Most read stories

Crossties

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Regrets lined behind him like crossties on a railroad track.

Epiphany on a July Morning

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It's that day in July when you feel really bummed because you can't find your favorite white sleeveless shirt that you wear on the hottest days of the yea

Theater of War

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We became The World Famous Shadow Puppet Theater because we thought that the best way to become world famous was to act as though we already were.

How it all started

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I heard this story from my grandmother who heard it from her grandmother who heard it from an uncle, who was a monkey.

My Piper Laurie

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Eddie meets Sarah Packard, a “college girl” played by Piper Laurie. She walks with a limp, a fact Eddie doesn’t notice at first because she’s sitting down at a diner table in a bus station. She’s alcoholic and writes poetry.

Kickstand

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Past the pavilion, past the factory, past the underside of the bridge where the surfers jimmy their sloppy fingers over the oil barrels.

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…

Samantha’s Note to Her Husband

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By February, I had decided, That you'd tear out my throat every morning if it meant your favorite song would play from my neck.

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.

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.

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,

THE RICH RIVER

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I must have been six years old at that time, but the events of…

Estella

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Everyone loves a story of love unrequited. But what about the stories of the unrequited lovee?

Valhalla After Dark

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In traffic I cry bloody murder, but my bloodlust subsides once I'm in Valhalla. Chip Whitehead wants to see me on the 22nd floor before I start my shift. Charlie and the other suits have been looking at me funny since I sent Chip a memo suggesting the recession…

Storm and Shelter

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Sometimes one person's shelter is another person's storm.

Let the Others Drool

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They are all sleeping, but I know better. I will keep watch and if he comes tonight I will be alert and ready. When he arrives he'll see the slack mouths, the graceless sprawls, hear the grunts, snorts and snores of the other women and then he'll sense me. My eyes will…

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…

A Little Load of Paint

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Cézanne sags during a moment of paint. There is an umbrella in the room whose surface collects his thoughts. Outside, in the rain, the grass and garden smell strongly of spring. Fruit litters the table. Light through the window writhes in conversation with shape and…

match point

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two roses her eyes aqua-blue no, blue-green

The Gruden

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"Who’s John Gruden?"

black tulips

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the memories return like they do every year at this time

I’m Afraid You May Have Made Some

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awfully evil decisions upstairs in your head that could come back to haunt you in your later years;I'm here to report your zooming about hair isn't really one of them. You have found the infernal wheel works in all four directions at once. Good for you.…

WARNING: I Brake for Plastic Shopping Bags

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"...innocent butterflies of pollution trapped and entangled,"

Visions On The Beach

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I walked along the beach today, and there I saw them all; including the latest lost: little Tiven, Tommy, Michaela & my Paul. Grandma painted at her easel, set upon the dune. Uncle Eddie bent in half, laughing like a loon, Oliver growled…

Not Calculable

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saw the world was a mess I did nothing about it, poured myself some apple juice

Text Adventure

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Twenty-two tornadoes tore through Toronto, spiraling steel and stone to the streets where she stood, texting her best friend.

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.

Smoke and Stars

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as distant lights all must shiver before joining in a Milky Way river

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,…

Geode

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There is a rock somewhere with the truth of the sky in it, the glitter of otherworldly charms that falsify the ugliness of the literal.