Most read stories

Ways of Making Love

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the honesty of bodies & the lies hidden under skin.

Why Your Choice of Music Matters to the History of the People

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Once there was a real honest to God holy spiritout there that was a gift of loving kindness meant for everyone to share; unfortunately, it was given to all the wrong people, or the wrong people simply stole it. Either way the wrong people are…

Return of the Lost Ones

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I'm working through the rocky pine cones so you don't have to. I'm stepping over the little dreaming people in your dreams so we don't wake them with our loud and coming loose footprints. The poem passes by like a heartbreaking train…

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…

A Life of My Own - 3

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My father seems anxious about my gender orientation. I grew up looking like a boy, acting like a boy. He bought dresses and girly stuff for me but he avoided making an issue of it until recently.

Things Like This

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I'm an older guy. She is still quite young. I tell her I may be too old but she giggles and tells me that she did the research and it said because there is snow on the roof doesn't mean no fire's in the stove. She proved it. Things like this. We excite ourselves,…

Figures in Disquieting Landscapes

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Tentacles hold fast to the small/ thrashing thing they believe is true// which, devoured, once crushed/ completely still, turns into shit,

Scar

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I stared at these meteor impacts, feeling far away, a lone sentient cloud admiring the scoured yet wondrous earth-of-this-girl below me, the lean slope of her side, the soft dip of her neck, the sharp edge of her cheekbone, the monarch wing of her eyelash

Everybody Be Cool, This is a Robbery!

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Wesley did not rob banks in Banning County. Wesley Roberts was the sheriff of Banning County; robbing its banks would have created a conflict of interest.

Isn't It Funny How Some People Don't Think They're Contemptibly Stupid?

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[VIEWER DISCRETION IS ADVISED.]

15 Restatements

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I arrange 15 restatements of how lovely you are forward then backward, horizontally then vertically then along the diagonals.

The Face of the Moon, And Another Story

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For example, I never noticed that the moon had eyelashes, not until tonight. You said you couldn’t really see that, not at all. You preferred the fact that the word “lunatic” sounded like an attic on the moon...

In Real Time

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

Beside the Pool at Noon

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he flies away past the green explosion, into the azure sky

Highway 17 South

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did I read that right?

In A Lightning Storm, Sheep Run Through Barbed Wire

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I used to fear things. The lonesome wind come through the clapboards. Dry hillsides rustling. My own skin in the summer heat. Rattlers. Lurking. Abandoned coal pits. Pa said I was afraid of desolation. I didn't know what he meant by that. How can you be…

Split second

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When people talk about the end moments when one's life flashes before his or her eyes, they often refer to time as slowing down. I can attest to this phenomenon during my final moments, before the collision: the song playing on the radio, the squeal of tires and flash of…

Life Among the Epiphytes

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Have you ever seen anyone die? It will alter your life. Because you suddenly realize that anxiety was worth something after all, and was a coin of the human condition, imprinted with hectic symbols, some of which resemble cypress, others more like Frankenstein:…

Looking Back On the Night That the Easy Went Under

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Where were you the night Katrina destroyed New Orleans? Oh, what a night... A week later, most of the city was still underwater, with hundreds or thousands of folks presumed dead, and tens of thousands…

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

About The Author

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Gnarly Berger was born in a guitar case in Istanbul. His mother was an Iranian singer from Israel accompanied by a Turkish santur player & a French guitarist (Gnarly's biological father) and into whose guitar case Gnarly entered this world, somewhat by accident,…

Building This Thing and That Wall

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The world has long since been bootlegged by madmen. The new invisible con men are the same as the old visible con men, hiding and lying behind their walls of lingering death. There's a weapon wielding demon hell bent on an insane vengeance crawling around…

Paddy Wagon

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So many are so sick.

Teeth - Yet Another Obsession

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The teeth I want must hold significance. Like the quote, “it’s not the destination that matters, it’s the journey,” for me, it’s the connection that I’ve had with someone and the story behind the lost tooth that interests me.

Strange Humidity

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The kitchen is full of old girlfriends. I avoid them. They are munching on cheddar and sharing stories I'm sure I don't want to hear.

The Museum

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Flicking through the sheets on her clipboard, Evelyn double checked the address with the mismatched numbers on the letterbox. Its mouth was a rusty, gaping grin like it had lost its dentures.

*cute little space bat with scissors*

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I AM A FIRE SWAN! THIS IS MY QUILT! YOU ARE MY QUEEN!

The James Joyce Piggly-Wiggly

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In Aisle 3 would you brighthearted find Count the Chocula.

Tomcat

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And, if you look real close, you see there’s a bullet hole next to his left ear. A stray one went past his head and straight through Santa’s heart.

this isn't what i was trying to write, you ass

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sometimes it's hard/ to leave the house in the morning/ when bed is so comfortable/ and you're so far away.