Most read stories

Drowning

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I found Mathew face down, cold and ridged like a plastic doll. I had overslept because he never cried—never told me he was hungry. Rodney had to peel my arms from around my son so the paramedics could take him in a blaze of flashing red and white lights.…

Let's All Go Down to the Rising River

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As the pastor of a small southern church, I'm often asked by our younger members about this prickly notion of global warming. They herd around me, as adolescents are prone to do, and they ask me, “Dear father, is this something that we should fear, these…

I fell in love with jackal face

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As we stood there, my hair slung over his shoulder like uncooked pizza dough, I updated my wish.

Regrets du Noir

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You want to be Teilhard de Chardin? You’re getting started way too late. There’s a better chance you’ll be tomorrow’s Peking Man if I bury you in the cellar.

Brains

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My memory is like tracks in the snow. My memory is cookie dough. My memory is dirty tube socks.

3

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1 is another.

my future, maybe yours

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She went for the typewriter first.

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

Five Million Yen: Chapter 10

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Ben watched the cat burglar snake his way from window ledge to window ledge.

Excelsior - A Poem in 9 Parts (post 4 of 5)

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VI. At Antares Alpha A pyramid carries four sides: only this one Is surmounted by a circle, and its cone Has all of what we claimed within its cargo, Or that shall never find a plan, or transit now; Though the sulphur and carmine skies that…

extinguished

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The silence grew louder as it grew longer.

The Unseen Hand Shuffles the Deck

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2008Not a bubble burstbut a trust ruptured.The guilty don't survivebut, rather, thrive. 2011The monied are superior.They game the system well.As we work harder, longer,their paper fortunes swell.2017Marie and Louie were monied once.The Romanovs as well.Fast as blades and…

Night Terror

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A door in the hallway, with 30E in brass letters glinting dully on its polished surface, lying sideways on the floor like a beacon.

Antarctica

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I don't have the feelings of self-worth a young woman should have, Monica Lewinsky tells the nation. She seems to understand there will always be some amount of ice beneath her.

You Can Look Up Everything on Reality TV

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Caution, the beer on the shore is lapping at the foam of sanity, and the wind in the trees is speaking thy previous names. Caution, a rise in the ocean will soak your dress above your knees, causing infinite tears, infinite hopes

Oddities

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Sometimes he would get up at night, go outside, and stand in the middle of their back yard.

Grey Zones

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There are these unspoken zones,where everybody is corrupt,and everybody is a con artist.Half the people are frauds,and the other half are phonies.Each person trying to outwit the next person,while everybody else tries to pick each others' pocket.Simultaneously and…

The Right Kind of Magic

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1. During the outpouring of our newly discovered grief oh how we danced, electrical, into oblivion, maybe once, twice. It was toall to be expected, but not everything you feel is always real. After all the dust may settle, but it…

Dinosaur

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All of the students’ eyes were fixed on him, and now Nelson was embarrassed. It’s not that he didn’t want to pay attention. He already knew the answer to this book. But he wouldn’t dare tell the rest of the class or Mrs. Edwards.

Eyeball

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"Here's the bad news: you have to wear a patch over your eye for the next six weeks."

End Game

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The will to make/ remains

The Case of the Incinerated Spinster

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There by the opposite doorway opening onto the thinly carpeted kitchen lay—well, what seemed to be all that was left of Miriam Flagellporte . . .

Fly Fishing For Bats

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then something like a shark gnawing on a harpsichord. Her drum kit apparently is an entire laundromat. A pocketful of marbles spilling in rivulets, down a set of narrow linoleum steps, merrily as two warblers splashing in a birdbath. several octaves below

gravelortian part 18

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A poor boy scribbling

Watching the Clock

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Benjamin did everything by the clock. He ate when the little hand pointed to five and the big hand pointed to six. He danced when the little hand pointed to three and the big hand pointed to seven. He slept when they both hit twelve.To be more precise, he did everything…

From the Cradle

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Loss and awakening are irrevocable. Love and grief are one.

Cakewalk

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She could estimate herself around 30, though this was debatable since she had stopped counting years ago. She looked like a person who would be very pretty if she wore make-up, but she didn’t and therefore wasn’t.

The Blood and the Bulb

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I had laid my hand down hard upon a long forgotten shard of an old coke bottle. The cut is deep.

Shade to Shade

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Cathy told the boy to sit in the seat behind her, and gave him her scarf for his face. He nodded and plucked the scarf gingerly from her hands, suspending it between the clean thumb and ring finger on his left hand.

When the Snow Geese Fly

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When the snow geese fly to the warming marshes,when the ice melts on the pond in the wood,when the sweet breath of fresh-mown haylofts over us and settles on the fields,I will remember you have been a blessing,a quiet steady forceWe will sit at the kitchen table and…