Most read stories

Beelzebub

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The jewels were dragonflies, buzzing lazily, Beelzebub’s hair a golden meadow.

Sleep Music, No. 1

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Now they are sleeping in a poppy field, sun-drenched warm afternoon girls lying on their stomachs and sides, faces in flowers, and flowers blowing, blowing. If this afternoon were every afternoon, the world would be cured.

Third World Problems: On Breaking My Kindle in Africa

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I blame the fucking mosquito net.

Down

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Locked at the highest rung Unable to budge at all

That's It

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I am heading to work. It's early and Clare is still asleep. When I hit the breezeway I realize that I forgot my keys. I walk back into the house and start rustling through the junk on the table by the door. After a moment I sense someone standing behind me and…

The Man Who Defied Gravity

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Let us be stranded in the Andes and have to eat human flesh or at least toothpaste to survive! Let there be an earthquake! Let there be a flood! Let there be a tornado, a new ice age, an invasion from Mars. Only: let me survive.

Despite Your Faith

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As the other mammals go extinct,/ we can’t presume we are immune// because of big brains and a history/ of belief in the control of nature.

Strings Go

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This woman is naked to the waist and then nakeder below that.

Shades

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It was the sodabottle glasses that scared Entro the most. Stubbled with scratches, taped with residual angst and piercing his soul with contempt he’d seen only on the National Geographic Focus Antarctica series - as Seals readied to mangle for Alpha bragg

Darwin at the Zoo

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This year we have no need of spring!

Ten Dreams That Raised Some Of the Dead

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Dreams will show you a life that might or might not be yours, but you better believe that they've got to serve when you're asked to come up with a story."--Frank Baron, the night he made bail and left town1. First Blood in Dreams Long Ago The…

Processes

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How to Boil Water How to Cook an Egg How to Eat How to Think How to Love How to Die

Big Al Dissects Literary Fiction since No One Else in the Bar could pronounce Aristotle

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“Well” I say. “What do you think about the dilemma of a guy who’s tortured by a history of incest and bondage?” “Depends” Says Al. “On who was cested and who was bonded.

The Loam

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From above we see the trampled grass circling the house. Trampled grass from where half starved alligators circled the house, hissing and issuing low moans. Half starved alligators deranged by the red skies circled the house in the late August of the last year. Beginning in…

The Perfect Plan

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They screened the thousands of mosquitoes that hatched, and found a few carrying the botox transgene. In a few months time, several billion mosquitoes had been bred, ready for release. Now to wait for that diplomatic flashpoint, when war could be declared

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.

Monster

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My sister, Bonnie, is busy with the dishes as I enter the kitchen; I toss the mail I was sorting through onto the table and look around for Sophie, my four-year-old daughter. "Bonnie, isn't she ready…

Plastic Jesus in an Upright Tub

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Me and Dale chuck rocks at it.

Nineteenth Century Noise

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The virtuoso tortures a violin/ in homage to Paganini.

Crack in the Cosmos

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There’s a crack in the cosmos, and pink is leaking through. There’s a crack in the cosmos, fix the sink, the toilet leak. There are many cracks in the cosmos, numerous. This is how time escapes. Good grief, they’re going to suck the cream

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. …

The Hangman's Poor Gift

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of placing the rope just so; of settling the veil with care --

black tulips

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the memories return like they do every year at this time

Prisoners (edited)

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This cell the sole certainty, all else steeped in mystery. Why should we be here?

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?

Mastery of All Thangs Including Sonatas and Piledrivers

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My old buddy Snoop Dogg saunters into the room, and we go through a handshake routine that takes over ten minutes, ending with double-backflips and some brotherly penis swordplay.

On the Bench (Matthew III)

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turn your face

Heat

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Flames dance behind glass

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.