Most read stories

Day Off Work

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My time glass allocation nears its end.

Juicy | In the Umbra

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He licks his lips and mouths the air, salivating, unashamed of his propensity for the round, pink grapefruit, the almost egg-shaped oranges, the firm, juicy tangerines.

You Require Sharpness of Image and Therefore of Words

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I wrote a poem and asked a professor to read it. / He said: IMAGE IMAGE IMAGE IMAGE / like a mad man on meth, foam running down / his mouth crowded with sharp, shimmering teeth.

Alfamadog

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It was that special ache between heart and stomach that made me stop things. That ache that cannot be caused by the mere knowledge that you have steered your life into a completely wrong direction. To feel this pain, you also need to have no clue why and how it…

twitter quitter

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you can reach me at hashtag this!

Survival

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When nothing's coming in All I have are fragments Cloudy memories Uncompleted projects Disappointments loom large and threaten to define me I am only as good as what I produce And now I feel empty So how do I shine How do I find the spark that…

Small Boat Row Told Through a Roughed Out Dungeon Window

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The princess knew exactly where to find the annoying gurgling frog of her childhood, but she wasn't wearing the right shoes to step onto lily pads with, so she decided there and then to take a stolen boat out onto that soft mission, all by herself instead. It was a…

A Shower of Rain

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You have at least an intermittent belief.

Elephant's Miracle

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"Already he is running and flying to the center of the world" - Mircea Eliade, about what a shaman is up to, under his mask.

Slivers from the edge

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Four ships anchor Far off shore Chains slip Beneath the swell.

The Rumble Strip

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But, The Driver talked about speed. Something about pulling her off easy or we’ll blow our tires. “No telling what’s off that shoulder,” he’d say.

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.

Widow Walk

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She heads toward the end of the island and doesn't look back.

A Girl You Couldn't Hurt

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He started to concentrate on the music again. It was the album with the crazy picture of Monk on the cover, with a machine gun over his shoulder, a tied-up Gestapo officer and a female resistance fighter standing next to—a cow.

Staying With Mattie

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I invited Henry to go out with me and Marge, suggesting he ask Ellen who he dated a while back and who still asked about him, but Henry shook his head “no” and said “out things” were just too boring at our ages — and besides, since his…

The Human Phenom Project

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I sat at the vast graveyard of broken hearts on the mending fence of wonderment unsealing the silence of the wounds I began to put the pieces together like a puzzle against forgetting

Max Beckmann Poem

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the unutterable things of this world

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.

a different kind of poetry slam

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removing oneself sometimes occurs only on the page

twelve tines

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till the tiny death may we remain true, me and you, to our flesh and blood and sinew, the springs and silver in our tiny hearts with vicious teeth and a hard bone need to fuck

The Witch in the Canyon

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There's a witch in Laurel Canyon.She made Wes a promise.Her bungalow smelled like Parliaments. Parliaments, garlic frying in olive oil. Parliaments, garlic frying in olive, and a freshly opened pack of Red Vines. Wes could have curled up into a ball and fallen asleep on her…

The Fourth Prague Defenestration: 5

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Vladimir walked down the little path next to the creek with us. I stopped along the way and picked off a sliver of some of the bedrock that was sticking out alongside the narrow path, to take home with me as a souvenir of my family castle, just to be ab

Blue Ridge

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...swallowed like a radiant yolk by an epicurean barracuda.

The Harrisburg

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“Gliese Base Twelve, come in. Gliese Base Twelve, this is the Harrisburg. We have a level five emergency. Requesting immediate assistance.”

sunflower 15

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“plain before my eyes” said he eyes swathed in bandages covering sight oozing yellow fluid is this life thought i

(Withheld) 1970

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The Moon The hatch of the lunar module hissed as it opened, a few puffs of leftover water vapor escaped toward them in a sparkling white cloud that rapidly dissolved…

Myra's Cigarettes

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I know from the experience of too many odd sideways glances that folks are seldom interested in my brand of observation. No one else seems to wonder how many commas there are in the library or how many other people own that exact shirt.

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.

Joe

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Nephew Joe, my old brother's son, came to fix our pipes. Strapping, strapless, hairless, tanned, he clinked with gold. He came out to us over the pipes... drip drip...I just wanted them fixed pronto. He took precious time. He cried...drip drip...I wanted him to stop. My…

Room # 23

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She stood for a moment to think about what happened inside. She had just killed her husband of twenty three years.