Most read stories

The Magical Thinking of Birds

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Her eyes grew wide, moist, catching the low light, holding onto it as if an imprisoned lover. "So you come home." I smiled. Was she playing a game?

Nevertheless The Plan Was Not Implemented

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Thomas Friedman was right when he said, “Much of this biodiversity in Indonesia is now under threat.” It had been this way since gasoline became currency; I remember bartering with The Governance for the newest edition of The Guinness Book of

...And Nail

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For twenty-eight years, Cochran Baines removed a tooth from the mouth of every dead child that spent time on his table.

Billy Strayhorn: A Short, Gay and Lush Life of Beauty

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“I don't have any position for you,” Ellington told Strayhorn. “You'll do whatever you feel like doing.”

Two Things I Did Not Know

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Their breath stank inside my lungs and tamped down the very minute amount of remorse I had left. It was replaced with contempt. Their fear warmed my cold sensibility as I steeled myself.

Anhedonia (excerpt)

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Things have happened. It’s a given. What, are you crazy? Of course things have happened. It’s the world, for Christ’s sake. Things are happening. I am consistently missing most, if not all, of them.

The Riddle of Steel

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This is my motorcycle. There are many like it, but this one is mine. My motorcycle is my best friend. It is my life. I must master it as I must master my life. Without me, my motorcycle is useless. Without my motorcycle, I am useless.

Behind Blue Eyes

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“You don't know what it's like, to be an old man, to be alone man, behind blue eyes,” he said to the downtown city sidewalk. The sidewalk said nothing. People with someplace to go rushed by him, not stopping.

Some Nature Haiku

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The proud, burly tree / Rests on the now crashed TV / Thanks a lot, nature

Roadside Attraction

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There is a certain stage of sobriety among men who drink every night. In that stage, they are their best selves: they write novels, fix cars, care for their young. Then they change.

Robotics

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I made this robot. Everyone was making them. Mine was a vacuum cleaner with a rubber jack-o-lantern mask taped to the handle. His name was Z-Bot2131F, but I just called him Brady, after my dead brother. Brady, my brother, had come out cold, and…

Quitting

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If you outlive me, she said, it won't be because I smoke but because of what you put me through when you quit.

Freeing Annabel Lee

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It drifted into the sea, I say, when you ask me about home. You’ve only known me for a few moments, so you’re not sure how to gauge me. You laugh, and make an Annabel Lee reference. The English teach in me wants to hug you. The New Jersey in me wants

Santa’s stuck

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The lard-arsed ol’bastard struggling soot-faced and yelling. . . .

Daffodil

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The Trinity boys don’t blame me at all. They know I am not stupid about the world. I am a robust girl. Nevertheless, like everyone else I have limits. I am a clock that winds down.

There Is Nothing Left To Do But Care

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He was the kind of cat who began lifting weights in the fourth grade.

For the Sake of the Boy

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Why does he beat you, Suraiya had asked one day, looking at the dark, mottled bruise on the side of her head one morning. Why don’t you leave him? How can I possibly, Sadhana said, surprised that one Indian woman (whom she’d thought once was so much lik

Upstream

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But home won.

Mind Games

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Rendine Philips polishes his courage and enters the fray. Not virtual reality, more reality virtuous. He feels the pull and the push. Electricity pulses resistance.

Soviet

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The neatly-gentrified Mtsensk District plaster buckled in all the right grey-painted places. The aged, yellowing windows rose and fell in fashionable decay. It was a well-upholstered citizen's slum, drawn to exacting state specifications. Local housing authorities…

No access to the Hollywood Sign

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The sign that informs tourists that there is no access to the Hollywood Sign is the most ignored sign in all of Los Angeles.

The White Cloud

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Like a small meteorite, a white cloud falls. The journey seems to have been long since it cannot spring up again, its wings being exhausted. Like a scared and shivering bird, it curls into my hand. Its apparent fragility prevents me from tightening my grip. A unique…

Clover Grill: A Short Story

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I'm somewhere on I-10 in Mississippi, barreling westbound at 80 miles an hour through a rainstorm on a late Wednesday afternoon. The last road sign I remember was for Beauvoir, some Confederate general's…

Other People’s Children

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Children should not be made to do things unless they want it.

ER Chronicles (3)

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In the shower she sees that her nipples are large and brown, feels the weight of her breasts in the hot water, and suddenly her hand is between her legs, seeking the pleasure that's always been denied her, always

Anything Again

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...she lifts one shell, sips a little, then swallows the creature whole.

The Hole Between Them

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Opposite the foothills, on the field's southern edge, was a stand of old eucalyptus trees, each one a gnarled sentry with bark like burnt skin peeling from its trunk.

Abletofly: Latest Drug: Read Before Use

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With Abletofly you will be able to fly and the feeling will be overwhelming! That’s right, Abletofly. A few warnings and precautions are in order, however: Don’t try to drive a car if you experience an erection lasting more than eight hours.

Sparrow Down

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There's no surcease from heat, no "cool of the evening," like the songs say about summer in the South. Those songwriters sat under fans in the Brill Building in downtown Manhattan.

it snows

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I popped open the wine with a Nike shoelace, a trick I learned on the internet