Most read stories

Cost

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I rifled through the bedside table until I found dirty magazines

STIFF NOW! The Early Embalming Craze Sweeping the Nation!

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Originally designed for para-morticians and pre-professional undertakers, the Protocol has now been certified and approved for over-the-counter purchase and is completely safe (check local regulations for sales to minors: not approved for veterinary use).

solace

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the frost has made all tender greens bow

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...

Hungry

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

A Little Idea

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I have reasons to believe she’s been stealing.“ “Stealing what?” “Steaks.” “Steaks?”

John's Wife

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Unreasonable anger, Each hour prescribed The house haunted with good intentions,

Harvest

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When the hay was ripe it stirred and rippled like water.

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

The Assassination of Sadat

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Just beyond the corkscrew slide / the President of Egypt was bleeding to death

Sacrifice on Maple Drive

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Sacrificial vic bleeds out . . .

just not working

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

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

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…

She Called My Poem Nice

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“There is no future in art, you will not change lives with flowery words. Please don’t rock the boat”

Xs and Os

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Momma pointed out our paintings on the walls, the signs we had learned, but when Daddy saw our friends, their wheelchairs, braces on their legs, he left...

Delphi and Parlor Games

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Ghosts// and the voice of God/ never actually visited you

The Sound of Human Lives

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The room smelled of an old rank basement. Boys and girls of all ages crowded the stage. The room was dark with only a few lights that hung from above keeping the crowd dark and silhouetting Chris on drums.

Assiduity Five

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. . . my situation.

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 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.

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

SYCAMORE STREET MORNING

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

Simon The Sex Trafficker

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While he was in there he saw another man walk in, five years his senior. He was ushered back by a woman with bare legs and a white coat, as if she was role playing a professional masseuse. He'd caught sight of the man's ring finger and it hand a plain gol

His Nightmares

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Motionless seconds turned

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.

The wooden man: 12 fragments for Easter

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The wooden man came to her in a cloud in a vision in a dream in a story. When he spoke, his tongue clacked against his teeth.——As soon as she woke up, she knew the wooden man was in her belly. She felt heavy with him, fatigued. All she wanted to eat was…

How (not) to Cheat

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...I’m honest enough to know that fucking around has never been accidental or unplanned. Every time I did it, even in the rock bottom throes of esteem, sobriety, and life, yes, even on the brink of suicide, I knew exactly what I was doing...