Most read stories

A Man Dies

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The spirit smiled and held out his hand, the light in the room magnified and he brushed past the books and the thoughts still hanging in the small alcove, " You are ready now.

Happy Birthday!

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[WARNING: DO NOT OPEN UNTIL 'R XMAS!]

Pink Lipstick & Cigarette Machines

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It was that pink lipstick found on the end of that brown filter yeah, think it was an Old Gold

The Dry World

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drunkards indulge, addicts abuse

Kingfish

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Time stole you from underneath the goldendock. Writhing there, slick as a flapping tongue;lips gored, red, whose gaping could embolden weak hands behind the blazing buck blade, long ago pierced in your summer quietus, beneath the soft shade of a tackle box, as the…

My Dad was a ditch digger

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men sitting on stoops women earning the rent by working as servants in the rich folks yard

Cost

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I rifled through the bedside table until I found dirty magazines

Living Alone

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This morning as I stepped out of the shower I was hit with a panicked fit in which it became urgent that I rid my flesh of each drop of water that burdened it. Not quite like the feeling of being…

Move Along

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W here do you think you're going what'll you think you'll do running down this highway that you never even knew

Rocket

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The Chicago to Denver fast train clocked 90 MPH plus, but braked hard on the long curve through town, sparks ringing flanged wheels.

Tales from the Golden Age

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Fucking buffalo, the curse of the writer.

Hey! Where? Georgie Girl!

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Starry, Starry Night we slept, talked and did the nasty where I, in innocence once built a raft of driftwood to take me twenty miles across to the shore from which we ferried escaping my Father’s demise

Desert

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On a trail, Richard and I came upon a saguaro cactus that had dried in the shape of a human figure. Its arms were lifted and its back was stooped. I said, “It looks like my mother.”

Off the Grid

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The slicing is easy. Blade barely touching skin, flesh separating into two clean parts. A breath, and blood fills in the space, an old friend materializing in the shadows. I am redolent with hope and desire. I can't stop thinking of how he excised himself from my…

The Book Bindery

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In a mad tipsy leap you came up short and hard on the chipped stone counter Bruised and blue below the seams against the inside of your thigh. Your grand jeté a little too low, left you on the black floorboards Wincing in…

What Kiss

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The women were increasing their writing in the restroom. I asked you later why women only talk on restroom walls, and you said, why do men only talk on restroom walls? I told you as much as I could remember of what had been written.

We'll Always Have Bakersfield

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"I tell you about ten other men who want to love me and two I could kiss in the smoking room of a jazz club, you wonder if I’d love anyone."

Souvenir Des Choses du Passé

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Let's say maybe you're in a place your mind has never left, and let's say maybe it's Mississippi, and let's say maybe it's summer with kudzu throbbing green all around you, and let's say maybe she's a Sagittarius girl, standing in that driveway with her young breasts…

Sacrifice on Maple Drive

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Sacrificial vic bleeds out . . .

Olive Green

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Five years ago—or maybe ten—I clipped an article containing a quote that has haunted and inspired me ever since, and tacked it to my wall. Describing the success of diplomats from nearly ninety nations to convene in Oslo, Norway, and agree on the wording

Baffled

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It's a tunnel, you know, like the neck of a bottle, the tunnel the hair comes up, it's coming out soon, I'm an adolescent now, dammit.

just not working

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some days you wake up/ to feel horror/ wrapped beneath your blanket./

Shorty

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“They’re not gonna shoot him?” Rick cried.

The Story You Wanted

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For I would draw a diagramTo signify the things I amBut I think you know--Todd Rundgren The door was opened before me. I know that's not a good way to start out on an adventure, but it is what happened to me. I didn't see any beckoning light, I felt a crazy urge, like…

Every Time a Bell Rings

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I could feel the old house skulking in the shadows. In the basement I used to play in the dark, shine a flashlight on the angular black widows creeping in the corners, feed them ants and silverfish and flies with the wings pulled off so the web wouldn’

Australia (from slushpilemag.com)

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Now Ninalee gets up from the table. She starts to put some snacks in a bag for Janny and Benjie, and some storybooks in there too, to read to them in the park: books about trains, mostly, and there’s one with a bus and one with a car...

Context and Confessional Poetry

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I like babies and little kids, more than some people but goddamn, children's laughter out of nowhere (in the night, when you're not expecting it) is creepy. I don't like slugs smeared like nightmare goo on my summer-bare feet, I could do without them in …

Master of Puppets

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“There’s enough food to last here a week.” Ferdinand assured, as a dingy wooden cabin came into view. They were on foot now. He’d insisted on forcing the car into a ravine, using a heavy rock and the last of the gasoline to drive it into a heap of rusted

Manliness!! *urp*

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It starts on the Fallopian Speedway

War & Peace

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In the morning the fog boils up from the ground as I pad down the steps to the lake in bare feet. I stand at the edge of the water naked as a newborn.