Most read stories

Collect Enough Fragments, You've Got Yourself a Poem

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I. The sun's corona. Empty boxes near the firehouse. Red birth. A bird's lost wing. II. The bitterness of littleness. Apples in a pile.Early love.A spider, swinging. III. A father's harshness.Twelve bills unpaid. Leaves in a crevice. A dream…

Upstream

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Rain pours down in a world transformedthrough thunder. The storm rages, night takes on a weight, and everyone hides, most from habit, some from fear. She stands there, soaked and beautiful, responding to the…

All Wet

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the small break of consciousness that is my dreamswaterso much wateri can never forgive the watertoo many tears

Shaken not stirred

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The warmth of the sun

Rescued From A Dream

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There were six people on the bridge, myself included, and we were making our way across when something exploded—it was more a rifle shot than explosion, actually—and it cut like a razor through the delicate fabric of the moment.

Deliberate Music

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My emulations always fail. At heart,/ I don’t want bougainvillea nor blushing pilgrims

Learning to Live With Radical Presbyterians

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Proponents of this pragmatic line of thinking say a tolerant approach to Islam will succeed where force has failed to persuade terrorists to abandon the religious fanaticism. It's certainly worth a try--it worked with Presbyterians.

Harried or Employed

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Irony is written sarcasm. Sarcasm is spoken irony: the opposite of what is meant. Catholic irony in fiction seems deeper and more related to theme. Protestant irony starts with P as do other þing.

John of God, Painted by Murillo

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NO ONE CAN BE A BASTARD FOREVER

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 Alleys & Ivory

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“You think it’s a self-castrating suicide note or a self-righteous freedom speech?” “Probably just the ramblings of a madman, pissed he lost a company baseball game.” “Fuckin-A, Pete! Double-murder suicide for a baseball game? Ain’t nobody that craz

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.

Are You A Handywoman? Take This (Not Entirely Serious) Test and Find Out!

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As I was reading “Not Your Mother's Book on Home Improvement,” a new collection of light-hearted essays by (primarily) middle-aged female do-it-yourselfers, it became abundantly clear to me that, unlike the women who tell their stories here, I am not a…

The Buddhist

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She is not centered, but she finds her way.

Unintentional Hermits/ Animal Cities- The Helper

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So this was how it started. The next day Kia returned to sit with him a bit and the next day and the day after that until the days turned into weeks and the weeks into months. Eventually she found out his name was Saul, that he had no 'proper' job, was o

Gabe

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“Damn!” he said to himself, wondering for the millionth time what he was doing in such a sad line of work. Break time, he decided, grabbing his stash box and locking himself into the freezing cold bathroom to smoke a joint. He emerged thirty minutes la

I am not theirs and they are not mine

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My first year I hated how big and unruly the plants got.

Fragment from an Unwritten Diary

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It's not stories the quiet lack, but inclination...

Arcana Magi Memorial Vol.7 - c.4

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Azure lowered her head, nearly burying it in the window, watching the helicopter land.

Salt/Sweet

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Salted sea of summer fingers- sand and salted skinmelt in me; vanilla ice cream lick- your lips; salty kiss saliva- sweet salt of semen run down my chin languid-salty sweat of you.

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."

Gentility

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The walls of our shanty were of the standard corrugated rusty metal typical of communities like ours.We did our cooking over a Bunsen burner purloined from the Catholic Boys' School - beans mostly. We did our drinking from bottles of Thunderbird or Old Crow (when…

FEAR OF LANDING

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“Omaha is filled with fine clothing stores for men,” he says, “all of them doing very well. Whereas Minneapolis is a different story altogether.” I am trying to sleep in seat 26C. 26B is occupied by Mildred who has already introduced herself,…

Holiday Moons

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Not quite full, but bright,/ December 23rd.__ A waning moon for New Year’s Day-/ Portent?

For all we know, we'll never meet again...

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Jillian speeds across the stone wall, the hem of her dress flaps violently behind her. Sometimes she stands with her back fully erect letting perpetual motion guide her down a bend with her sun blonde locks brightening the dreary sky, or she lurches her

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…

A Slick Story

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After Slick Daddy — aka Billy Ray Thompson — gave up driving his log truck and took up with playing and singing the blues full-time he was what you might call a hot property around the juke joints along Highway 61. The women didn't seem to mind…

Whip Poor Will

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Save your delirium...

Ghost Story

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They come to wipe themselves from my memory, but that, of course, is impossible. In this place, we are bound together, the long line of men who have killed me, and I.

Mark Twain's Typewriter

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Did I refer to Mark Twain’s typewriter as an animal? Did I call it a hyena? I would not say that about Mark Twain’s typewriter.