Most read stories

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.

Shaken not stirred

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The warmth of the sun

Steven 33

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Steven 33 started small, made it big then opted out. All the great pillars of the world’s economic construction do that. Steven 33 saw an opening, then sold the idea just before yesterday dawned. His first fortune grew from fear.

Alice in Hell: 13 slithy variations

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1. Having made Alice from one of the Mad Hatter's ribs, Humpty Dumpty told her she could do anything, except speak. “How bothersome!” she said.2. In the church, Alice was horrified to be presented with a talking lamb. “EAT ME!” it bleated and, as the…

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…

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."

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…

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.

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.

Mating for Life

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Mari thinks that's all fine and fucking dandy.

Stroke One, Stroke Two, Stroke Three

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

Celebrity Sighting

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No, that can't be him, Joe thought. The guy was messing around the displays in back. He had walked in three or four minutes ago, by now, and he certainly looked the part — or at least Joe thought…

Post-apocalyptic Fable # 8

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Crouching like little children in a game of hide & seek, we entered the old house, slowly

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

(Younger Driest)

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He did not seek a place on a cabinet, nor to impress stockholders with placards of wealth and return; he did not enumerate the downtrodden and asocial with advertised miracle treatments, or write a best seller on the markings of success. All he did, all h

Control

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I’m afraid

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…

The Fields

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Swat at those screeching children with tufts of harp-grass. Flail, mad eyed and sad sighed with all gleaming hope gone out of the daylight. Swat and screech swat and screech. We continue until their thick bark-like hides are smooth and polished. We sand them with…

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.