Most read stories

The Bludgeoning of a Burgeoning Young Artist

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There was an implicit understanding, made clear by Athena's gentle stroking of Freddy's silky blond hair, that he would share her canopy bed with its frilly fuchsia pillows. He didn't mind this, despite despising the color of the pillows.

Blind

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a dim wood-paneled stair leading to the ladies’ rooms, candle-lit.

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…

Packing

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I left Iowa in august when the air was thick and sticky. I had been there three years minus a few days when the boy I'd been sleeping with packed almost everything I owned into my car and waved goodbye. In Baltimore I had few friends and a job teaching English at a…

children

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today on the bus/ a man in his fifties/ smiled at a baby/

Leaping Through Flames

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I should have never gotten involved in such a huge lie. I was a poet, for God's sake, not a novelist. I wasn't used to lying.

M. Nerveux Chronicles: Toad Suffers a Bad Business

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Herr Toad smokin'

“The Confession of the Sorcerer of Darkness”

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A dark and mysterious account of an ancient traveler seeking arcane literature, and the miserable results to him after he receives what he sought.

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…

Sunset

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Behind the bellicose façade lay a soft, compassionate soul. He sat within a swirl of rosy twilight hues, buoyed by the gently creeping tide. A dark wall approached and he mechanically spun and began stroking into the glassy canvas of light and ocean that lay between him…

A Poem for Chris Toll

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we all die from the bottom up

before Creation

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Before Genesis, digesting the primordial soup.

Wild Origin

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Seeking your will, instead we found, somehow, a clutch of our own documents; folded under a rubber band gone to rot, muddy strands nestled in the creases.

The Tribe of Women

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One can’t predict the final cadence of one’s life.

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…

The perfectly banal postcards...

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“There are so few uses for Crisco, that to keep it in the house seems an unnecessary temptation,” said my health teacher.

sabotage

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people keep trying to get me/ "out of the house"./ they see fun in me, and cool in me,/ and want to spend time with me,/ and i am flattered most sincerely./

The Girl I Danced With Is Now A Man

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You can't always be everything you were expected to be

young salesman

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When I was young I bowed with such forgotten politeness, a young salesman, enchanting, in the silken trades. But I remembered the sun also when it was in Hades, which had forgotten to set, or to rise. Peace, also, dangled there by the neck. Such a pre

Two Takes on a Flickering Moth

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Take 1. The Love Letter to an Unspoken Name Well we're beyond our appointed Moment now. We must step On what's left, alone, but That begs some explanation to These days that pinball between Stars and to the sad dreamers…

our notorious youth

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Be aware the dog is king, radiant, emitting many beams, renewed by and restored by his fullness, his satiety. In many ways underlying all our hearts and minds, out of our notorious youth, ever the flower of our flesh on fire like a little reed next to the dried…

Dinner with Someone Who Fucks Someone Else

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say no / to me / and devastate me / and I will take it / as god's will / to drown me / in a vat / of my own / entrails

Light

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"You gonna be old before you're old," my father had told her.

Perfect Lady

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The Tea Party member was married but cuter. He worked as a caulker, a tub and basin man.

Perilous Joy

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...bush tail beside him his closest comfort next to the genes...

I Am Quantum

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He had a lean build, except, remarkably, his midsection was perfectly barrel-like. As if he kept an alien lifeform in his belly, cultivated by years of Pabst and Yuengling transfusions.

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!

The Judge's Wife Part 8

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—You're convinced I'm crazy. I'm convinced you're incompetent.

Morning and Arachnophobia

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...Rabidosa rabida- no spinner/ of webs but a quick and cunning solitary hunter. Anxiety overwhelmed

Faces of Death Revisited

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He looks outside, sees everything disappearing like crumbing cookies into what appears to be a giant mouth.