Most read stories

~switches and shade~

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  mis-placed       the change           she goes looking for.        her folks        missed another hour...          her worth-while spent wasting        the voice wouldn’t leave the leaves alone.

Noises

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Another noise, softer than the first: swish, thud. You are still. The house is very loud tonight.

To an Overly Helpful Husband of Advanced Age

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in which a man who is bored with years of retirement poses a threat to himself and others

the total compiler

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The idea of an infinite textual universe occurs in many places in the works of Jorge Luis Borges. The contexts and permutations of language, which others had held to be perhaps infinite (allowing themselves to use such an imprecise term), that…

Unsent

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this is where we end -- the exorbitant eye of forgotten days.

The Eyes of the Inmate

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The courts had scheduled the date long ago but the time, an hour always left to the warden, had yet to be decided.

Beachcomber's dirge

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...clash of gulls wend upwards, disappearing into grey night's high tide recedes

Ten Books That Have Stuck with Me Off the Top of My Head as I Make Them Up, #2

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#2 The Typewriter Inside You by Harmon Gentle—I found this one at a garage sale when I was 15. Intended as a manual for sharpening one's typing skills, by the third chapter it became obvious that Mr. Gentle's sanity had slipped, and that rather than mastering the…

Comic Superhero

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Andrew had learned the art of being a chameleon at school where his school uniform provided an exoskeleton. Beneath was no costume, just the fragile skin of adolescent ego.

Inmate Words

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in White Heat there’s a character who reads lips using a mirror to see the mouths of prisoners in other cells that’s how I feel when I talk with you

What's that on your glasses?

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The shit just doesn't want to come off.

Assiduity Fourteen

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Don reports everything to Uzma and Rasheed, I'm aware of that. It doesn't bother me. I'm not hiding anything from them or anyone else.

Destiny Narrowly Avoided

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Then it started extruding tendrils and tying them all into intricate knots.

Water Hitting Water.

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Jenny was certain nobody saw her when she took the slinky shirt from her father's store. It was blue with buttons shaped like cherries, the fabric light as air. She balled it up in her hand. Her father owned a chain of boutiques called Body Electric. The racks were…

Hunting Season

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A mundane endeavor depicted as a quest. Try it, you'll like it!

The Planetary Phosphorescent Horses

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sprang straight up to their full galloping heights roaming over your hills like constantly shifting eyes, your strange approximated illuminating hair like ghosts giving birth to a tender smell of green sea foam. This was all I saw, but it was quite…

How to Stop Doing and Be

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Monday will come soon enough to get/ what needs to be done, done.

Nose

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At the conference her boss showed off his knowledge of wines.

on the shore on the shore

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I await, here at Sandymount Strand / There's a stony bed and moistened sand / Couples dance away into futurity / With their dogs upon the shore

Storms

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Sirens wake me, screaming warnings in the dark.

Building Houses Out of Words

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I remember sitting there on the first unfinished rooftop, watching you building houses out of words. You hammered in grammar and punctuation; you said these things needed to be hammered in by hand. You drove the long straight exclamation …

Ways and Means

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the bodies of the poor become/ a simple logistical problem,/ disposable as any gnawed bones

Gossip

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Gossip Betty Martini divorces husbands when they least expect it. On a seeming whim, she pays a visit to dear Arnold, who keeps her papers handy in his top desk drawer. She initials here and there, signs with a…

The Monday Wednesday Friday War

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Ginny, the mother, was a lark in every respect of the word. Born and raised in central California farm country, to a family of lower middle class means, educated in public schools in whose bathroom stalls she was deflowered as unceremoniously as a pig ta

A Serial Killer’s First Day in Medical School

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To rival the professor in his knowledge of various body parts is impossible ...

Across US Sullen Teens Dump Family for Olive Garden

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"That zit on your forehead just won't go away, will it, sweetie?" she adds as she brushes her daughter's bangs downward.

Wings

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He knows I talk to angels, what he would call angels. I don’t talk to him.

Buy Me Some Peanuts

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The voice on the other end mumbles, not forming words, but I understand: I am to be the starting third baseman for the Detroit Tigers.

Revisionist History

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A break from bleak world history and events...

Legs Unwilling

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Summer bakes the metal playground slide to ripples. Still, kids line up. Sadists, all of them. Lucky enough to choose pain. Max feels it every breath, unwanted.