Most read stories

Left to our own Dvices

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No one knew why DVices were so hard to find. No one knows for sure anyway.

Castle and Bell

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The bells are ringing once again. They are three sets of bells, but I can tell them apart. It's cold up here, and I never thought I would end up in such a high fortress surrounded by the grey and dark and the moat and the flora and fauna foreign and slightly brutish.…

Waterstones and The Fridge

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I try to slot into order the sequence of events: the book deal that appeared and then winked away like a dying star, the white gloves and the brick through Waterstone's window; my novel lying in the shop front in a bed of glass.

we were not deer

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The crescent moon lies with anyone (in case you wanted to know.) And the rain – as cheaply! I don’t think anyone knows this, when they are young. When you are young, very young, you want to be included in everything. “The young that the sea took, ki

Your dog, or hazelnut gelato - which would it be?

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It’s hard to lose. Harder than you think. I guess the ultimate question is: If I had to give up one thing, my dog, or hazelnut gelato, which would it be? I’ll tell you, between those two, it would have been easy to choose. But losing you, that was a who

And then we... Part 3

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Well, Bainz' dad didn't kill us for stealing his bomb because one of the drug addicts at my house was a cop. At least he said he was a cop, or knew a cop, or had something to do with the cops. I don't know for sure. I know he didn't look like a cop, at least he …

anura

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still to early to dodge leaping bodies on misty roads at night

The Right to Privacy

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Every day, I come home from work and hear you two screaming next door, breaking dishes and furniture and sometimes each other while your toddler wails. And if I can't drown it out with the TV and a beer, I stuff in the earbuds and crank up the iPod, too. That way, I…

Searching for Mr. Bharath Seshardi

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This tall, very fair, very blonde, very female, very feminist friend of mine, with a smile the moon and stars must take lessons from. . . .

Jim

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Jim twisted the skinny trunk of his body in a fast, violent jerk just as the cop grabbed the buckle of his left Harley Davidson boot. When the boot flopped off, Jim found himself sitting upright, ready to jump up and run. But then he felt the baton lock down on his…

The Old Man

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The old man tied his black tie and put on a black beret. His bones hurt, but at ninety-two it was to be expected.

A Prayer for Adelaide

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Any God we could respect/ would listen, kind, to prayers,/ compassionate but resolute –

The Flower

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In dimmed purple light, that day When the rain fell, Dissolved the textures of her face,

Generous World

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perhaps because it knows that time’s a solvent/ and dissolves all things in time.

Soil.

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As individual as a shadow and the opposite of ‘stone faced’, Sidney Elvin “Ike” Liebowitz, with a clean-shaven face, well kempt hair and sideburns a quarter of an inch off of his ears, walks down a dirty and dimly lit street pondering sneakers.

Blackballed

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When I was a small child, my father was just barely a man, and he was independently wealthy. So it didn't matter that he was an adolescent inside. There was never any mention of "working." No notion of career. Just the girl he knocked up and the amusing…

Saturdays with Satan: Desperately Seeking Evil

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“Grow some fucking balls, Satan!”Did I just say that? To the prince of darkness?Yes. Yes, I did. Let me back up.*It was around 10:30 Saturday morning when the phone rang. I recognized the caller id.“Hi, Satan,” I said as I picked it…

no-name time of day

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"covered in a sheen of sweat, flowers of salt bloom on my T-shirt"

Dark Matter

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The darkness isn’t evil but invisible/ in the otherwise excellent light of day

Left for Dead

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Bobby slowly raised his head above the emerald green stalks of rice and looked up and down the paddy for any sign of the men who had been crossing it with him, when the shell exploded. Movement out of the corner of his eye sent him face down in the muck a

Sulfur and Wishes

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Some mornings he would wake up with his hand in the curve of her side. But her scent would awaken him further to his reality. This was not his wife. No, the women he vowed to protect was asleep in the arms of another.Lost to adultery, his dreams fell to…

The Last Last Ride

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You’d stay on this small roller coaster ride all summer long if you could and if I were a rich man, I would let you. Is it fun riding around in circles? You’re only nine; of course it’s fun.

Job Needed

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I have enjoyed three paid teaching days in Minnesota, since my return in 1996. All three paid days were fielded through S.A.S.E., all three at Patrick Henry. I loved it there. I hope never to become certified to teach.

Parable of the Parabola

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I held the steam and scrubbed it. How do you do that? asked Willy. How do you scrub steam? It is so, you know, diaphanous. I said to Willy, because Willy was a good man and listened with both ears, we adapt to the heart's convulsions. I send my grammar to a…

done

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...

Mrs. Smedley's Art Class

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THERE ARE TWO PARTS. FROM PART ONE: (Later the police escort the students out, directing them to keep their hands in the air, as they file out into the parking lot. They wrap Mrs. Smedley in a blanket as she stares out blankly in shock. "How is Linda? Is

He Loved Her (In Honor of Father's Day)

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A man strolled by with perfect posture and a masterful comb-over. Bud gave me that 'get him' expression; sitting there with his own low side part. We razzed him about it all the time, but he still looked pretty-damn-good for seventy-five.

Still Single

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“Yes, Mother, of course I’m still single. No, I haven’t joined the Army. No, I’m not moving back home.”

Lotis

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1A voice scratches her ear: Come here, petal.Later: …

Where in daytime nothing is

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I had imagined what it must be like / out there in the middle place