Most read stories

Sparks Beneath the Surface

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If I should wake/ before I die,/ just shoot me through/ the one good eye.

The Beach

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The wind blows off the ocean soft and cool. I close my eyes in hopes to strengthen my sense of touch. A bit of sand wriggles through my teeth; crunchy and salty like spoiled oven-roasted peanuts. I imagine the air would smell like low tide if it wasn't constantly…

Santa's stuck

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Santa’s stuck/you say? In the chimney of course./The lard-arsed ol’bastard struggling

Chip's Bar

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Bill texted me at 3:44, invited me to join him at Chip's, where he was having a drink. Chip's Bar is a great dive, and I accepted without hesitation. Ten minutes later I was on a crowded bus filled mostly with fat people, and twenty minutes after that I was…

Every Thing is a Hole in a Thing That It Is Not (A Theoretical Fiction)

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A is a hole in the series of letters, each of which is also a hole in the series of letters.

Mosaic

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MOSAIC Your eyes coal-rimmed, busted, burned by betrayal. You and I, knee to knuckle, skinny with disorders and blurred around our edges. Challenged by our experience and the ash of past-love dusting the grate, the state, the…

The Replica City

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From somewhere beneath the train, steam rose, which was—of course—puzzling as the train was powered by electricity. The steam condensed on the windows of the cars, making tears streak across the surface. Perhaps that was why the woman’s cheeks were shinin

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…

black tulips

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the memories return like they do every year at this time

Sax Named Pegasus

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I was just sitting in the corner, stirring my stories with a straw that sucked characters out of bars.

Friends

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“Hi. I’m Rita Bates,” I had said. “Can I sit here? The boy who introduced himself as Thomas told me I could, so I did, and his friends all introduced themselves in turn. Around the table there was Bev, Ernest, someone whose name started with an F – maybe

ID

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He does not read what he’s giving them permission to do to him, just signs the release.

5 Narratives From The Field Museum (Naturally)

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5 Narratives From The Field Museum (Naturally) 1. The American wife asked her French husband why it took him 50 words to ask which pass they would need. He said, “Because it does,” and they argued more, each in their own words. 2. The child…

Why I Cannot be your Facebook Friend

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The TV projects from an insect arm. It has the face of my ex-husband, smiling and void. I like to set small fires and inhale them.

Wiscasset, Maine

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She bought a dog with short legs to make her own legs look longer.

Castor and Pollux

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Over the stained fence the spectres flew and that is where the rain was turning colder and colder in the time when the trees had become mostly bare.

What I'd Like to Say is That Something Special

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that doesn't need any words to arrive fully formed, or too many words to be believed in at all I should say, a little something we can simply send back and forth across your time and my space without having to talk at length about it, but being a …

the menace from prague

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...the dead have...communicated into the high tech microwave towers of modern Prague. And their messages now may mount to the stars, confusing millions.

Beyond the Brown Paper Bag: Baggers & The Bagged Items

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[THIS PROGRAM HAS BEEN EDITED FOR CONTENT, AND TO RUN IN THE TIME ALLOTTED.]

Dirty Movies

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He liked to take pictures of her, and she liked to pose. It made her horny, she said.

West Side of the Tracks

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The bus heads west on Route 36, toward the next stop – Howell, New Jersey. After driving ten minutes, and after crossing the tracks, the bus gets a flat.

Political Poem

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As if to ask if I'm okay, as if to ask aren't we the same two on this wet December morning as ever, as yesterday, a month ago even, she shoots me a look as I stand by the bed, then her sane mild brown eyes…

Assiduity Six

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"Every generation is a new generation, isn't it? What's so different about your generation?"

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.

Chocolate Diamonds

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with facets

Fanmail to Ellen Page

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You and I will never meet. You will never even know I existed. Even in dreams you will never imagine me. Someone told me once that your sleeping mind cannot conjure up new faces. It just spits out all the ones you’ve ever seen and that’s it. That’s it.

Quicksand

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At 25...

Everything You've Got

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I reach into my pocket for my keys and discover the cough drops Iput there a week ago have melted. Now my fingers are sticky. And I don’t have my keys.

9/11

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He laughs and runs just like the other boys even though he doesn’t have a father now, just his mom.

Ah, The Drink

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My mother was Irish as Paddy's pig. So all her family. Lovely people they were. Also, seldom seen among the Folk; stone cold sober. My father's family; Bavarian German. Bavaria's the wrong side of the German tracks. Frankfort people laugh at Bavarians as people in…