Most read stories

Emma Louise

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Emma Louise is walking over a concrete bridge when she spies, out of the corner of her eye, a man fishing, waist deep, in the river tumbling below. She is thinking that the water must be very cold on this autumn day, when she sees an extraordinary thing.

Sometimes, an audience of one is enough

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not of time, but of all the clocks/ that tick along toward the end/ of all the possibilities.

The Canoeist's Luncheon. Renoir

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The artist leans back in his chair, smoking a cigarette after lunch, looking away from the table toward the right He is dressed in white, and he's practically stretched out his entire length, to relax after rowing the boat all morning. Sunlight

Fumes

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He was choking on the fumes.

Promises

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THE LAST THING I WANTED, expected, or needed was to be standing in the doorway of Carly Ray's room, watching her clutch a picture of her father, my old friend Beryl, up to her face. She is so tiny, but at the same time there is something very adult about the way she looks.…

Achieving Inner Peace without facebook

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There was an empty box on his facebook page asking to be filled in with, “What’s on your mind?” He thought. "Hair?"

Wire

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“We know you’re in there, motherfucker. Step out, slowly, and we might keep you fit for an open casket funeral."

Hello and Thank You!

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She didn’t think of herself as an undesirable, no, she didn’t, but did find herself cowering in face of the presumed judgment of those around her. They had more money, more clout, more everything.

Hey Old Lady! Want To Buy A Reverse Mortgage?

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Facebook just hit me with an ad for coping with memory loss, probably because I just turned 63. As far as my favorite social media site is concerned, I am now an Old Lady. When I asked my Facebook pals who are also Seniors what kind of promotions have been turning up…

Sniping

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Snipers wear camouflage clothing to avoid being seen. It wouldn’t do for a sniper to be seen because then the sniper might become the snipee.

Lost In The City

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They found it naught however as it was lost at metro stops, canceled appointments and in ever dimming light that failed to reflect what was instead of what could have been.

Shadow Play

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I read it all wrong. In writing her novel, I thought Marilynne Robinson was writing about twins — writing, in some way, about me. Instead, these characters, Lucille and Ruthie, were standard sisters, one older than the other. In fact, Robinson explains th

Only Temporary

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It was the middle of May when I found out my teacher was screwing my mother.

The Small Blue House

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She allowed him to wash her hair. Touching it in a wet state, running his hands through it in a soapy state, wringing the water out when he was finished—he was ecstatic.

The Apartment House

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Everybody called her The Crier because from time to time we would hear her crying.

Zorro

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Zorro lived in his mother’s basement until he could get back on his feet.

Hara-kiri

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unwrapping the gauze from her wrists....

In the Stream of Space Expanding, Eddies

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Microscopic purposes emerged// with their combinations and permutations

Raft and Rag

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A new philosophy stirs in its surgery.

The Ghosts of History

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In this lab, where I work 40 hours a week, live the ghosts of questions asked.

Honoring Heritage

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salmon sits gentler on my palate

Gifts for Bonnie & Charlie

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Jojo dolls & basketballs a mindflex & pick-up sticks Parcheesi and—no, not Parcheesi a supersoaker, a Care Bear

Too Early, Too Late

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Things don't always go to plan. Gem knew what people would have said back then, of course. She wasn't stupid.

Batteries For Smoke Detectors

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Crack open the roof-- raise the battery on a platform with chains up into the lightning

Cousin

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“The beginning was good. That’s what he likes. The moment when you’re driving in the open air and your hair is flying and your skirt is whipping up around your knees, and he’s smoking, of all things, and happy and looking at you."

The Star... an excerpt from The Exile of Gaspar

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The night is very clear and unusually cold. We are so near to the star that its light banishes the darkness that tries futilely to extinguish it. A small village twinkles in the foothills to our east. The cry of a lost sheep cuts the night like a blade

Making Time

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Sleep left him like a fragmenting illusion. Suddenly, he was awake, like something pressing but fleeting had awoken him. Once awake, though, all he had was silence and stillness. His pulse quickened, his…

1958-1961

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In those years, you and I were told to leap for a world suffused with sound and industry.

Txt msging

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Forty years later he was still her Romeo, she his Juliet.

The Tourists

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They acquire him in a bar that is famous for its shipwrecks.