Most read stories

A Paper that Changes Things

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The dowdy woman in fart nailed the vim.

Birth of a Tiger

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He was instantly on her, pulling at her nightgown

I Am Speckles the Clown

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Food is silly. Eating is silly. Yet the camaraderie of sharing a table is not silly. It is sacred. It becomes silly when the jello arrives.

How Would Jesus Drive?

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Contemporary persecution of Christians takes on milder forms of torture like having to explain away something Pat Robertson said, or constantly having to hear about Fred Phelps picketing funerals because he happens to hate homosexuals.

Brain Cleaning & Repair

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You've been given some really cruel thoughts that are not your own.You've been given some really stupid sets of rules which are impossibleto follow. You can learn to manage for yourself. Remember who youwere before they told you who you were. You've been trainedsince birth…

Under The Tree

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There were echoes all around them, their shadows delirious and only existed in short spurts under the breath of the streetlights. They danced as their cigarettes leaked calligraphy across the night sky and she tried to trace it with her finger. He asked her what it said…

Girlfriend

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As a rule, she calls me whenever she’s waiting for her train or bus. ‘Hiya… How’s life-’ she starts off sweetly. Even though I should know better by now, I can only respond in the same old way. I’ll say: ‘Hi Kate!’. Next, I’ll try to te

The Hater

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You look at people and despise them all.

If I Felt

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If I felt like reading a book then I would read a book

For My Sons, a Poem

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In time, I will forgethow he said "smooshie" for "smoothie"and "eyebrowns" for "eyebrows,"how his upper lip dimpled when he laughedin that uproarious, wild toddler way.How he wheedled to be wrapped and rocked,after a bath, even at age five,his long calves uncovered by…

Divorcing Delia

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I held her hand through two divorces, I warned her that gorgeous Geoffrey was homosexual when she was oblivious, and I fed her children when she was off at rehab (four times before it 'took').

What you're waiting for.

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I figure maybe I’m mostly alone; they are all running down staircases or falling down fire escapes, some of them naked, some of them with towels, mostly probably naked though.

Ilex Cahokia and A Common Piece

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remembering Cahokia, a place we rent near the water's edge, for we dare not enter

Voyeur

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Morning's first blush, their world in repose. Sated, drained, spent; …

Lessons Learned

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What was so bad about other religions that their followers were automatically condemned to eternal damnation? The priests were so convincing when they claimed Christ was the only true way.

Nighttime Dreaming

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"You've fallen out of love with me, is that it? That you'll leave me for another girl, who has bigger boobs and fucks you better than I do."

Meadows

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The whole thing is broken. It's like an egg. I'm not saying this to get you to say something else in the sunny opposite direction of the tattooed scar upon my painted backyard scene. I don't really care. It's only on me. Not on you. I'm glad as…

SNOW ANGEL

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I do this when I think of you. Today we took the first steps towards you're never here.

you're a james now. here's what to expect:

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fetal position can make a man seem small. harmless. like the child your womb won't carry...

Yellow Dining Room (from The New Yorker)

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...you should pick a VERY OLD millionaire. Very old, and NOT VERY WELL...

The Shadow People

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Two summers later, the ritual began. Carol left her house at midnight, having served her husband and daughter a heavy dinner that left them caged in their sleep. She was like a thief working in reverse: she rose from bed with her husband’s first snore,

Mississippi

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“I won't live here,” Beth said, waving her hand to indicate the small Southern town in which they were having dinner—the most delicious fried chicken either of them had ever tasted—in a restaurant located in an antebellum mansion. She looked…

Liking in "The Scarlet Letter"

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like the dome of an immense lamp like blades of grass at the sweep of the scythe like a line of cliffs against a tempestuous tide

North of Center

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Paulette lived on the east side on Paulette Avenue. Mama dropped me off when we wanted to play Barbies. Her neighborhood was a little green lily pad in a swamp of blight and disrepair. A ghetto moat ringed around those three fancy blocks like a first line of defense,…

Boomer Tunes Pop Quiz

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If you're a Boomer, your brain is teaming with decades-old Pop tunes that you just can't forget. The real reason you can never remember where you put your keys? Too many of your brain cells are clinging to every last lyric to “Fire and Rain,” “Free…

Puppy Love

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That was the summer that Christine Nelson owned me. It felt like catching the flu. I had it bad. I was about to turn seven, and it was my first time, and it was bad. A love like that, I don’t know, it’s not a love supreme. It wasn’t completely cru

Crazy Eyes

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The kid with a testosterone chip Instead of a brain

'MY DICK IS SO HARD FOR JESUS!' by Christofascist Jones

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"Now, I'm not no Holocaust Denier . . . I just think it was a little bump in the road! Like Reagan said about Watergate . . . 'Mistakes were made,' and all. Well, shoot . . .…

The Need To Tell Somebody

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He just had to tell somebody. Anybody. So he called up his publisher, L., who agreed to meet him at Oliveira’s for a drink. It only took about ten minutes to walk there from his big duplex in the Elmwood, where he was still living with his wife among

Inevitable break down

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I went to a drum circle next night under the full moon in May, scotch broom and lilacs blooming. One does not inhale such aphrodisiacs without losing one’s balance. There were children of druids and pagans and stregas from lands over the sea, lands beyo