Most read stories

Second Collage

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B developed a thick emulsion that he paints onto the pieces of meat on which he prints photographs.

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.…

That Does Me Good

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Your clothes had been burned and your skin washed. They kept your boots at my firm insistence. I saw them write your name on the card. The card was black, and the ink was black. The writing was shallow and scratchy. The box they filed the card into was black and so…

Unfinished Journal Entries (which only goes to prove just how unprofessionally untutored I am)

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I could tell you right nowwhat I'm thinking aboutbut that would not be sacrificeenough. Takes all kinds, and youonly listen when it'ssomething you think is instantlyoverpowering. I swear, there's always something not quiteright with you. There's a silly left…

Five Million Yen: Chapter 34

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Al-Sidran pulled out a switchblade knife from his pocket and proceeded to carefully cut open the box. Ben could tell it was razor sharp by the way it cut through the packing tape and cardboard.

To Sleep

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The woman wrings her hands again and again, reaching up to place one under her chin, then to her cheek as though there is some pending trepidation no one else can see...

Lazarus argentatus

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They take the blue man out on a stretcher, stiff in cyanotic repose until the paramedics shake him. He sits bolt upright, startled, confused, indignant. ‘Lazarus?' I ask. ‘Argyria. Happens every fucking time he naps on the …

Meet Your Happy-Go-Lucky Poet

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"Time is an ocean, but it ends at the shore. You may not see me tomorrow."--Bob DylanThey're writing poems, but not for me. Guess I'll write one for my own. For nobody that I know now. It's a pretty lonely world for someone who sings, not you, not with…

taken

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today somewhere by water this photograph of a woman

The Sun, the Trees, the Clouds, the Grass

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The sun was a dish of burnished courage

The Roses of Gettysburg

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Mothers and sons and war, an old story...

War Story: Alternate Duty II - crash landing

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I was only allowed ten hours in the tower a month so the Army in its infinite wisdom gave me lots of alternate duty which in the I-Corp area mostly meant loaning me to the Marines. That worked out because the alternate duty the Army came up with tended to

Violent Limb Part 2

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"Take the other arm, Jonas! Take the other arm," I said, laughing. "Make me a better god!"

End Game

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The will to make/ remains

The Art of Pizza

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He’d eaten every kind of pizza from the most sublime to the foulest.

Ask the Language Monitor

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A woman I work with is always going on about her daughter is an expert water-skier and has a collection of antique thimbles and makes prize-winning congo bars.

The Flame Child

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Lupe drove. She didn't know where she was going, but still she drove. The Mustang whined because she did not shift gears. The street was wet from a night rain and if…

Three Easy Steps:the little genuine things in life/sauteed whole peppers/easy roof repair

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So, once, we were all like sitting around the kitchen table, and it was so kind of like an okay sort of day to begin with. We were all like a secret theater of strangers, a living children's secret circle, meeting right in…

Probability of Rain

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haiku

Magdalene's dream

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That night Magdalene dreamt about Jesus.

Twisting Destiny

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

Sorting It All Out

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To understand how and when things have gone wrong, it works best to proceed from the beginning and put them in order.

london walking (empty streets)

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st. paul is steeped in fog. mist and rain make the north side a grainy faded photograph, almost timeless.

Freedom

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His senses were heightened. The scratching on the table with his finger nails, intense nervousness, the noise magnified every second, the ball point pen was piercing into his sweaty palm.

QuaintAugust 2017

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a midge smothered in the light of disarray crawls back into the sage

A Waltz Viennese

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We made a plan to see each other to chat more and so we did. I went to his little house in the neighboring town and walked in to a kind of time warp. It was a large living room, made so by it's emptiness. It was stark in the vastness it seemed, but dark.

Convoluted Title

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She came to him with her arms open and a smile on her face; the kind of smile that assured him everything would be fine. He longed for that smile for months now; seeing her wearing that smile that he…

The First Several Chapters of His Memoirs

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He went for long, quiet walks. These seemed to quell the seething rages swirling about him as he exhumed and reconstructed the truth of himself.

Urban Skunks

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Urban skunks want to visit your neighborhood and be bold in your neighborhood.

Best blurb (pitch) -- and thanks, Sally and Prickly

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The author's note explains...