Most read stories

77 Words Sparked by Insomnia

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Mice dreams are a reality ...

Bedtime Stories

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I want to read a story that ends unhappily ever after: one where the bad guy wins and no one gets the girl.

Sleeping late in Cahuita, Costa Rica

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The light of day is screaming, shook by the calls of howler monkeys, their low roar hanging in the salt, in the black sand riding the wind, as Playa Negra outstretches its infinite arms.

Name

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Every day, I write myself further away From the East Where we began

The Dog

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The dog is reading. This morning, as every morning, the book is open in front of him. Well before his master's rise, he had already read the moon then dawn and the clouds. Now the slippers, these that walk here and there. Followed by coffee and the pages that turn. A little…

Melons

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A baseball bat a large pipe a hammer and axe

Boats for Rent (Thinking About You)

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We're killing off the elephants. We're killing off the tigers. We're killing off monarch butterflies. We're wrecking the coral reefs. Big sad gorillas don't feel at home in their own homes. And all instead of learning to live in some…

Catching Mitt For Sadness

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He stops smiling and only says he loves me when prompted, as if asking me to pass the salt for his inner peace as it tastes too bland.

The Color of Sleep

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Have you ever seen a body of words give birth to a paragraph? I won't lie. It's a little gross. But quite moving. First there is the biology of reproduction. A blackbird living in an electric guitar, for instance, and its inexplicable urge to mate with an elephant.…

Playground in the Fire

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People questioned my motives when I became a smokejumper again. They said I had a death wish, or that somehow by going into battle against the big Pacific Northwest forest fires, I was still trying to put out the flames of the burning car in which my sons Jake (age…

Real life

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He bought damaged and used sex dolls online.

Secrets; Opening to "Woolgathering"

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Some of us, however, turn our secrets over in our souls, churning them with the fury of the howling winds of a January night. They are eroded and shaped and fine-tuned with the precision of a jeweler; the deeper and darker they are, the more brilliant of

Amanda Palmer

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Amanda Palmer's explaining the eyebrow thing. An altercation with someone at Roadrunner, or maybe old boyfriend shit to burn— She's animated but he's losing signal, filling in the blanks himself. Whatever, it won't light at first, and then WHUMP and she…

Mommy

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I miss her.

Angelic

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Remembering his body makes me think of Egyptian cotton sheets dried in the sun. He smelled crisp and clean even after sweating hard. His hair fell in golden spirals down his cheeks, his back, over his forehead, and captured light just like the gilded halos on…

Factory Worker

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Hits start, enters numbers, runs the program / Does this again one hundred times / Then takes a break

Summer, 1966

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After my mother died, my father shipped me to my uncle's. He hadn't told me she was dying, so he could just mourn alone.Lena lived next door, Italian, my age -- which was ten -- beautiful. She was watched by goons in black suits. Her parents owned a restaurant. Across the…

From Your Lips To God's Hearing Aid

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God’s hearing aid is missing And apparently needs an enormous battery But no one has the heart to tell Him because who wants to be shouting at God?

Settled

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Zusman snored on the sofa as Motel gathered his belongings in the dark. He moved quietly as had become his custom in the mornings. Initially he had tried not to wake his nephew on his way to work in the…

Possible Candidates for Reading to a Crowd

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"Possible candidates for reading to a crowd" the subject line of the email to myself read. You see, writing can be hard - or writing can be easy. But writing for a crowd you'll see is something else entirely.

These Gothy Days

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(haiku)

I Dated A 50 Foot Woman

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There was no need to drive. She could travel ten miles in ten minutes. She merely had to be careful not to step on any cars or trucks.

My Notes on "Quittin' Ain't Easy"

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Sorry, I think I was jotting and not writing. I see a dropped article that would clarify my interest. I purposely didn't describe my alcohol use. There, I just did.

Headlines

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He brought me flowers once, three wilted carnations I put in water, though the sight of them made me uneasy. He brought me pictures once, too, of three sisters—ten, twelve, fourteen—straddling dirt bikes. He touched my shoulder once, as I edited pictures …

Noodle

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Our painter man was killed by a bunch of snotty kids who were making fun of him. A gun went off. What is a noodle to do? He wasn't sitting alone in his world, anymore. Where was his famous straw hat? His trusty pipe? He desperately needed to smoke…

Accident Assurance

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They found your athymic neck/clipped like a bag of Skittles/and your lifeblood left a Rorschach test on the dash/in which they saw the future/and their own exits/(straight ahead and to the right).

Chancing the Moonglow

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It's become sort of a habit now when Elsie's husband is away on business two or three times a month that we take the afternoon off and drive nine miles across the river to Marginalia, Arkansas and the Moonglow Motel with its red, neon vacancy sign and although to some, two…

Accepting New Patients

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You've had some truly awful shit pumped into your brains for years at a time now. The practice started a long time ago. It's not always your fault. The only lasting way to get it out of your head is to go and figure out exactly where…

On Women

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She was prepared

falling, endlessly

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Clouds quickly appeared, in a perfect peach sky. Big, puffy clouds, moving together, formed the shape of a heart.