Most read stories

The Scavenger

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I am a scavenger. I sit on the telephone wire, a ravenous vulture watching a man and a woman arguing across the street. The clouds remind me of ashy marshmallows I found in a fire pit yesterday. The woman starts violently shoving the man; he stumbles…

Road Movies

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Like puddles when it rains, like relationships in chains.

Attempting Integration, Duchamp Descends to the Killing Floor

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Slice the moment into/ free body diagrams/ of elegant simplicity

The Dream Shop

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From nine at night until five in the morningthe mannequins staff the Dream Shop.Customers sleepwalk in and murmur their enquiries.Some of the patrons are very demanding.They queue outside before opening…

Arcana Magi Zero - c.4

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Mulberry Street was once filled with people. Just going about themselves; day to day, minding their business. To school, to work, to deliveries, or to personal priorities, it all came to halt. What Marissa saw was unlike anything she experienced in her li

A note from Liu Xiabo

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I think about the weight of those words—how they are silenced by the weight of stone, by the weight of 11 years in a Jinzhou prison cell,

A Love Letter of a Cannibal

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Dear Butterfly, Are you there ? Wherever there is ? Are you there, crossing your feet on top of each other, sipping your coffee while observing the sky from behind those cat-eye glasses of yours ? 3 days, 8 months and 11 years. That's exactly how long since the last time…

Where's My Phreakin' Nobel Prize in Physics?

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Where I went to college, you couldn’t swing a dead cat in a physics lab without hitting a Nobel laureate. I know–we tried. They finally made us stop–it wasn’t fair to the cat.

The First Snowfall

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the smell of the small cedar chips burning in the fireplace

Frogs

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The frog was splayed after its operation in the science lab, but not forsaken. He knew that his wife still loved him, even though he was in an advanced state of dissection. “Oooooo, Mdntf, let's hide under the table and touch tongues,”

A Killing in the Market

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Everyone hoped to be assigned somewhere they could just drop in on their way home for Memorial Day weekend. Someone said, Blake, you’re single. You hate your family, don’t you?

"they"--inspired by Lynn Beighley's "Ten Amazing don't-miss writing prompts (especially number 6)!--(but I chose number 2--thank

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52. they hate the word hate

The Metope Prophecy

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When his brown eyes met the lapis colored stones representing hers, she leaned forward from her exalted position and whispered to him, “Save me.”

Porch

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“Emerald Leaf Borers, Dutch Elm Disease and Gypsy Moths blow through here like the Plagues of Egypt,” said Rafe, sipping from his glass of Parallel 44 wine. “You'd think we'd get more than a few days of good weather for all the parasites we feed.” …

Walking To Gibraltar, Chapter 3: In Which Everyone Was Wrong

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What's the protocol for telling people your spouse has cancer? How do you tell your son, your friends, your co-workers? How do you tell your mother? How do you tell her mother?

Fidelity

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The night before leaving, we have French toast and red wine in Matthew's kitchen, our packs and sleeping bags and tents surrounding us, looming like golems. Because we're nervous, and a little drunk, the conversation inevitably turns to grammar. "I'm sure I learned…

The Color

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The artist glides through an art supply store looking for a color within. She can feel the color, but she can't name it. She can almost see it, but it's not that kind of color. It's not like, say, blue or red, a primary color that animates flags or exotic ceremonies.…

Third World Problems: On Breaking My Kindle in Africa

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I blame the fucking mosquito net.

Monkey House

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We walked into the light where tired elephants slung their trunks and big cats moved over hills. My head was swollen, the whole back of my skull throbbing and black.

Arbitrary Dilettante

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Every damned time we came back to Richland County, I told JuneBug to just do whatever she had to do but to leave me and Skeeter out of it. And every goddamned time, we ended up somewhere like this, the two sisters hook-armed and conspiratorial, and Skeete

Mercury Unbound - 6

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Liszt, Piano Sonata in B minor. I don't like it but I can't stop listening. It doesn't fit my mood, or the high plains landscape, or the early evening, pink and blue, pastel colored sky.

All that Remains

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The drapes are closed against the sunlight, but Ginny can feel someone in the room. She peers through barely open eyes so as not to let on she's awake. She adjusts her position in a way she hopes mimics sleep, turns her head to the side. A woman…

Yr Wire

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Hours. Hours, bygone. He said, “Come to me all liquored up and you know what’s gonna happen.” Sure. It was every bit true, what he said, six months bygone, chewing off cuticle scabs somewhere out west.

Cento (Christian Morals)

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Be not a Hercules furens abroad, and a Poltroon within thyself

Naughty Alice -- There's No Laughter When You're Extinct

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Does life have an expiration date Alice asked herself? One must be careful when trying to deal with a broken person; you might cut yourself on their shattered pieces. Life can be like an arrow penetrating your heart. Hard and painful to pull it out, yet i

Flash'em Tag'em Bag'em

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On a hot summer day in downtown San Francisco, a flasher gets more than he bargains for when the woman he flashed at a coffeehouse pulls out a gun.

CBGB

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Lou Reed was sitting in CBGB, I was sitting on Greenwich Ave. and West 10th street. I didn't know him then and I didn't know him later either, but we were both there.

Water Break

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Whenever you act as if you're one of themit makes perfectly sad sense tome; you are one of them; we're supposed to believe there areno shadows in that particular choice? When you areone of them, they say youfall asleep with a peaceful droopinglip to your smile. When…

Who's Chasing You?

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“Who’s chasing you?”. When the answer is ‘no one’, it’s best to drive away, like you would from a forgettable Oregon town or someone who can’t love you more than they hate themselves.

Mice and Men

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Some life in Rosco's walls. He listened with his dead wife Sonya's stethoscope: rustles and scratching, a collective heartbeat.“Vermin”, said Vlad, Rosco's neighbor. “Will take over if no kill.” He smiled with one tooth, urped some vodka. “I…