Most read stories

My Old Man, Across a Hotel Pool in the Bahamas

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Three guys playing “Cocoanut water, rum and gin” on steel drums, guitar and trap set outside on the deck by the pool.

The Plane

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"..sneezing repeatedly into an obviously saturated cocktail napkin,.."

Scenes From The Alternative Nativity

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The three kings decide to leave their kingdoms, all on their own without family, retainers, armies or servants, and wander about the middle east carrying valuable items.

Three-toed Sloth Love

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Couldn’t we just do a quick ie

man running from a bar

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A man alone in his paid-for living room, with his hands folded behind his head. A man running from a bar, a bald man seen from behind. Someone who made a wide circle to avoid your laughter. A man undressing at the side of the road saying: “How y

Delicate

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I'm not plagued with high levels. Must be all the raking I do. My pubes look as lush as my hair, so fire isn't even a concern. Maybe heat exhaustion is.This might be a poem,My oceans aren't small.

Writing Prompts

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If you want to be a writer, just write stuff.

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.

Trans

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so much of what we know with certainty is amazingly uncertain

FULL NEST

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Every time I look at you there are two dumb mouths that slip between stretch marks.

the last day of the world

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I thought that was the last day of the world (when I floated up near your ceiling,) but it was the first. I thought I had seen the worst. But that was nothing. I know you had no idea what was coming when I first met you. But when we looked in each other

This Story Will Break Your Heart

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The first years of her life she had been owned by a bear hunter and trained to hunt bear, a terrible turn of luck for her.

Dream of the Feast

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I’d caught a small fish but there wasn't enough room on the bridge to reel it in completely so I carried it hanging from my pole along the edge of the traffic A fine black dog joined me following me into the shack at the end of the bridg

Elegy on a country rooftop

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Willa knows why Jimmy reached for the thirty ought six Chambered a round With three more clinking in his pants pocket And took to the roof

China

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Your words broke meLike a china vase dropped to the floorAnd though the pieces were recoveredStuck together with love and compassionThe cracks are there for those who lookI was happy to be there, content in that placeYou wanting to be somewhere elseNever telling me where…

Youngstown

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Last night I met a man from the same littleshithole townthat you are fromand I kissed him in the mouth to find out if he tasted like coallike you do.While he slept, I tried to pinpoint on a map I drew on his back exactly how far apart you might have been:how many years…

Violent Limb Part 1

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Before the new arm, I used to sit outside the players' facility and wonder, in between the throbs of pain pulsing sickly through my temples, how much longer I could be a hockey player.

stop bullying racists

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Everyone wants to feel like the world has lined up against them and any achievement they have been able to attain was done despite the best efforts of everyone who isn't them. That's a given. But there is one group of people who seem to have a point.

Intentional Households

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Bradley turns out to be a walking red flag. He approaches as I unload the U-Haul and says, "Hi, I'm Bradley. I'm not very modest so you might see me from time to time in various stages of undress." Bradley is the last man on Earth I wish to see undressed.

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.

Promenade

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At the week's end, memories may come to you Of weekends same as those just gone before, That fade away from seeing as a tide's grey flue, That vanishes once travelled to a shifting shore: Still, hope you'll know a girl for an hour anew, One who fades…

Love and How It Gets That Way

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and we spun you, / spun you!

Agora

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Sometimes I think our gathering is a ritual centered on collective visualization. Other times I feel like I have been physically transported. I am not sure there is a difference.

The Mother Kidnappers

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We kidnap mothers of all sorts: old mothers, single mothers, young mothers (rarely), but we never do it for ransom. As a society we are adamantly opposed to the use of violence. Our mission is to remove mothers from environments they are not appreciated in, whether by their…

***Breaking News!***

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FedEx merges with UPS becoming FedUp

Sappho

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Two Roman busts have come down to us, both copies of supposed earlier Greek originals, from the 4th. century BC.

Con Artist

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The name he was using this time was Paul Sterling.

An excerpt from "Goodbye, Baseball"

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The boys were his biggest nuisance. The unwashed guttersnipes poured into the park early, all shoeless and half shirtless. He only imagined how thick the fleas must be in their thick tangle of hair, of which only two didn’t have covered with a cap with an

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

Siren

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There it it again, that noise. That low hum that I know so well now, spinning, gaining momentum in my head, like a cyclist in a velodrome, until its steadiness and roundness becomes sharp, painful, cutting like glass.