Most read stories

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.

Unreality Television

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I was told, take him round the back and deal with him.

Ripped from the Headlines

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Their relationship had proved volatile. The husband had gone missing. The wife had gone dead.

A Dear, Sweet Girl

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He was pretty much packed, one large suitcase full, two crates of albums, one duffel bag. He had to leave room for the three riders he would pick up on his way, one in St. Louis, two in Columbia.

Book of Mountains

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Headsets screaming with suburban boredom

The Cooler

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We stop laughing when the doctors come in. Don't want to scare them.Ben (car accident, Christmas, gifts all over the road), tries to freak them out though. He'll make a low soundsometimes. One nurse ran so fast she almost wentout the window. Sheryl her name…

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

The Old Man (The End)

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The dark staircase creaked as he crept down to the basement. The even whoosh-whoosh of the washing machine was comforting to him. He reached for the light as he entered the room. A dim bulb blinked on above him. There was a small table across the room f

Where Do We Come From? What Are We? Where Are We Going?

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Marcel Proust had never been to a big-box store before. He was dazzled by the sheer size and scope of the store and the seeming impassivity of the shoppers. So many products, so many shelves, such strangely intriguing examples of the human condition. The people seemed…

Take Two Llamas and Call Me in the Morning

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A nursing home that doesn’t believe in antipsychotic drugs uses alternative methods to calm patients, including a llama named Travis who walks through the halls.

Eyeball

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

Die for the sunset

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we get back to discussing how long a year is although no one talks about what a woman is or a man and they are just there. rocking chairs rock. sitting and spinning, just like spider’s spin waiting for him – to make a coffee.

Wading

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Through feeling her life story, I understood mine, more,

Ideal Man

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“Mirela,” I said. “Mirela, Mirela, Mirela.” I must have told him a hundred times, no exaggeration. “What the hell kind of name is that?” I ignored him, lit a smoke and watched a group of teenage girls as they laughed their way…

Renoir: Le Moulin de la Galette

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Crowded into the heart are impressions past These are not recognized in the available light of the present. So they sit in the dappled shade drinking, the clear glass partially filled with various and red liquid. Hat tilted back. Black top hat S

X Marks The Spot

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day1 I've been fucked. I've been fucked. I'm supposed to behave now and say all these things I don’t really want to say. I've been fixed in spot. I have been turned into a broken record, or no even worse, a broken record case. I've become a parody, a p

nests

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His wife left behind a mini-muffin tin, a cookie sheet and a gaudy, scratched green metal tray decorated with an artist’s renderings of New Hampshire tourist spots.

A Borrowed Barrow

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It was a battered, creaky, rickety old thing, this wheelbarrow. It had two wooden handles with cracks running through the wood, a fat rubber wheel and a deep tray encrusted with the mud and plaster and grout that it had transported through decades of heavy use. Based on…

The portrait

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Gestures we would like to make in the solitude of a café terrace ... Early in the morning ... She's sitting there, seems shivering. Grey dress, red scarf. Her eyes move. I try to meet them - small, vague black clouds which pass, without resting, by mine. She drinks her…

HEARTTHROB SERIES

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And when you come back, you work minimum wage and have water cooler sex and your face is no more than archives.

13 confessions made by the Punchman, after being subjected to enhanced interrogation techniques

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1. It was never me operating Jack Ketch. I let someone else do it. Never saw his face. He smelt of burning oil.2. I stole from the kids' parents. While they watched the show, I sent my mates round to pick their pockets.3. I gave the arresting officers nightmares. It was…

The Tomb

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His spoken words had reavealed nothing, but the far-off look in his eyes had told me good-bye.

Bonsai

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Adam, now Eve-less, stood before his most exquisite Bonsai, wallowing in the miseries of youth.Seth Gall has had work published in China, Canada, and the U.S. His work has appeared in Word Riot, SmokeLong Quarterly, and Nanoism. He is S.H. Gall in decomP…

Pictures of an Inhibition

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Fun times. Deep breath.

The Nude Pianist: A Novel: Chapter 50

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Oriana, much as she wanted to, did not sleep with Francesco, propriety ruled.

Letter to Garrison Keillor

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Hilda Raz lost a daughter. Her son gained a persona, backed by biological components. I was impressed by his male-pattern baldness. A biological genius. And yet, I was reduced and in the elevator mentioned crying about it.

Beginning Amy Clampitt

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The walks along the beach/ render brave, meticulous, taxonomies

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…

What'd You Do This Weekend?

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Sometimes your Monday morning answer to the inevitable questions don't have to be so mundane and repetitive. And sometimes they do. No one gives a shit anyway.

Fiery Passions

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Isaac Beauregard Lyons woke with a start as he heard the slamming of a pickup truck door then a curse from someone down on his front lawn. “Damn it Mike, be quiet!” someone shouted.