Most read stories

No Word for Enchantment

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fanned lashes on rouged cheek a glamorous sea creature in violet perfume

tiny thoughts

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what if I die?

Going Back in Time: Song

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If we go back in time We are living in tents If we go back in time We are living in caves We are fighting over rivers We are fighting over fields Near the soft edges of slime If we go back in time Nothing would have us And we had t

MASS OF TANGLES

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I leapt up to retaliate when the clang of a distant door quieted my retesance. Shit, why am I so popular? I guess it was my turn to be thrown around like the guy in the Hotdog suit on the corner... Don't shoot the "Hotdog" guy... Please, please don't

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.

In my day...

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In my day, you could buy a polythene bag of cigarette butts for 5p. And everyone had a proper haircut.In my day, plumbers gave free vasectomies whilst reciting patriotic poems. And all the buses were red.In my day, there was always more than enough sex to go round, with…

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…

End Scene

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In the fall it is especially beautiful with the blazing orange oaks set on fire against a crystal blue sky. It is here that she frequently daydreams of her demise.

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.

Invoking Fire

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We talk of his time in the jungle.

A Straw Grasp

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My wife, Sheila, inadvertently clicked my e-mail address, too, when she sent her reply back to him and I read her poet friend's message that her love opened the window of his heart and she replied that his words were knocks that opened the door to her being, then I stood…

Unsent

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

To Zephyrus

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In a field of barley, I see you, ...

White

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This is what it is to feel yourself forget.

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 …

Go Wild

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

The Gallery of Wounds

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The blood is memorable/ as is the copper taste of that/ momentary certainty of lockjaw.

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.

Triolet

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the magic is our making

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 ...

1935 What I Wanted

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embarrassment

Saturday TV with Dad

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

Whither Butter Sculpture?

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Would we have been satisfied with a humble butter sculpture of a cow in 1960? Puh-lease! Would Parisians of the Impressionist era swoon over a big-eyed child picture?

Open Wounds

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Where the skin had grazed, shredded by the coarse gravel to form scabs, fascinated Jack. It reminded him of his youth and his own grazes, scratches and stitches. As a boy he imagined scabs were rough foundations of igneous rock, blood like lava pouring th

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…

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.”

Bag

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

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…

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