, talked and did the nasty where I, in innocence once built a raft of driftwood to take me twenty miles across to the shore from which we ferried escaping my Father’s demise

Circumstance

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In a time of drought,/ the sound of rain is sweet/ and joyful music.

SWING-SET

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Soon, out of the womb ‘down there' is nuance. It guides you, like a legality, like your own breathing, in and out of overtone, hardcore hodgepodges, those inklings near sacrosanct beyond breakfront negligees and neo-negligence leading the good life. Isn't it…

SWAMPLANDS by Paul D. Brazill

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Elvis awoke in a cold, dank sweat, hungover from bourbon and bad dreams.

IT CAN, IT CAN, IT CAN

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A man jumped off the High Level Bridge this morning.

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…

Abu Arif & His Daughters

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I cannot remember what the celebration was for, but the baby was at its center. We passed him around, a sweet smiling boy about seven months old. The age when babies can sit but can't yet crawl and their thighs get plump.

Hail to the Pres: Celebrating Lester Young's Birthday

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At a time when jazz had its share of royalty–kings, dukes, and counts–Young was democratically elected the President by an aristocratic vote of one; the best jazz singer alive, his sometime lover Billie Holiday.

Spider Bite

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“You done done sumpin’,” the old man guessed, “Sumpin’ bad...”

A Flam

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In the blacklight of the storm, mother would tremble, spit and sway as the shutters would clatter and she would give away her balance. It was more than my heart could bear. She would always center her accusation with, “your boyfriend is a rake and a flam.” That…

Kimberlina

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...She smells like Mentholadium all the time which is one of them old lady smells. When I get up there, she says, “I’ll scrub the bee jesus out of you little girl,” and by God, I have a purty good bath that day.

blanck (1?)

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

If Pigs Could Fly

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One day we turn a corner, and two fat little doggies spot us and come running up. Oh, they are so glad to see us!

I Wake Up Teetering

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I wake up on the edge of the mattress, teetering. The dog is looking at me funny.