Most read stories

A taste of competition

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We called him Mickey Habanero, because he could fill his mouth with the hottest food imaginable, the kind packed with the sort of heat that would melt the gums from the teeth of a novice, all without taking a drink of milk or anything else that would otherwise soothe the…

Sad without Tears

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Sometimes, to be sad, you don't need tears.

Betrayal

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My brother Herb married his high school sweetheart right after completing college. This was a girl named Beryl, whom he'd met originally in Mr. Reinert's marching band at York High School in Elmhurst. I remember one day in particular in the middle of the

Fulton Flapper

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The Italian was late. She was supposed to come into the store, meet him in the back, and arrange to take the last of his liquor.

Sayōnara

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He painted a woman on them, identical to the woman that kneeled by his bed.

Apex

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You left paint and blood smeared on the wall.

The Road

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we were traveling on wasn't necessarily going to go careening over any hill as fast as it was smashing into the blunt end of another cloudless hole like a cartoon cat chasing a cartoon mouse. It was huge like a stone wall that had its own…

Little Oddities

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The energies align to compel you,/ wave by field, charge by pulse, into/ an ever increasing circle of speed

Ineluctable

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I attended the burial of our affair when I found the notebook-maybe it should be called her diary-she had foolishly forgotten, leaving it on the deck of my beach house where she stayed while I was on that short trip to Chicago and I was numbed at first, unsure how to…

The Exhaustion of Dreams

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I like it best when I wake up And the wild rain of dreaming ends.

Houses Are Havens and the Outside Plans Your Destruction

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The first of the fires that started by the river in the abandoned mills were so hot they burned white and pale blue

In Real Time

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We are the same shits/ we were in the Bronze Age

The Ice Scraper Symphony

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Stay tuned for my next short - Candle Smoke Wishes - COMING SOON ON A MONITOR NEAR YOU!!

Small Ghosts

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the mother tells her child the flashes at the horizonare fireworks, not bombs, so he will not be afraid.at night he curls by the door or else he follows her to a different place. he is quiet, then. as if he knows the secret challenge.better if he and all the others…

The Cherry

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He then spent his walk home to his single apartment spitting up various textures of red, combinations of cherry and blood mostly.

Mercury Unbound - 5

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As the music concludes, I'm finally in control of my emotions . . .

What my daughter knows I know or some likely version

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He doesn't call, not even on her birthday. She doesn't mention it or complain. She knows she doesn't have it as bad as some, even in this privileged Triangle of North Carolina. She is white and pretty and belongs to what's left of the middle…

One Kiss

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"It was one kiss. No tongue. What does that even mean?" Lindley tried to see Leah as any other patient, "What do you want it to mean?" "I don't know," Leah whined, tears welling, "something, maybe. You know I hate surprises." Her sister was not another…

Spoke

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Laurel's new bike is powder blue, with silver tassels on the handle bars. Jenny's mouth actually waters at the sight of it, as though it were a fresh loaf of bread or a perfect, juicy orange. “You can ride it if you want,” Laurel…

Un Americano

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His eyes are wide then narrow and brown. Hers are gray then they look away, toward the back door where a delivery driver has walked in, carrying a tray. Nothing is going to happen today.

The Old Man and the Cigarette

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Flicking the cigarette into the river the man's face becomes soft, as if waving goodbye to the only real attachment that he has felt in decades.

Our Last Night at the Nunnery Motel 2.0 in Milano

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They make you work For your pizza in Italy You have to slice it yourself While wearing a gas mask To ward off the cigarette smoke From every neighboring table While chasing away the Mosquitos and the pigeons The flies and the gypsy r

The Next Best Thing to Dying

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Later, my daughter told me that she hadn't been scared because as I lay on the ground unconscious I continued to laugh, gradually relaxing into a big smile as I came around a minute later.

Mean Time

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between

No Homo

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We were talking in the dark in my room. He lay on a mattress on the floor. He came for a sleepover.

Things of Beauty

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The cover features Lincoln as a woman. Lincoln as a woman is not a thing of beauty.

Dear Poet(s) of Tomorrow

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you'd do him more of a favor to kill him, than place upon him the burden of such an abrupt change in travel plans.

Aisle Seven

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A young boy, breathing heavily from running, stopped at her feet, barely able to speak,

Oyster

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"Maybe…" he began searching for some comforting wisdom. "Maybe it's like this. Husbands live for their wives. Mothers live for their children. And children...well...until they're husbands or wives, they live for themselves."

Countdown

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My bones will rob me blind, corpuscle by corpuscle.