Most read stories

Music That Tastes Like Blood

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It is your music that makes me want to crack open my ribcage and rip out my heart as it still beats, to cauterize my carotids, and shove the mechanical insides of a clock into my thoracic cavity.

Tissue

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A tissue, she was saying - hand me a tissue. Her seat belt was locked and she was rocking back and forth in it cinching wrinkles into her favorite blue silk blouse. I can't remember her wearing anything else. Her hands were gesturing - on and on- an endless loop…

Capital Offense

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They can’t exterminate the poor just yet

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

Pen Pals

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Sitting together at Starbucks, we composed a long love letter which we've been mailing back and forth to each other, signing our name upon each receipt and returning it for the last nine months and it has grown to eighty seven pages, barely fitting in a shoe box.

Excerpts from 'Dispatches from the Front: My Life in NE Portland—diary by JENA RACHEL ROCKWELL (year 08)'

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I'm getting self-righteous here, Dear Reader . . . [hey! wait a second! this is my diary! what are you doing, looking at it, dude! Hit the road! Scram! Vamoose!]

Strawberry Swirl

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Keisha selected a strawberry swirl cupcake from the waiter's tray, so pretty, from the hottest, coolest, newest patisserie. Moist strawberrylishious cake, swirly pink frosting, sprinkles. Keisha was one lucky lady, scoring a bizdev gig at recession-proof…

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…

missing item #7

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in her bedroom, opening night of his solo show she is snapping her nylons to center the seam stretching from her toes to where the line disappears into the hem of her dress.

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…

Modern Teleology

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little curly moustaches

The James Joyce Piggly-Wiggly

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In Aisle 3 would you brighthearted find Count the Chocula.

Youngish Professor, or Grad Student TA

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Natty looking in his 2-tone shoes and argyle socks blue blazer with 3 gold buttons on each cuff pale yellow hemp or burlap necktie, of course with a blue shirt (never white!!) long mopish hair hanging on his forehead and a

The Blue Jay

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His mother hated blue jays, hated them with a passion she usually reserved for no-count trash who drank beer on their front steps and worked on their cars in the street.

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,…

The Lycanthrope Fun-Time Activity Book

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an elongating boy with butter-yellow flecks in his eyes, and skin patched like a tabby.

Richardson

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What is golf?

Deus Ex Machina

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He rolls in unbidden across the stubble fields / Old acquaintance astride a newly booming cloud/ Under sky an alien shade of strawberries whipped/ Her watch stops ticking out the rest of her/ scheduled breathing poses

The Bird King's employees

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The Bird King's advisors and ministers are a range of rusty kitchen utensils. They all observe a respectful silence in his presence.——Contrary to popular belief, the Bird King is not an atheist. His meathook priests do their rounds at twilight.——The…

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.

Vision and Conviction in San Lorenzo

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"They don't know how this formed or how it got to where it is today. What we do know is that it's not going to last forever." Said Edward McCabe to his daughter who hadn't learned to talk but communicated with her father through her agreement or disagreem

The Watchers

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Up at the top, a quarter mile south, billows of black smoke crawled up the faint blue of the sky.

Oopsy-Daisy!

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[This story definitely WON'T be appearing in this month's "Alfred Hitchock's Mystery Magazine"!]

August 1976 Jefferson City, MISSOURI

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"We gotta find a way to get high!" "Shh! My parents will hear you Tommy! Their bed is right above us." …

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

Transgressions

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Once you descend, the third rail/ hums its invitation

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…

Knott Travel

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The next post card was of gondolas in Venice. “Have never not enjoyed ourselves less,” wrote Sylvia. “Sylvia can be hard to please,” said Angelynn. “Those boats could use a coat of paint,” I said.