Most read stories

Rock, Roll, et al.

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She looks for the obit, can't find. Over and over, looks. Nothing. Nothing except something touching her shoulder. Follow me. Corridors, doors, along and along, no time to notice that this last is the stage door — she was so suddenly there in the blare and…

His Nightmares

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Motionless seconds turned

The Sober Boat

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I am my beloved’s Advil and she is my Aleve

Emotion is a Weather in a Basket of Clouds

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If you can imagine a ghost taking a shower then you can imagine the kind of emotion I have in mind.

Rentals

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You master their secrets. Mirror adjusters... Air conditioning knobs... Fuel door releases... Changing their satellites to Mojo Nixon. But you never really know them.

The Fourth Prague Defenestration: 11

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Many weddings took place at the foot of the Astronomical Clock Tower. One every hour, on the hour. It turned out these were set-up photo shoots for things like men’s cologne, brocade bridal gowns, and smoked carp. At night we wandered around the many

A Rough Dance

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A young woman is seated center stage. She is pretty, dressed in a short nightgown. She sits nervously, her body tense and expectant.

Father Dunne's School for Wayward Boys #1

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A young girl wavering between celibacy and punk mother-lust despair came to visit us each night

Dead End

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I unwrap my #4, the greasy smell wafting over my nostrils, and I pause, with the understanding that this will be the highlight of my day, and that I should savor the moment, and then I bite in.

Dump like no other.

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Their dump was like no other in the country. It was bigger than the rest. And, unlike their innumerable competitors, this dump—which sat packed with trash on the surf of an ocean—was organized with care.The Elks took pride in their dump. Three…

Blemish in the Blood

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Warning: some of this is true, some of this is not.

Dusk

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Her memory was a faded pastiche of the past, and indeed the present sat uneasily in the middle of the dreams that governed her mind; so it was that often she would forget the day, the time, the year.

In Your Dreams

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What did it mean? What would a psychologist say? Oh, who cares. In my opinion, we ask why, what, when, where, and how too often.

Clear Cut

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John held up his pistol and racked the slide to chamber a round. He told me that he knew a few things. He knew I'd knocked up Nikki. His girl. He knew I'd taken Nikki to the free clinic in Gresham. He knew I wasn't…

Louise at Christmas

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My brother used to hang a pair of panty hose over his fireplace before Christmas. He said all he wanted was for Santa to fill them ..

The Sway

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When it was sticky cool at night, he'd pull her hair up off her neck and spin it like a pinwheel. “You could be anything," he would say. “You could be a preschool teacher.” She waited for him to add, “For dragons! For wallabees! For…

Fatherhood 101

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The instructor moved over to the whiteboard and wrote in big block letters “FOOTBALL” and then crossed it out. “You should just never treat your newborn like a football. That means no passing it or punting it.

Hungry

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Why do people kill themselves with food? It’s obvious, I suppose. They’re hungry.

Love in the Afternoon

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“What took you so long?” she asks. She seldom asks me that when we’re done, but today I feel ready to protract the glory, to tease out its rise and fall like the lingering chords of a Debussy pastorale.

The next hour

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I allow myself one hour every two weeks. Devoting 335 of my 336 hours to her and the kids is beyond dutiful.

Cougar

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What follows is one of those moments, though to some people, it would seem a fantasy, perhaps a "Wizard of Oz" era tale.

IT BURNS

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“Again,” Danny said, and I hit him with everything I had until I was out of breath and it was his turn to hit me. We did this three, four, five days in a row, took the weekend to admire our bruises and heal a little, and then on Monday we were back up th

Jolly Old Nick (Black As Hell)

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A tanka poem about Jolly Old Nick being black as hell.

Thumb

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I’m trying to get this said, this piece of fact. If I am a person who can own something, then that something that I own is not me, not me as a person. I do not own my foot, my foot is my own. It’s like a whatsit, a semantic distinction I’m trying to

Tiger Lily

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4th of July weekend, Woodland canyon, summer heat like the Garden of Eden, lush, green, secluded. She lay by the creek in a lounge chair under dappled shade from the sycamore trees, listening to the frogs jump and the birds sing, admiring the orange tiger lilies that…

It's End of the World Karaoke

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It’s End of the World Karaoke at Big Daddy’s and Lara takes a photo of herself for Facebook before she goes on stage. She’s holding a basket of nachos in one hand and her phone in the other. After she takes the photo, she says, to Javier, “Hold these,” an

Blackish by Reason of the Ice

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"Sara, do you taketh it with your eyes?"

Nearsighted Singers, Your Time Has Come

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An old man in overalls with rags on his head known locally as Bo Peep made his way up from the black side of town to the white. After listening for a few moments, he shook his head in disgust. “Boy, you can’t play them blues.”

Rex edits an essay about relationships

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...it's about female needs, Rex.

Winter in Waveland

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They build them high they do in Waveland, Mississippi.The tall houses with their skinny thighs spread wide flirting with the dusky coast, like antebellum ladies petticoats lifted, stockings wetted, ankles bared, savingtheir hems from the unpredictable tide,…