Most read stories

Five Million Yen: Chapter 15

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There was a motley assortment of customers in the restaurant. Mostly casually dressed young men and women who looked like freelancers of some persuasion.

Sometimes You Wait.

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Sometimes you wait by the mailbox and he doesn't come. It doesn't come, the letter, the talisman from another world you've been waiting for, and you give up. You finally open…

I want to hear the man talk

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I remember going out to a restaurant with some guy and a friend of mine who brought her little boy along. And suddenly her boy said, “I want to hear the man talk.” Well, that stopped us. Smart kid, I thought. He was fed up hearing her women friends talk

John Brigham's Dog

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Every day from my window I saw John Brigham's dog making its way across my field. The dog picked carefully through the shorn corn stubble taking the same route, I'm guessing, it took when the stalks made a shaded rustling forest. There is a narrow path…

this was very symbolic

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I remember this vivid dream I had once. Maybe you were in it? I’m not sure. There was a gang of spitting men outside this bar, standing beside a whole row of gleaming motorcycles, with tons of chrome, and I remember my dreams were their feathers. They

Tea Time Story

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She smiled at him. "You want to know the secret, that's why you want her to tell - not because you want her to be happy."

Who Set Off the Liberal Detectors?

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I sense that I may have won a few hearts and minds with my stirring peroration. "Can I get anybody a Republican Party beer koozie to take home?"

Leaving Home

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it is heavier than it looks with edges smoothed by the passage of time

The Nude Pianist: A Novel: Chapter 13

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Tuesday morning while Frank was in Dr. Jawarski’s office, Michiko was sitting in the waiting room of a gynecologist’s office.

The Hostage

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My mother should have been a minister or a peace officer. Instead, she was a homemaker who ran the home like an agency. There were certain hard and fast rules.

Nothing Much

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As a boy, he had little hope of ever becoming anything.

Stroke One, Stroke Two, Stroke Three

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On Monday, May 7, 2018, at the age of 67, I had a stroke.

Shaken not stirred

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The warmth of the sun

Arcana Magi Memorial Vol.4 - c.5

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Azure understood now. She felt it there as she remembered what she told Sora after her ordeal with the domed creature.

A meditation on mint tins

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And I am reminded of river eyes: The summer we slumbered, Like mummies in the sand

A Storm A-Brewin'

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"I'm just saying," the older man continues, "We oughta be ready in case she hits." "We'll be fine," the woman says. "We've weathered every storm that's ever come through here just fine."

Moai

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Rain and wind and the pecking of birds

The Devil’s Troubadour

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The Devil’s laugh was the screech of wind. Ignacio Carillo heard Him as he dug the grave that would hold the body of his beloved wife.

Into the Mystic

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Writing opens doors to perception. For example, the glockenspiel smells of gardenias, but the catwalk is opening a can of Franklin stove. It emits fumes of fairyland and olive. And in the green and pleasant country of Scotland and England, vintage trains go…

End of the Cloud

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Somewhere between the bleating of sheep And the laying of eggs Comes the licking of frosting And the eating of the cake We’re not young enough To know everything anymore And you may think there’s no rush But I know this There’s a limit t

Of Roses and Hyacinths

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The blooms are practical/ and cannot see themselves

The Black Madonna

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They say I am filthy. On this high pillar I perch like a stuffed avian relic, flightless, no prey. The horizon before me is broken by scuff and foreign tongue, by atomized evil. Pleas, and there are many, are answered by the only prayer I know, the one prayer, which…

The Donkey

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Since dawn doesn't understand my words, I will give them to the donkey, finely cut for him, let them ferment some time and add a few sprigs of lucerne. The donkey grazes in the meadow down the road and always welcomes me with a grin that displays his mauve gums and his…

Us Kids in Left Field

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Us kids in left field steal out bedroom windows after dark to pinch hit Lucky Strikes between first and second fingers, arc the glow of shop-lifted hot-boxed cigarettes over the chain link homerun fence sprawl on perfectly ridiculous grass passing a bottle…

Notebook (excerpt)

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I try as much as I can to write but only in as much as you believe―am I successful.

The Writing Class

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I ask if anyone has a poem or a story they would like to read. Everybody's hand shoots up.

The Form of a Cyclist

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His legs were pedaling hard and his heart was beating fast, He's got his scars; He can't outrun his past, Down the hill he goes, wind whipped his hair, a new style with each draft. He broke his brakes long ago; He cut the cable and ripped off the pads. He cried…

Pieces of the poet

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This is the poem you leave behind that you die in the middle of.

Gone Shopping

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She found Matthew toward the back, cradling an urn with a tasteful black and gold pattern. When he saw her approaching, he held it up for inspection. “You think I’d look good in this?” he asked.

Graven Images

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Mother hated a crucifix. Graven, she said. Evidence that Catholics weren't saved, just stuck in ceremony. Jesus had risen and anyone who had to pray in Latin, count beads or confess to robed men who took orders from a monarch didn't know…