Most read stories

The Answer at the Bottom of the Stairs

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She knew she had missed a step as her body rolled down the stairs. Panic set in as the world flew by her at lightening speed. Would she survive?

Each Planned to Kill the Other

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What was heinous about it was how easy I assumed it would be. That was truly heinous, and it was a mistake in the end to think of it that way. But I’ve learned from what’s heinous. I’ve bought a plastic cylinder filled with nylon zip ties. They’re great f

Ai Kitano

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Sick of sight, Ai Kitano constructed glasses by which the wearer was rendered totally blind.

Sunday Evening, 4:23AM

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The rhythm of my breathing is a litany of regret.

Burying the Tramp

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Heaven and hell. Hadley believed in neither. One way or another you’re a meal ticket for someone, best to be the one spending than the one being spent. The worms and insects are getting their meal ticket now, that’s for sure.

The Gift

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and oh how serratedly so

Puppet X, 8

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After too much I had forgotten how to fly. There was a small owl with me on the old dirt road by the wind. It was a very dark gray, like an ash. Its beak moved, it opened and shut, opened and closed, but I had also forgotten the language

The House on El Nino Diablo Court

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On a cold, dark night near to All Hallows' Eve in October of 1930, I was summoned by Constable John Wakefield to the house of Vernalier Driscoll. The constable was wild-eyed and very nervous, his hair appeared to be standing on end.

Wolf - Variation 5

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his eyes see blood as circumstance.

Twisting Destiny

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And so, many ideas and stories and wonders crash onto the shores of my conscience...

Lights Out in the Ardennes

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Once with the lights flickering....

Me and Frisco on the Road

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I don't think I minded so much watching the trucks hit him, one breaking his spine with a decisive snap, and the other finishing the job by splitting his skull. I don't think I minded watching as much as I did watching those two boys poking around at his

Politicouscous II

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In which era was it not a scary world?/ Last century, the perils were both red and yellow/ after Jerry was undone. Now, they’re brown/ and cross, without respect, the Rio Grande

And then we... Part 2

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The way I figure it, mom wasn't worth a shit. I'd cry when she hit me but she'd just keep pounding. When I was seven, she burned a hole in my back. It happened one day at the fair. We were walking around. She didn't have any money so all we could do was walk. I had…

There’s Just This

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Coupling—why did I say that? Who says that? I mean the clacking together of bones, the willful splitting of fine and tender skin.

The Immunodeficiency Of Our Collective Hearts

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a set of 4 poems

A Good Provider

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She looked over from the passenger seat at her husband and smiled. It had been twenty years. She hadn't expected him to remember. She leaned over and kissed him on the cheek, placed her hand on his thigh.“We'll be home soon enough,” he said. He was not…

He's All Man--And He's All Mine

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My man’s got a habit that’s kinda strange. I’ve got a feeling he’s never gonna change. Whenever I take a trip, when I git back, my underwear’s ripped.

Crash Car Star

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here we go.

Female Scent-Marking in the Suburbs

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We watched through the plate glass window, like kids watching a mother guppy eat her young. A woman approached the sweaters but stopped suddently, as if she sensed the dark force Darth Vader projects in Star Wars movies.

Hearing the Usual Reports

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In its own defense against what is too concrete the mind allows a magical thought--

Read Through

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“Professor Gosser,”continued Victor, “I once screwed three women in a row--I mean of course, time, not space—good one, huh? Well, each woman farted at the exact moment she climaxed. Would that qualify as coincidence? And did it have anything to do with th

Optimum Condition

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I have hate and it is black not midnight, crisp fresh clear. Unadulterated. It is dirty, poor, gritty solid rough like unripe stone fruit. A peach, mealy and dry. The killing, effete, endures. Silent, my repugnance, sick, eats…

Payments

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What it was for, didn’t matter. When Susan walked into Fred’s house every few weeks and start talking, he’d just nod and say, “Sure, I know how tough it is out there, baby.” Then they’d drink some wine and put on some music, and he’d give her a little mon

Handicapping the Saints

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I've been a fan of hagiography—the lives of the saints—since first grade when Claude Dunham and I were asked to represent St. Stephen and St. Sebastian, two martyrs of the early church, in a tableau vivant of bored boys.

Lunch, daily.

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She’s not settling. She can learn to like this.

Our Enormous Fat Man

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Pity would have been appropriate. Yet, townsfolk whispered behind his back. Shouldn't he do something about it. So lazy. A gluttonous swine. Hadn't his mother kept him too long at tit, breastfeeding ‘til four? Look. Look at him now. A fat man. Our enormou

Colours

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Not yet confident enough, for example, to feel free to interrupt, to suggest, to demur; not free of his desires his urgency (‘in the morning, fiddle diddle dee, when I rise’)

The Truth About Storytelling

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irretrievably we tell ourselves stories irretrievably as beaded water slides off our skin

August and After Haiku

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The brown grackle chirps/ as she chomps a plump cricket-/ melodious meal.