Most read stories

after

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when the mirror cracks my eyes won't cry it's a perfectly respectable (romance) between her and i

Your Love Life

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Maintaining a healthy love life requires effort and professional advice, and Your Love Life columnist would be happy to assist you.

Beneficial

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Had I said something before, she might could have saved a little face by telling me to go to hell before we tumbled into the covers. All right. Again, I was no gentleman. Send me to hell. Whatever. I lay there on my back, my arm around her, and listened t

Abel in the Bar by the Youth Hostel

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“It felt like the space under my skin had been filled with desert sand. I did not open my eyes for my body was covered with the dust. A camel could have walked over me and not noticed. I needed to wipe my eyes before I could open them and my body was froz

Six Down

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“You own your own burial plot, but you don't own your home,” he'd said, and I couldn't help but agree.

Memory and Restoration

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How a breeze feels evaporating sweat on neck and forearms.

Klarheit oder Genug

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F.B.I. then or: "I said later 'for a boob job' and imagined her, a public lawyer, wandering Arizona on foot unable to hide a Playboy-Mansion style rack."

Parallels

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“I honestly can't believe how much you eat, honey.”, Lenora said as I put down the fork after gorging myself on breakfast. Twelve pancakes, four eggs, two cups of coffee, a glass of milk, and half a pound of bacon had passed through my lips this morning. …

1053

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She pulled into the doorway. Uncertain where to spend the night. Certain there'd once been a place with food. Here. This place. She remembered. Curtains. Small tables. Coffee cups thick-handled and sturdy. Crockery. Some words came back.

Poem for My Wife and Three Daughters

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Last night Ariana our second daughter, only 8,wanted to baptize you for your birthday. Her hair shimmered and the face of her joy reminded me of Two Oceans Plateauin the Beartooth Range in southern Montana.As she walked from the sink she carrieda large…

Weight

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We flew./ In my dreams, I can fly.

Fun With Literature, Part Two

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Here are some ideas for stories I have had. 1. A captain of a whaling ship loses his leg to a whale, and makes it is life's mission to find this beast and kill it, and make a pair of boots, belt, and wallet out of its skin. 2. Ten people are invited to stay the weekend at a…

Father's Day

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“What the hell, bitch?” The words rolled out of my aching jaw. I twisted my legs around, kicking Lila out of the bed. She screamed, crashing to the floor. All I heard was barking. I threw a pillow at her.

Origins

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I was sleeping the night of a hurricane party. I awoke to lightning flashes. They lit the undersides of descending clouds, and lit the shadows of scattering dancers. The hurricane must have turned inland.

Buzz Kill

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Blood had soaked through his Converse All-Stars, and into his cotton sox. It was the smell of metal, of iron more specifically, that nudged his mind out from the fog of shock and denial, closer to the reality of his circumstances.

Four Stories I Cannot Write

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“Per­haps instead of a book I could write lists of words, in alpha­bet­ical order, an ava­lanche of isol­ated words which expresses the truth I still do not know” — Italo Calvino albu­men before child grit secretlyshame august blood …

Popcorn Tigers

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The last row of furniture is all black leather. In unison the tigers hop onto a couch a piece, sit calmly on their haunches, and reach for remote controls buried in the cushions. Roaring, they paw at the remotes.

Arcana Magi Wisp

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Gon found himself slowing behind everyone. His wings slowly tired. The bird took a chance and pulled up. He could feel it behind him.

Human Spirit - a poem

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It feels for an exit.

Haiku Haiku, Fattened Feral Kittens, Hobgoblin Test

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and watch the bird play and squirrel play/ and the twitching of cottontail noses

Book of Forgetting

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To make your own, obtain a book with blank pages. Collect materials; postcards, photographs, magazines. Make rules to determine what you do with them. Write things down. Make other rules to determine whether you write in the book or on pieces of paper

Bliss

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When he got out of sick bay, they moved him into a room with three other alkies. A kid, a tree trimmer, and a Catholic priest.

mort

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how alike, breakup & death

Five Million Yen: Chapter 7

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The logic of the impoverished was amazing. Like Rita telling me I owed her fifty cents for a token after she stole five million yen from me.

Occasional cloud

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And she tried to laugh, to justify her half evasion, to dismiss the memory of their vitriolic breakfast conversation.

Time Flies

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Time has wings. They are bright and beautiful, like those of a butterfly. They are delicate wings, and they carry the years away from my decaying mind. I would break those wings if I could, for tomorrow I turn seventy-three, and I grow weary of their ince

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…

The Puppet Maker

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My sister Janis called me from Berlin and said to turn on the news. You could see the thick flurries of snow that were falling there and the flat feathers of peoples' breaths issuing from their mouths as they took turns swinging pick-axes, standing on top

The End of Coffee

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I am getting twisted like a cruller into the mess I have made of this morning and I am stretching the meaning of morning to way past its boundaries.

The Man who was followed by butterflies

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They hovered and darted but, after a while, they seemed to be always around him. Lapping at him like the mellow waves that stroked the muddy bank.