Most read stories

One Sick, Two Sick, Red Sick, Blue Sick

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I found a diseased fish / wedged between some boulders near the pier

Bunking off

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He looked like a black paper doorway pasted onto a painting of summer.

Sinking to the beat

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I'd wear my pajamas too, fitting for the big sleep

Those Things

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For me, it was that kind of moment. I got to come back. I had been here before and now, well now, I could come back. I had a chance to do it all again, bigger, better and well, just better. I hoped I could remember all that I learned the first time.

Style Shifts

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Style Shifts “Oh, yes, my cousin. We were rude boys until the armed gangs started to gather. Used to be we could pass a night driving, playing our songs, acting tough. Yeah. We'd mouth off, flash some teeth, spark some anger when we felt like it. We…

Recipe for the Broken

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This poem first appeared in “Walt’s Corner” of The Long Islander, founded by Walt Whitman in 1838.

16 Rules to help you become a Writer

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Get comfortable with criticism

The Centre of the Universe

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"Look Emily, I’m charging your solar powered calculator and helping you relieve your dependence on foreign oil."

Misunderstood, Meet Cynical.

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The blaring scream from my alarm clock suffices as my wake-up call. It disrupts me from my dream state that I so rarely get the privilege to experience any more. I've always loathed that alarm clock, so I turn it off in the most sensibly aggressive manner I know how: just…

MOTHER MOUSE AND HER BRATS

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Oh, you aren't going to lecture us, for heaven's sake?

Girl in 'Nam (Part 2)

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A life in NYC was one I always dreamed of but I found myself turning into a bitter, sarcastic person who was losing the ability to see the silver lining in just about anything.

Folk Music Returns to Roots, But Some Try to Keep Them Buried

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“Sandy likes the way Bob spanks, when he’s done she gives him thanks."

Illinois Route 3

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If this road could answer I would ask her what it is like to follow the path of the rippleshimmery river for too many miles through the slowly ghosting towns and the corncovered landscapes of the dying Midwest

My Uncle's Last Day in Hospice

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In and out of morphine dreams, he flies through the unfinished roof of Illinois sky. Below, matchbox-sized farm machines. A silo becomes his father's thermos, the silver-capped tower from which he stole sips at ten, his first secret. Back …

Trajectory

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Soon the world is on film that is burning.

Peanut Time

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A peanut, who knoweth

Deer People

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There was no provision for keeping the post on the door, but I did not have the fingernails to pry it off.

The letter.

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I am useless. A freak. Different. They all hate me now. All except you, of course. You will never leave me. Never. I'd kill them all if I could. Every single one. But twenty-four, that's a lot even for me. I'm so sick of the cliques; the special groups and hastily strung…

Cancer Always Calls Collect - Part 2 - Dear Santa

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We all know that sometimes miracles happen and sometimes they don't. Some days are good and some days go by slowly as the fatigue sets in and he realizes that he is fighting cancer.

Falling Towards Oblivion Avenue

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At some point, you care/ just enough to wake each morning,

Saturday TV with Dad

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By the sixth - Dizz, Falstaff buzzed - Croons - The Wabash Cannonball

Love Story

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You are a warm winter Despite the presence of snow

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.

Natural History

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It sits up tall on its hind legs to take in all of whatever this is, big and bluer than the sky, death's own taxicab parked on its doorstep.

Oopsy-Daisy!

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[This story definitely WON'T be appearing in this month's "Alfred Hitchock's Mystery Magazine"!]

Substitution

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Once there was a man who wrote in code. He was comfortable among substitutions

Sensation

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She could see him doing these things but she could not hear him.

Ichthyology

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The doctors said, when she was born, that the gills would eventually fade away on their own. Nothing to fear, they said; no more unusual than the rare child born with a tail, or a dense pelt of fur, or a single sharp tooth jutting from its new pink gums.

Prelude to a Love Story

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Slipping into the Sydney Harbour Tunnel like a nocturnal creature fleeing the light, tears stream down my cheeks, spilling from my lips, the pain too great to care about self-preservation. Drunk still, hands clenched, I strain to focus on the world fading into a blur of…

It's Part of the Plan

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...and on the eighth day