Most read stories

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.

High School Bards Face Tough Summer of Two-a-Day Practices

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Joe Don followed the route taken by an increasing number of Texas teenage jocks whose football glory days are prematurely cut short and joined his high school's Cowboy Poet Squad.

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

A Shot at Pool

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

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.

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...

Something for Seniors

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For Sale: Clean Depends, Never Worn

Anthropometamorphism

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I have known a head become / a callus, matriculate, stop / shaving, move to Vegas

The Nude Pianist: A Novel: Chapter 8

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—So much for a cocktail at the tender hour of twilight, he told the empty beer bottle.

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.”

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.

When Spectacle Replaces Ritual,

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The aisle, nave and/ transept twist themselves/ into an auditorium.

Prayer to Ray Bradbury

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Dear Ray Bradbury, yesterday was my thirteenth birthday, and I could not stop thinking of the Mennonite girl in the milkwhite bonnet, the squint of her eye, the twitch of her anxious finger on the trigger, sudden holes bloomi

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.

An Advent Cookie's Rumination

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The sugar cookie sits on the cold counter. Alone. He is cut in the shape of an angel, a fact which often causes him to contemplate the possibility that he may not be a cookie at all, but an angel. Who says he couldn’t be?

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…

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.

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.”

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...

Gastro Ad Astra

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He had a simple dream: He wanted to become a star, and not one of those tv stars because those die, those die all the time, and before dying they usually become terrible shadows of their former selves, vile creatures who exploit their own former glory...

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.

A Story

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The next moment is a convergence made from a single repeating sequence that disappears behind the voice that tells of it.

Hard-to-Reach Places

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Jody wakes some days with pieces missing.

The Last VooDoo Doll

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So I lopped off his head and reworked the creation...

Breakfast for Ten

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Chuck woke when he smelled cooking.

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.

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.

Working Girls

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In the summer when it's light out later it's my nature to linger a couple of hours in the park after work, just standing around watching the Downtown Divas working the corner, offering themselves to each male driver who stops for the light and I always joke with them about…