Most read stories

Walking with the Moon

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I heard a voice. It was calling me as from a far-off cloud. I listened, holding my breath, and heard it again, though fading away, barely audible. If I hadn't known my name I wouldn't have decrypted it. Three hazy syllables clearly detached with a sigh between each of them.…

Leda, After the Swan

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I do not jerk up to sirens birds doorbell shouts hello hello through the letterbox hello

Day Off Work

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My time glass allocation nears its end.

Black Night Takes Bite

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The Black night reached under his shiny silk jacket And touched the steamy leather of his holster.

The Cusp of Leaving

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She waited on the hot, broken pavement, arm outstretched, her thumb a ticket to a distant, refracted horizon. Waves of heat danced like undulating snakes under the spell of a charmer. She pictured herself passing through them, abandoning the green of home for the…

THE REAL MAP

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When we crossed the California/Oregon border, I had this vivid image of sleeping bags filled with human bones. I shook my head and the scene would not go away. The woods must be full of dead campers, hitch hikers, run-a-ways, and black teenage whores

Drummer Boy

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A door slams. The vibrations rattle through the floor, up his legs and into his chest. He can hear the yells, and the tears that mar her voice. Rat-ta-tatRat-ta-tat A door slams. Eyes closed while images of a life he will never live flicker on…

The Etymology of Fun

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Tell people of substance the truth.

June Cleaver Faces the Implications of the Integrated Circuit

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The Cleavers were never really undone by anything. Everyone, however, has a limit. June manages it all, as usual, with her characteristic grace, lovely crinoline - and a bit of manipulation.

Reality TV is Dead

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Welcome to the world of (un)reality television. He/she who dies with the most stories wins. Another kind of religion. The Church of Being Famous For Whatever.

A Losing Hand

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A group of us from work are playing cards at a friend's house, so when my brother Jimmy calls, I take my phone into the other room. I already know what it's about, really the only reason he ever calls these days.“Look, I hate to ask,” he begins, the way he…

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…

Off We Go Then

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Wish more than ever there was a more perfect way to mean everything I say. If I could I'd certainly walk all my words right up to your face now and give them over, hand to hand so to speak. That's the point at which I'd very much…

(2) 77 Words (pcs.)

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The sometimes shiver that arrives from awkward silences and the more often cold that comes from midwestern winters.

Moving Out

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Lying in the blissful glow of young television. Idly sleeping, eyes open and ears closed.

September 26, 2016

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whatever weaknesses you displayed// as empathetic human fellow traveler,/ your command of English survives you,// on into the last echoes of the human/ once we’re gone.

Lady in the Cave

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Life strikes another blow and away I go: back to the cave to sleep, read, write, dream, soothed by rocking chair therapy, spend hours on hours looking at photo memories, lighting incense and candles, crying, howling out the injustices smothering me. …

Where is Home?

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We are both 53 and this is the first time I’ve gotten past a third date with anyone from Match. Seth is different. I’m not sure why. My therapist said, “Well, maybe you’ll be good for each other. You both have to accept that you are recovering, or in reco

Pros and Cons of Wildflower Collection

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If it was truly new territory of the mind, he thought he might find some place that resembled the world as his dad envisioned it, having already decided that his father could never turn back across the frontier to the old world of youth

by the sound of it

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cicadas run our furnace

Art Is Resilient

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Our revolutionaries Have evolved into gamekeepers

Convenience

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I drove all night, but there weren’t nothing Roy Orbison about it. I’d been driving and around lunchtime I just thought I might stop by Shona’s place.

Tollund Man, one/breakfast, zero

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how enthralled might you be, or how much appalled,/plucked from a fresh dream that had just grown serene?

I Am the Cheap Man

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I considered my choices, then asked the question that has brought my wife so much pain over the years. "Which is cheaper?"

the dreamer of eggs

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How much sucking, faithlessly, can there be? The body being a night thing off which steam rises, that attracts like a magnet or loadstone, whose curls attract, whose ringlets or tufts of touched hair between the legs glory up the nightly watched miracle,

Stan Smith

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Ah we just sat on the flat roof of the school and looked out at what was beyond because sometimes there is nothin' to do but sit on a flat roof of a school and look out at what is beyond. Going up there I had told him to be careful with the bag because if he didn't take…

Cause of Death

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“You sure?” He nods. “Maybe it was pneuomonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis.” Flash of a smile, sobbing laughter, like an abandoned seal.

Dormilona

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These fern-like weeds grow along the roads. “Watch this,” you say, bending down over a plant. The touch of your fingertip sets it recoiling, stunned–a fun, jungle trick you picked up somewhere along your way.

Here is the thing. No one knows what it (actually) represents

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beyond knowing that when it hits you, you've been very much run over, and flattened like a stack of cardboard pancakes. I've seen it all before, and it works all right I guess. But my oh my, my, my oh thank you Jesus, to…

In Battle of Mascots, San Dorito State Usually Wins

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“A lot of kids–granted, kids who aren’t too bright–will choose a school because of its mascot, and that’s what Chipper is all about,” he says.