Most read stories

The Bombs & Blood of Texas & Boston

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Running into the fire, the smoke and the chaos; selfless first responders, innocent bystanders, and dedicated runners

When I Grow Up; Or, Why Teenagers Shouldn't Listen to Angst-Rock

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rockstar, moviestar, literary supernova – burning out before all the planets are declassified.

How It Went Bad With Horsepen

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You should never have believed your daddy when he said a man with half a dog was better off than a man with no dog at all.

Walking To Gibraltar, Chapter 14: In Which 500 Fucking Words Appear

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This was before the cancer, years before. He did this every day: up at five, before Astrid and Max. Four cups of coffee in the machine. A bowl of granola. Five hundred words. Five hundred words no matter goddamn what. Five hundred words on Sunday and Chri

Txt msging

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

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…

Dancing on the Rhythm Bus–One Night after Leaving The Pyramid Club, 1991

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The next day I can’t recall at all, a waste, like the flash of twenty years of my life, faces that pass you like comets in some erogenous unnamed zone of night, but they got me in some isolation room with my wrists in leather restraints.

Greyhound

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Published in Exquisite CorpseI…

Poem: Admonition

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"Why, before the summer has passed You won’t remember her name. . ."

How to pick up women.

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The easiest and most legal way to pick up a woman is to take a single, writer friend with you to a bar. While there, look for the woman you are interested in. Her? Are you sure? Okay then. Next, tell your writer friend that the woman keeps looking at him when he's…

Two poems

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I cut myself. Often. The bloodslice like thin lips parted/in prayer. life’s color drained to ashen/as the old world spins, pirouettes/like a circus dog on the back/of a galloping horse.

"Beautiful Boy! I am doomed"

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Beautiful boy! I am doomed / to have attended your presence; / time consumes us, but you / have changed so little...

I Was a Cat Once

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This is a 50-word story.

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.…

Acrobats

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What a beautiful day it was, what a wonderful day to lose one's mind. This is what you think going into it, that it is all a wonderful dream come true, and sure I'll have my hands full, but at the end of the day it will be worth something. If I hang in long enough,…

I May be Dried Up -- But I can Make You Breakfast in the Morning

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Our dinner was over and we regretfully had to leave the restaurant. She leaves with enough shopping money for a few weeks. He, getting the rough end of the deal, has charged more money to his credit card at 19% plus cash withdrawal fees. So I ask myself

An Orphan of Fire

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I break your flesh and make music on the harp of your bones.

Fealty

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I wander toward the midnight dock a neon sine curve stabs my eyes

The 5 Senses of the Apocalypse

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The Rapture comes and goes unannounced in carbonated soda bubbles spicing the air.

6.0 in Eureka

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"Shit," said the Charge Nurse. "Not again."

A Lot of Things to Tell You (from FATHER MUST)

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How long have you been waiting for me? How long?

Black Mariah

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The war they wage fills everything with holes.

The Masquerade

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Atlanta, 1990The night we almost died,crushed at a one-hit wonder concert,comes back to mewhen the club announces it's closing.An ancient excelsior millturned industrial dance hall,I spent three years mapping every dark corner, finding secret places for sex and…

Zoo

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It's London Zoo and ten minutes to closing time. The clock walks in and out of cages. I love you baby when you laugh like that at monkeys.Penguin and pelican, wing in wing, approaching. It's some bird act, I know. Two birds from nowhere. One flies, one walks.The zoo…

The Devil's Pass

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“Devil’s Pass.” It had the highest rate of vehicle fatalities per year in the entire State of Colorado. Everyone in my state drove like a bunch of stupid rejects, so I asked the guy just how many? He replied, “Four thousand for the entire state!...Nin

Only Temporary

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

THANKS FOR TRYING TO RUIN MY DAY!

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If you work with the public, you're stressed. Unreasonable customers. Demanding bosses. Reduced staffing. I love my job, but the workload is tough and getting tougher. What can we do to keep our spirits up?Play Customer Appreciation! It's simple. Assign a point value…

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.

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.

Windfall

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It turned out Eel’s brain corrects for imbalance, and he can only feel danger for a moment or two.