Most read stories

End of an Arabesque. Degas

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Holding a bouquet of flowers wrapped in a tissue in one hand, a round shape that balances the round yellow burst of light that is her dress. While the flesh of her chest bulges forward and she balances as though in a holding pattern in flight.

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,…

Under This Cover of Quiet

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Originally published on Six Sentences:In a family of many hushed secrets, only so many years could pass before the cracks would begin to show, and usually started with the creative girls. Though her aunt had been dead for two years, Shifra knew the cracks the family…

Stones

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The manicured lawn rolls down either side of the knoll, punctuated with flat granite plaques, the occasional bouquet of cut flowers, a smattering of faded eight-inch American flags.

PAPA'S TEARS

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Darkness was fast approaching. I stuck out my tongue at Naya, and she reached out as if to grab…

Tabula Rasa

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When I was younger, I tried very hard to be myself, but it never worked. I'd close my eyes, wait a beat, open them and slowly bring them into focus. This is the new me, the only me. Never worked, not once. It could only last a minute or two, so I…

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.

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,…

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…

Forever and a Day

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Just an abnormal visit to the post office.

The Tribe of Women

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

Provided

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A man bows his head and crosses his chest before crossing the street and the rain keeps falling on his bare blue shirt and on top of his head The taxis will not stop The light’s still red as the man waits for the sign of the hands

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…

Books

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'Like poems,’ I said she paused and nodded her black mop.

The James Joyce Piggly-Wiggly

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In Aisle 3 would you brighthearted find Count the Chocula.

Getting Away

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Daddy says he needs to go to the movies at night to relieve his stress, so Momma wakes us up, puts coats over our pajamas, leads us to the car ...

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…

Supernova

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Ben had us over, me and him and his boy, Benji, to look at the supernova. Ben was always coming up with these things with the telescope. Jupiter's moons, Saturn's rings. On his wedding night he made everybody stop dancing and run out to the golf course so he could show us…

Tendencies

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Will he do it with a gun? If it’s a gun, will it be a short one, shaved so he can hold it against his head. Will it look like the photograph he showed me, black and brown. I told him he couldn’t possibly buy something like that from a Walmart.

To a Bright Pair of Green Eyes

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The sad march goes ever on. It stretches endlessly over an eternity of painful hills, as unnatural as lumps under the skin, into the deserted broken down streets, the forgotten unprotected alleyways, always adding more and more lost children to…

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…

Revisionist History

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A break from bleak world history and events...

the PC birds have come home to roost

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I want the luxury of hearing other people who disagree with me tell me why I’m an asshole!

Where's Waldo?

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Over his usual ham sandwich and skim milk for lunch Uncle Waldo used to always say, “Going out in the dead of night without a flashlight is dangerous.” But I knew what I was doing. After dark, I'd slip out and sneaker on down the path to take a dip in a…

Dear Friend

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Dear Friend: As a visitor to Wonderland in the past, you are truly among our most treasured friends. It is the enthusiasm for whimsy such as yours that spurs us to continue to provide perplexing chaos for which we are so widely esteemed, the better to

Downland Ballad I :Photo-disintegration

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Like a distant memory of past expectations I wander through past journeys, delineations chew on the fresh air like a discontented Wordsworth now free, free to roam where I will..

Ashes to Ashes

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Day by day people went missing. Reports of the ads being answered with a robocall solution to their problems were at first unconfirmed. Yesterday my best friend told me his emotional distress call was going to be channeled into a free trip to what he call

Falling

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Sometimes when I fall I see a ...

The Ritz

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After oh so many hours the eyes could only close only to view a Ritz cracker marching on a nose

Waves of Memory

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"Sometimes things just don’t go as planned. It doesn’t mean anyone is to blame - It just is."