Most read stories

Dirty Deeds

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Mustard stings the corner of his lips. He swipes it away with a finger, and looks closer at the hot dog. The piece of meat is ripped open like a sliced finger stuck in a doughy bandage

In This, Our Life

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Her captors allowed her the use of the toes of one foot. It was hard to pretend she was numb—as if playing an artic game indoors. With the ball of her foot, she primed the canvas. Her big toe acted as a fan brush, the rest were sable, flat, or pointy. She told…

Stinger: a Novel

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Lipstick on the bolt, she told herself, if it's no good in the slot anymore.

Filtering Grace

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...She was my first, my only, she broke me in then brought me down. Alone now, I cycle through hundreds of variations of her image like a flip book narrating some abstract story. That’s all she is now to me, an incoherent melange of tints, saturations, an

War Stories

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I told about the time during the early part of WW II when I shook hands with a member of the Flying Tigers. He was home on leave, and he stopped by to see my dad, who had been his scout master.

What happens when you listen too much

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It's definitely not her pretty face that made him smile so quirkily when she returned in the evening.

Five Million Yen: Chapter 21

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Some friends of mine took him for a ride out to Broad Channel, you know that enclave of crazies that live in houses on stilts on the island in Jamaica Bay on Cross Bay Boulevard. He might find that when the tide comes in, the water might be a little deepe

and I used to sing, too, after sex

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Females exuding from the genitals, giving life meaning, shape, cleanness of line, purity of spirit. They may form man as the honey moans out its salt song, solitary, its epic shout of joy, the sweet science of the human form. Then to give back in re

Rabbit Trail

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Sorrow fences with fear and questions

Seriously?

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Did you really think you were going to cure cancer with that poem?

Core Values

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Over dinner last evening she said things have to change because she can never be happy with our lives being so concentric and I knew she meant that while we share the common core of marriage, she felt she was a small circle and I was a larger one, enveloping her,…

Not Even

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That’s not just a trinket on her finger, that’s a rock, a fortress, a castle. No one can scale those walls except Joe Sixpack, slumped beside her at the airport. They’re not a match. I give it 5 years, max. Not even. Joe

Angels and Inspiration

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It was then an angel was sent to provide assistance and guidance. After the first time, with the radio show, the woman could almost feel her presence. When she did not know what to do, or needed help or to encourage others, when her own will and words wer

The Search for Pastina Continues

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To assist you in recalling some of Episode One of - "A Poem by Jasmine Coriander-Semolina": My head lifted up slowly as I looked up through a gaussian blur of fragrant incense smoke and saw she was crying. She whispered that her daughter, Pastina, was last…

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…

Out of Vegas

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Whatever it is, the night vibe feeds off that disadvantage, nibbles at the desperation of those who come here.

Busking for Free

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I'll always remember those warm, weekend twilights on the beach after the frolic of the waves seemed to flatten with the impending dusk, sending the surfers home and, after the bait was spent, sending the surfcasters away, I'd claim a square of sand as my stage,…

Mind Altering

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She felt like she was turning into someone else, someone who appeared normal. She would be inundated with everyone else's ideas, morphing into an insipid lemming, smiling and bantering about mindless things. She wouldn't even care she had changed...

Proud Mary

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Mary had no shoes. She told me they were stolen by someone at the shelter and I believed her because she stood there outside the Arlington T stop in a pair of tube socks. She told me she wasn't asking for money. She told me the shelter was serving seafood today so her…

Sing for Me

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I am beginning to worry. There is something that they are not telling me. I am afraid that something bad is going to happen.

Ponies

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“The moon is a monk,” you said.

AUTUMN LEAVES UNDERFOOT

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Goodbye comes in stages. At first you recognize that you will “miss” someone when they are gone. Then you have to accept the fact that they are leaving. And finally accept the fact that they are gone; and not particularly in that order. If only it

Like There Was No Tomorrow

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And there on the street Were a bunch of frantic pigeons Picking over some discarded Chicken bones I mean they were really Going to town on them You know, frantic Like there was no tomorrow And then I saw it A real sign of progress

Literary Intercourse

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Meaning is harder to sell, unless it’s an analysis of why there is a Justin Bieber.”

Hippie Mix

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Let us talk granola and improvising on the margins of munchies and breakfast.

SUNRISE

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There is a false dawn, when night still holds sway, but tempered with promise; anticipation.

Pessoa

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Pessoa, wake up, I need your help!I want to be the universe, I need to be the universe. And somehow be no-one at all. I want to expand and be everything and not be tragically held by One. But I need your help, old man, because my words are not enough to make me forget that…

Follow My Lead

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I ran down the list of reasons she might be calling. She could be bankrupt, having a mid-life crisis, or maybe had a terminal illness. Either way I was clueless, as I had absolutely no emotional bond with the woman I came out of.

Five Million Yen: Chapter 13

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-That’s more like it. He released Ben and holstered his gun under his leather jacket.

Stuffed Animals

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Mr. Skunk looked disdainfully at the window. “When the fuck do we get out of this place?” It was mostly rhetorical as the Skunks were all stuffed and inanimate.