Most read stories

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

Tales from the Golden Age

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Fucking buffalo, the curse of the writer.

Faceless

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The sting of a slap will be remembered, as will sex, or at least a fragment of it, such as the face of a man in your room who tied your hands with the belt of your plush terry bathrobe.

Happy Birthday Mr. Watterson, Wherever You Are!

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Bill Watterson isn't just the creator of the world's best comic strip. According to the book “Looking for Calvin and Hobbes,” a biography of the elusive and reclusive cartoonist, Watterson is also a world-class introvert. Watterson refuses to make…

Ode to Flannery O'Connor

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Gert sat in the car and wiped at the inside of the window while the defroster blasted at full strength. The shards and slivers of ice that networked across the windshield were just thick enough to hinder visibility. Bane wrenched the door open and shoved

A Shot at Pool

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New waitress/bartender draws my attention to bare ankles and red hair

Hollywood Stars

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Your Uncle Howard and I listened to Dutch Reagan re broadcast big league baseball on WHO Radio when we were little. He'd call the play action off the wire complete with sound effects. The son of a bitch turned out to be a Republican...

whispered boat

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word boat

Hard-to-Reach Places

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Jody wakes some days with pieces missing.

The Tamarack Swamps

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Last night, in a tavern called Wits End, we dropped quarters into a console, sized and shaped like an old TV.

SYCAMORE STREET MORNING

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"S- E- X -- ever heard of it?"

Burger King Blues

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Read signs sometimes and you just might get where you're trying to go. When Eddie suggested they stop for a Whopper, Dennis said no. "Fuck Burger King, man. Let's get that Wendy's up there." They got…

The Cake Forest

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They look like amateur beavers, all twenty-seven of them on their knees, gnawing through frosting bark. My wife is taking notes on a huge purple flower, listening to the kids as they shout out what tree corresponds to what flavor.

Venison

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It is hunting season in Jersey today. They say “There are too many deer in Jersey today.”

I-35W

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my world cracked

Virgin

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Steven was a hollow tree of a man — outwardly normal for a tired fortysomething, but empty inside. He lived alone in an old farmhouse that reeked of decomposition and Lysol, the previous tenant having left a dozen skinned raccoon carcasses in the attic.

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...

Interview with the Cat

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As part of an online writers ”interview” series, I decided to deviate a little from the norm and do my first interview with our housecat, while I await my first ever conversation with an actual human.

Begonia {part two}

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perhaps because they were holding hands and sharing tears; perhaps because the moon shone so brightly; perhaps for no reason at all; but both the Coriander and Isabella felt a surge of hope so strongly that both smiled a genuine smile.

A Special Assignment

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In the graph of life or death, two axes will inevitably meet. Will it be as jarring as two sharp and well-hewn axes colliding?

We Are Waiting For The Wolves

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You say we will go together to the park and dig a shallow grave and atone for everything we ever did by breathing soil deep into our lungs, and the wolves will leave.

Past Due

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When Mr. Hawk died, he discovered something. Heaven was like being the library forever. Hell was like being in the library forever. Only one of those places had Ava Gardner.

Of Tongue and Cheek

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Our beautiful currencies and stamps/ disappear into the digital vortex/ of accelerated appetites.

Nostradamus

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the start of what you predicted

My Father Teaches Me To Drink Straight Shots

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of Jim Beam when I was maybe fifteen. Or anyway old enough to admire the lesson.

Love Thy Neighbor

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The summer I turned fourteen I wanted a job so I could start saving for a car. Actually, I had a job, but it wasn't much. Seventy-five cents…

To Really Hear

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He's driving in the Sierra Nevada with his wife and their small daughters and the girls are fighting and he can't take much more of it.

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.”

The Subsequent Ferocious Silence Is

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just another torn & burning journeyflag for the rebel heart. All we know forsure is that dancing among the toads andcrickets takes a bit of courage. Beauty takesreal living guts these days. Laughing takes guts,too. Living takes love. Love is feeling. What'dyou think I…

Luce

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Lucy shrugs into the corner of the train's seat. She envelopes her IPod in both hands as if she's praying or holding a conch shell: safe, secure like when she visited a Morcombe beach in the school holidays. The only giveaway's the white headphone cord.