Most read stories

The Evacuation Queue

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The ticking must have gone on for an hour before Kathy realized it wasn't a clock. When the line finally moved, the rhythm changed. When the queue stopped again, she glanced behind her and noticed a woman in torn jeans and a filthy sweater tapping a heel on the…

Wanna Bet?

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I was always more comfortable with the ponies than you were / more comfortable with betting windows and two-dollar bills than you were

Oh, You Silly, Silly Putty

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Aw, cheer the fuck up. I'm Silly Putty.

Sugar

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At first we thought we could get by using honey so we all stormed the SuperMart and cleaned the shelves out of Suzie Bee Honey. First the jars and then the squeeze bottles, but it wasn't the same. Then Mary Sue yelled out “How about brown sugar?”…

The Year Of Kahoutek

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My father had a terrific argument with his wife, my stepmother, a flaming harridan with a voice like hydrochloric acid, and insisted on driving me back home to California.

Hanging By A Moment

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It's come down to this: you're a grown man afraid to face his own son. For the past few years there has been tension;…

The Works

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The woman in green doesn’t want to encounter the meter maid who is actually a man and so waits to one side at the newspaper racks as if purchasing a paper while that person writes the parking ticket (this city needs that money) and drives away in his li

Letter to John Berryman

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My dad was an Army Reservist stationed in the U.S.—New York and Texas—the bugler in his corps. He golfed on summer weekends at Hazeltine in the course of his career. I had seen houses water colored prettily within the lines on L.S.D., after noticing not

How to Have a Dinner Party

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sherbet is hard cash.

The Gentleman on the Train

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The gentleman is discreet, but his eyes wander from his paper at intervals as we travel together from London to Manchester. We happen to be on the same train and he happens to be sitting opposite me. I happen to be a size 34C.

i wouldn't give two cents for somebody to love.

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money ain't nothin next to lovin.

Fast

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Everything seems still, but it's not.

Four from “Autobiographies”

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The white space beckons-/ a blank wall in a decrepit neighborhood-/ wishing to be decorated or defiled

Today It Rains

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I chose coming away because here at least I feel good — and it makes me feel I am growing very tall and straight inside — and very still — Maybe you will not love me for it — but for me it seems to be the best…

Blood on Her Hands

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Only blood I got on me was pulling him over onto my seat when I got out.

Boxes

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His voice isn't familiar but his words are. He says he knows we haven't spoken in years and apologizes for it. I can hear him pacing on the other end of the line, tapping things and then a shriek of glass shattering. Really, I tell him, no need to…

let’s play hooky

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There is just something about a thin, white cotton v-neck t-shirt, he thought, as he ran his hand over bleary eyes and dehydrated lips. He wanted her, as always. But he needed just a little more rest. She pulled her hair back into a ponytail. It…

The Nude Pianist: A Novel: Chapter 4

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He arrived at Bellevue hospital in a straight jacket bound to a gurney.

Women on Motorcycles

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Do you want this, you ask, and hand me a blue silk shirt of hers with small yellow flowers. I'm afraid to say no, in case it makes you remember all over again.

How Josh Met Emily

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“Well in opposite heaven every time you make scrambled eggs the shells break into a million pieces, then you spend eternity picking them out of the yolk.”

Outside Thunder Pallets

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Carl’s peculiarity of toilet paper rolls is not covered under the Americans with Disabilities Act – he’s looked it up.

The Weather in Paradise

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I immediately felt anxious guilt, being the one responsible for opening the way for infection.

Chalk (Sunflowers) on a Sidewalk

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Okay, so it's not exactly the lost art of sweeping anything away . For the sad fact that no one searing Love endures just for us. Brown, folded Petals, yellows buttered over petals, I do not Wait to see if the floating moon Can at…

MUSE

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The bar was dark and a little dirty, and that suited Splinker's mood just fine.

The Arrow

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"Give it to me I said, you dip! Fork it over!"

Klonakilty

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Magdalena White Herrington praised the lucky stars who’d sent her the Klonakilty ghosts.

The Breakup -- I was Always Yours, You Were Never Mine

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One cold winter's day she met what she thought was the love of her life. He had everything going for him but his age. You see the sweet young thing was a lot younger than her. One might say that she had lived many lives before he had been born.

What 68 Years on Planet Earth Have Taught Me

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Life is not always quixotic.

THUNDERSNOW

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I know who done it. Them goddamn taters. I walked around the yard and started picking up pieces of the camaro, wondering if, from above, they’d laid the parts out into some kinda cult symbols or something.

Acclimation

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Before I grew used to it I would wake to the sound of the Amtrak whistle echoing down along the tracks behind our trailer park and wonder who was hurtling where through the dark night and across this wide Illinois prairie