Most read stories

Bag

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No chance for Hallo, we sank into an unlit station doorway and he fumbled through my shorts.

19.

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They made posters and hung them everywhere. With the passing days she became the photograph at its center: hair always in the same ponytail; always with the same smile

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…

I Wish This Was Fiction

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The convalescent home's common areas are surprisingly well-appointed, given the neighborhood, which makes his actual living quarters that much more dismaying. Poorly lit, dusty, stifling, the room reeks of socks worn for weeks on end. My nostrils burn, and my eyes…

Henny Penny On Why She Crossed the Road

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Ok, ok, people are forever asking me, so why did I cross the frickin’ road? Dumb-shit me, of course. Consequences waaay unforseen.

Elevator to the Angels

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I opened the closet door and there stood Eugène Ionesco lost among our clothes.

Flutter in Night

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Have you heard this yet? The daughter flew home to care for the mother, whose pump is still tick ticking—though now with aid—which means she leaves the kitchen when the microwave clicks on.

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."

Go Wild

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Sometimes you have to go wild; you have just to go fucking nuts. You do.

A Next Step

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The first night I met her we slow danced to George Strait songs for most of the evening and when we took a break, our talking went warm and well as we sat eating hot dogs and sipping beers until she dropped a couple of bombs, first, telling me she was married and then, that…

My Belgian Waffle-Hound: Song

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I was walking my Belgian Waffle-Hound Past the Belgian waffle shop I found a penny on the ground And did a tiny little hop I spun around and went inside The Belgian waffle shop And bought a little waffle For my Belgian Waffle-Hound

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…

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 Fourth Prague Defenestration: 10

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But the restaurants put pig in every little dish. You couldn't eat there without encountering some portion of pig. It was in everything, including the cabbage. Who puts pig in the cabbage? I'm asking you. And in the dumplings too. For God's sake, give it

1935 What I Wanted

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embarrassment

Have You Seen Me?

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It’s as she reaches into the fridge for the carton of half-and-half with the grainy waxy photo of the little girl—Last Seen 10/2/06—that the memory surfaces: “Hey. That’s mine.”

Swords of Rome

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Rome and Carthage wage war as Hannibal crosses the Alps and invades Italy. With him, he brings an army of barbarian hordes hellbent on reducing Rome to ash. For one young Roman soldier, Gaius, he is trapped between his loyalties to the republic, and to hi

I Once Knew a Sparkledrop

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"And then I, and I believe, I alone, saw this small child run..."

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…

The Bird Nests of Lascaux

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With their brightly-colored bits of found string woven into the walls of their nests to teach their baby birds what the worms of the future will look like. Somewhat like the cave paintings of Lascaux for early man in France, when hunti

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.

Chair and Umbrella, $25

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If white t-shirts are only an SPF of 8, she couldn’t even imagine what a white nylon-mesh umbrella on this godforsaken beach might be in terms of protection.

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 …

Sorry, Charlie

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Vietnam, Tet, and beaucoup Charlie

Table Talk

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Her voice gets screechy as she talks of the boy he was caught fondling in the bathroom of a bowling alley. The worst part: the dumb schmuck doesn’t even bowl.

Saturday TV with Dad

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

FWA (Fiction Writers Anonymous)

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Sebastian and Janice had been a natural match. They sought to deny this at first because a recovery assistance program was not a place to forge intimate relationships. It worked out wonderfully in Hollywood, but Hollywood, as everyone knew, was just a facade. So…

Pleasure (it was) after all...

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I'm gonna write about this after...It'll either be a tale of pain or pleasure hopefully the latterI don't understand how this workswhy sometimes I want to hide from myself other times I can just give in, fully,and everything isohsoheightenedI want it to be beautifuland…

After the Flood

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That TV you got me? Ruined. And the ionizer fan? Ruined too. All your clothes you left over here, all my work scrubs and weekend dresses too, soaked with that river stink water. I kept thinking bout all the dead creatures.

What Keeps Us Awake

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On Friday evenings they play Scrabble, a whole crowd of them. They use books to keep score, page numbers, instead of a long column of pencil scratches. They organize themselves into teams; the English majors all together, versus biology, history and horn players. She and he…