Most read stories

annah la Javanese. Gauguin

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Her feet are raised upon an embroidered green pillow and she sits naked in a blue velvet chair. Red earrings dangling from her ears, while a red monkey sits at her feet with one leg extended. She is exotic. A powder blue on her lips and at her navel,

Inversions of Pound: Canto I

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these tender girls tears recent / with stained souls, brides of dead, / cadaverous Erebus; unguarded ladder / long the down going…came Anticlea then

Sphynx Clara

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A brick from the parapet splat down later as I was applying a bitter healing powder, made from the seeds of watermelons, to my raw tongue.

Xmas Letter 2015

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Another year has flown, crashed to the ground, and convulsed to its death in a final match with the meaninglessness of existence. Decided to try my luck as a Walmart greeter this year but the apomorphine treatment made me break out in hives and I reacted…

Killing Dennis Gauda

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I killed him. I know you probably don't believe me, but it was an accident. I'll bet everyone in this room knows Dennis Gauda.... or should I say knew him? He was District Governor a while back. He also won quite a few speech contests. Yes... he's competition,…

Cleaverly Done!

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‘what’s the hassle kiddo, chopping meat is fun, come here and listen to the music of the chop, the sound of steel ripping through air, slicing through flesh and hitting wood, poetry I say’.

An Orb for a Better World

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Max sighed. Solving for x was boring, so mind numbingly boring that he didn't notice the flickering blue light hovering in his room. It crackled and popped, growing until a shimmering rectangle stretched from floor to ceiling.A hand pushed out from the rectangle, and a…

Tiger Milk ( Part 3)

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"Soviet Mandelstam rose like Christ from the Nightmare, Rises from the gulag, sunrise on the page."

Cranshaw Engages in Debate

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They were discussing reincarnation, what animals they would come back as. "I'd be a vole," Cranshaw said. Is a vole even an animal? Connie asked.

At the Brooks Brothers Hip Hop Summit

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I pat my pocket to make sure everything’s in order; a Starbucks blueberry scone to sustain me, a $50 Brooks Brothers gift card from my in-laws, and my “piece”–a fully-charged BlackBerry handheld device.

Grannies

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The four Grannies say, “GO!” and leap from the window. King's pickup is below, and he has lined the bed with his mother's throw pillows. Sundresses fly. Blue plastic diapers billow. They want cigarettes. I light their smokes with King's pearl-handled lighter as…

Mobiles

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My stories are ramshackle; they lurch along in old sweaters with holes and missing buttons, drinking from mismatched cups and saucers.

Conspiracy

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I was convinced that enemy bombers were on the way.

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…

Untitled Haiku from Japanese Game Show by JANEY SMITH

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It's a haiku. It's its own snippet.

Jack

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We’ve already agreed on a date when Jack posts some new pictures of himself. I have to swallow. Hard. In four days Jack’s become twenty years older! On Thursday, a boyish thirty-something was smiling at me from my PC. This Monday I find myself stari

Happy Birthday to Me

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Happy Birthday to me. It takes just a second on waking to remember, It's June but it feels like December.

The Green Eyed Lady in the Glass Café

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Is this sought sea dream of the Arctic fox? The green below the circles of the white, above her eyes? On Formica tables where the woman smocks beneath glass borders of their vacant smiles, they pass by windows formulating styles,…

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

Sold 2 Books Though

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Reading at Menlo Park Senior Center, old people falling asleep leaning to the left in their chairs, all in the same direction.

Story Story

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It was one of those sweltering afternoons that San Diego endures only several times a summer. I'm riding on El Cajon Boulevard, with my friend John in his old Chevy pickup. John is a lifelong San Diego resident and fanatical Charger backer. He's talking up some…

Ghoster

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Ross, I've been a ghost hunter for almost 10 years now and this is a place I said I WOULD NEVER NEVER EVER go to!

I Am Not Like All The Rest: Funny Lines From Online Dating Profiles

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After becoming single at age 62, I joined an online dating site. After a year of perusing profiles and meeting men for coffee, staying single is starting to look better and better to me. But I've stayed on the site, in part for the pure enjoyment of…

Low Dose Yoga

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Names are forbidden here. So is apology.

WAR AND MUSIC AND VIDS TO GO WITH

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I. Europa How else to begin but with Gustave Holst's Mars--the gods waging war in romantic twilight as drumbeats and cannons blast swathes in the gloaming and glory awaits in the halls of black smoke. A visual perhaps:…

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.

Sunbelt Winter Sketches

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Sunlight and the small wind/ swallow the frost/ on rooftops and windshields

1740: My 7th Great-grandfather

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a half-moon hung straight up and down

Global Arms - 2

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While serving in government, she plotted to change it.

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…