Most read stories

Punkin Head

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The old neighborhood, long paling in the shadow of greater Los Angeles, was reduced to two blocks in length and occupied only one side of Figueroa. It was the crumbling bastian of homes whose architecture remembered yet street-car bells clanging, watermelon farms and…

Why Go Outside?

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Why go outside where the gutters / are fraudulent and clogged with popularity?

Roanne Smiled

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With some of these guys it was like propping a kid on a training-wheel bike, then steering the kid down the street til he figured out what to do next. Tricks would come into the bar. Roanne had a smile for all but the dregs…

'Bout Time

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Finite

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This was not a good sign, comforting gestures from strangers were bad omens.

faking an orgasm

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There’s an account of roasting inward, holding myself like a rock inflamed, my inward joy rotting my veins. How was I supposed to go on loving anything after you? Like a pigeon hated at home, awaiting your passionate kisses? Knowing how your classical k

Pantheon

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gods aren’t going to help you son

In the Sequence of Events

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Eroica sprawled among/ the horns and violins

No Alternative

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* — Eligibility conditions apply, no purchase necessary.

whoosh

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i learned all

Five Million Yen: Chapter 37

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-Serves you right, you double agent bitch, spat Arris.

War Bride

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Maria met her husband in World War Two. Maria is now eighty-two. She is from the country of Tuscany. She has lived in may countries. She was a war bride. She has a son. Maria's son is sixty-three. As a baby-boomer he won't retire until sixty-five Maria says.…

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

Bell Ringer

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Zal’s first day on the job they had 16 customers. They took turns crying, “Bring out your dead!”

full moon over econolodge on I-70

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There was no hope for the writing desk. Even if it had not been for the splintered leg held together only by duct tape, there was no way Ron could have fit into the back of the station wagon with the rest of the luggage. He asked the Mexicans across the s

Five Million Yen: Chapter 71

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It was that awkward time when one didn’t know if the night’s lover wanted to see you again.

Flower Power

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"Poets are damned but they are not blind, they see with the eyes of the angels."--William Carlos WilliamsThere is something beautiful I want to say to you that doesn't seem to make much more sense in a box of clever words like this one. It feels closer to…

WE TURNED THE SAFETY OFF

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It’s not like I could tell anyone. I hum a song my mother sang to me as a child. A dressed-up soprano to calm the tail I’ve grown.

Clockwork and Sex Appeal

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And her life runs like clockwork. And the kids wouldn’t get to school without her, and the paychecks wouldn’t arrive and the taxes wouldn’t get paid. And she listens to religion and country and God telling her how to run her life, what to do and when. B

Black Wheat, 6

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The soul was in the eyes but (it) isn't The animal is in the body and can't be hidden One senses the density of the blood there Occasionally the soul rises to the surface Occasionally the animal comes into the eyes They use people and throw them away

Fate

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decline the prof­fered hand

I Wonder

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I wonder what it would be like to dog-paddle in the middle of the ocean. I wonder how Jean Auguste Ingres got the flesh tones for “Odalisque.” I wonder if bees have dreams.

Five Million Yen: Chapter 57

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—Christ all mighty, said Ben to himself as he watched Isabella and Leona enter the bank. Those are some extraordinary examples of female flesh.

Panic Pure

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He said, “It was only after I broke my neck and even like maybe a year later that I really started realizing that I had something to say.”

wrong way home

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this little piggy

Song: Three Good Hubcaps, music by Tom Casesa

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NO3RAM7-ciU

leyh (they say)

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and then he began to sing, along with the ghostly villagers

April

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Well, hello hunger: what a sweet surprise.

the Case of the Smelly Rug Adventure

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I didn't know what to do, really, but I had to do something. After all there was no one left to be the real bona fide hero to this story, except for me, the guy who wasn't any kind of a hero at all. I mean I could hardly move an inch, rolled…

A Rave for "How the Sixties Ended"

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"At a bare minimum it deserves to be a major cult hit."