Most read stories

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

Jane

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Jane knew what to do when she heard murmurs in the ceiling, knew what to do when she struck out on the moor.

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.…

Coffee Foam

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We entered the castle at dawn. The dim light feebly illumined an array of antiques and medieval weapons. Bats dangled from the high vaulted ceiling, enfolded in membranous wings. What were once chandeliers radiating light were encrusted with webs and the ancient wax…

The Woman from Mecca

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We trade broken phrases of English, Arabic...

Hunting Season

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

So Twinkle Made Lemonade

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“Just how many different animals try to hide their nakedness?” “Only one. And that'd be us, idiot.”, Twinkle responded. “Then, why don't we mind sometimes showing our bodies?”, she then asked. Twinkle could see it was going to be another…

Sleepwalker

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I may as well have been sleepwalking. Either way, I had no opportunity to admire the moonlight flooding into the long corridors, illuminating the stag heads and painted cheeks of long-dead ancestors.

A Bad Year

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It's been a bad year, People dying. Some too close to home, Some too far away. I cry down to you, In your casket, and think you might sit up. You were not sick You went in just a moment, Looking stunning and alive. Not…

And so, like a kind of molting

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So for now, let the snow fall, but let it fall gently, each flake as a soft piano note

A city in the forties

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Along the hollow center

What I told the police the morning after

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Miracles don’t happen to the poor.

Esmeralda

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Being an uncredited bonus composition, written in the sublimest access of divine afflatus this poet believes his lyric verse has ever known. “In olden times, dark was not counted fair”: Those were the words, I think, of some old poet. …

R.I.P. Ann Bogle

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It is with great sadness I announce the passing of Ann Bogle on February 28, 2023 after a brief illness. Ann was longtime contributor and editor of these pages and a champion of small press and emerging writers.I knew Ann since the late 1970's when she was an undergraduate…

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.

Elephant with a little Poet on its Head

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“Every word was once an animal.”--Emerson This circle has been Broken. The mother has Disappeared inside the wounds Of gunfire like an Eye drop. Who knows if Any of them left, crunched Down, whole into the…

various verses

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in a willow garden lush shade/drapes dark the young woman's small house/with the lone window, the white door . . .

Escaped Poems

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Sometimes my poems escape. They crawl out through my Wi-Fi connection, I suspect.

Osama Retires

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Osama couldn’t see any reason he shouldn’t retire. No way he could top BP Oil in the Gulf or Pacific Gas & Electric in San Bruno.

Everything I Need To Know About Aging I Learned From Lilikoi

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Behold! Passion fruit!Aureolin sun condensedRolls off palm and tongue.Spurn taut rounded skinWait for wrinklesRipeness revealed, resplendent —The pinnacle of worth.

Arcana Magi Memorial Vol.4 - c.2

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Azure took the paper and read it herself. She wondered about those four mysterious beings that communicated with her.

Nine Women

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"Haven't you ever had some little thing you would rather everyone just left you alone about? I don't like to have my picture taken. Please don't ask me again."

Skin Wins

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One day, my feet and hands got into an argument. My feet argued that they were superior because they were not only the foundation of my body, but the cause of its mobility. They were modest in size, yet supported and transported an entire body that towered over them.…

Dumb Luck and the Fall of Empires

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At some point we all reach the end point/ of something. Something important/ if only to our fragile self esteem.

Go ahead

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Sit right down in the chair. It's a glider, see? Smooth and easy movement without that annoying head-swing you get from a rocker. And easy to get out of, unlike a lounge chair. Relax. "Reba" reruns will be coming on in a minute.

Beautiful Are the Feet: Part One

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Naomi hadn't expected them to come in such a big box. When the UPS man tried to hand it to her, she told him there must be some mistake, but then he pointed to her name¾NAOMI BROWN¾right there on the top. When she finally got off all that tape, she had another…

The Neighbors

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The first apartment Troy and Lynn lived in was managed by an alcoholic former army officer, who lived in the complex with his wife and teenage daughter. He was a lush who didn't do much in the way of management. Lynn had barely noticed him before Troy moved in with her.…

Déjà Vu Sur l’Herbe

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While watching the ever-present crowds passing by on my insides, I noticed, by accident, a man smiling who might have been me, not sure. Maybe I’m eating soap for the first time, because I am either frothing or foaming at the mouth. An

my love for you

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my love for you/ is like the falling snow

Voyeur

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He and she are fucking while I watch. She's moaning deep desire and he's pounding flesh into flesh. I'm fully clothed, eyes attune to their fornication, studying. He comes inside of her; their bodies stiffen and then wriggle against one another. …