Most read stories

Third World Problems: On Breaking My Kindle in Africa

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I blame the fucking mosquito net.

Combinatorics

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“I'm thinking about math class,” she said. “The solution to three factorial.” “Easy,” Leo said.

Big Money in Poetry!

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Perhaps you have heard the rumors of big money in poetry Maybe that’s why everybody is writing it these days Even Emily Dickinson must have heard these rumors Myself, I suspected as much 50 years ago And started early to accumulate my hoard of poe

Eyes Without a Face

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It's tough when muscle gets in the way of memory. The way pain is the only thing I can remember about certain things. Fifth grade, that's what I think of. I think of pain. Not just abstract pain, not some we'll get to it later adolescent angst or ennui.…

Daily Bread

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A little poem about prison

Sin

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Sin by Nonnie Augustine After my mother died, I met Aunt Shirley. I found her in dozens of snapshots piled in falling apart cardboard boxes we hauled down from the attic. Small girls, with huge bows bobby-pinned right on top of…

Adios

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After seventeen years of struggling to wake up early in the morning, I had managed to wake up on my own. Actually, I think it was because I was unable to sleep that I was up so early. I had laid on the bed all night, staring at the dark ceiling, taking in every…

Travis & Jared

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“Now I see clearly my whole life is pointed in one direction — there never has been any choice for me (Travis Bickle, "Taxi Driver").

Wolflet

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She wanted wolf cubs. Not kittens, not husky pups given as infant gifts with red bows around their scraggy necks. No, she wanted wolf cubs. Even when it grew to pace the length of her hallway - proud as men - she could not love it. …

Grand Theft Auto (a true story)

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He took the car out into the middle of Nowhere, Mexico, and drove it at top speed, off-road for a day and a night. I am talking strut-breaking, axle-wrecking, wheel-bending, paint-peeling conditions and balls-to-the-wall, testosterone-drunk driving.

The Nude Pianist: A Novel: Chapter 3

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It was like watching one of those vintage eighteen-frames-per-second films of someone trying to open a stuck umbrella.

Your Guide to Wi-Fi Security

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Public Wi-Fi ”hotspots” allow men and women to ogle each other discreetly while pretending to write the Great American Novel.

Frederick (from Unsaid literary journal)

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It started like this: just him saying, "Nice to meet you, Marie," and me, while I just said his own name back to him, at the same time thinking, "I want you to take me to a hotel room someday, Frederick. I think I’ll like the way you’d make me feel...

Lavender, A Liberal

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Betty, batty from hormones, in a fanciful fit, named her daughter Lavender. Husband Don winced. Brothers Donald, John, Billy, and Tom were puzzled and pleased by this sister, this girl, who was a little bit like them, yet not like them at all. …

Tree voices (revised)

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Shhhhhhh

Wanderer

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There’s an unending parade of drifters, outlaws and crazies and I always have to watch my back, but, then again, that’s nothing new.

You Know It!

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"Every single thing ... " Hunk Hokum pronounced from the stage, flexing his muscles and prancing around in his red pseudo-loincloth, "has been totally scripted ... and ... every action ... has been ... preplanned-out ... in advance!"

Bash

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Luke was in the gutter, his face in stagnant water littered with cigarette butts, condom wrappers, and green shards of glass from broken beer bottles. A man was kicking him in the face with a boot the size of a U-boat, over and over and over again. Blood

Why I Write

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Creep up behind me one day and prick my skin. I promise you won’t draw blood – for it is ink that will spurt from my veins.

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?

LECTURES

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LECTURES A Bra Burning When Freud painted “Envy,” the women collapsed, holding fans to their faces. Hot that year, they retired to the Tyrols. 50 Days of Palindromes Although Thiebaud painted cakes like women,…

I know everything's broken, but still I pretend

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Rumor was their only mission was to smash all the glass in the world. They sneezed and smashed and laughed like hell.

SMASH AND GRAB!

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Blast! crashed through Shelter of car Violence! of blow! On window glass It winced! on Four wheels

Myra

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When I got to Pete's house he was sitting on the curb smoking a cigarette, bruised and dirty, with a smoking pile of rubble behind him where his house used to be. I hadn't heard yet, but his ol' girl left him and blew up the house when she left.

Terror From Above

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As airplanes fly low over her children playing in the kiddie pool on the front lawn, Maureen learns something else about her father's new house that lies in the flight path of an international airport.

Down

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Locked at the highest rung Unable to budge at all

Serpent

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It chases other newborns down and eats them.

Real Talk – A Ghost Story

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Tunnel hobos, all hootched up high, think a sign's all about super powers, mind reading, clairvoyance, dig?

Girls U-10 Soccer Yakuza

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“Jesus Christ!” the man screams in pain, and a chorus of “Ewww” is heard from the girls' bench, where the severed body part has landed in a Yoplait strawberry yogurt.

Mistaken Identity

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Scott was sure his father was reassured by the sticky stains in his Penthouse; Dad found them when Scott was thirteen. Dad had just one issue of that venerable porno, which Scott defiled with his joy. It was not the Penthouse models…