Most read stories

one for the runners

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it always takes too long to figure it out

WE SHOULDN'T HAVE BOUGHT THE FIREWORKS

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My chin is half-eaten. My chest is gone. There is a rhythm to how each flame licks me. Like how you used to in the mornings before work. Before the coffee. Before the toaster. Before a rose clenched between your teeth and dancing.

Motivation

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Motivation always needs to come from somewhere. For some all it takes is a sunny day, a smile from a stranger or a simple pat on the back. Others demand a fire lit, a carrot dangled or a whip cracked. Yet here the sun had set, the fire extinguished and th

“Because a man has read a book does not mean he is a wise man”

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That night in the stable the three wise men were the only ones who had read books. All the rest became victims of circumstance. Characters amazing in their own right. To be written and talked about for centuries. Totally…

With Torture Banned, US Tries High School Awards Night

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“He’s a tough nut,” says CIA officer Marlon McGrath. “He says he’ll die a martyr rather than crack before we get to the Booster Club award for outstanding female athlete.”

My Space

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Hey, can you move over and let me sit down here? In German you would use Raum to mean room, or for an area, a region or something like that. There is another word for “room,” as in a room in a house, but you can't use either of those words to ask someone

Biblos Melas

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While laying in his hospital bed recovering from a minor heart attack, Professor Martin Hellman reads details of an ancient book he has been given for translation--Biblos Melas, or, the "Black Book." Excerpted from the forthcoming novel "Minion Web."

Pilot Wannabe

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We were both looking up at the rainy sky, while the big jet barely moved through the clouds, coming in for a landing at Oakland between storms. It sort of reminded me of 911, the way they just seemed to hover above us, barely moving, like they were poss

Main Street

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You know when you see the flashing blue lights in your rearview mirror that you're not being pulled over because of a busted taillight or carelessly doing fifty in a thirty-five mile an hour school zone; your crime is being a Black man behind the wheel. It happens often…

Rootless

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[This story is not racist!]

A New Woman

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George didn’t move when Cindy punched him in the nose. He just stood up and walked to the fridge, poured a glass of water and dropped a few ice cubes into the glass. The ice cracked in the glass as he walked back to the couch.

The Choice

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The bull had flesh of a deep red that turned black where the massive muscles knotted. Colt thought of the way blood turns black when it pools too deep. There was nothing but muscle, an intricate network of coarse fibers woven tightly and wrapped in a thin

Cattle Crossing

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"You wantin' one of them kittens? If we can't give 'em away we're gonna drown 'em. We got too many."

karmic youth

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We were so easy, so willing to be drained, that to start making those puffed-up stories about us now, our courage, etc. would be purely misleading. Put a bottle, or glass of wine in our hand, and our panties flew off, and gladly we would have followed y

Nascent Talk with the Gypsy

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She was having a laugh, but I didn't know what about. We were sitting in a big house that was on the top of a large incline. All these books were scattered around, and the walls and the kitchen, the doors and the quarter round and every other thing, was old and…

Yet More Band Names For Sale or Rent

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Random Access Hundred Dollar Bill Burning Question The Black Truffles Open John Queasy Sister Tortoise and the Hair Duck Tail and the Wrap Stiff Resistance Knee Jerk Reaction Tough Cookie Bar Code and the Illusion Erosion Eroti

Mail from the Ungrund: A Tardy Preamble

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nevertheless, this crowd had come up with a universal cure for humanity, and regardless of consequences . . .

Playground

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The Keds-stubbed grass, toy trucks without wheels, and Band-aids threaded in the sand… Most parenting is vigilance. Seconds ahead of its own sound, a passenger jet spears the heights not far above the treetops, …

Where Does the Foam From the Lattes Go?

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Where does the foam from the lattes go? I'm not being flip--I want to know.

of love and death

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- I wish I were taller. - You also wish I never die.- What´s your point?- Santa Claus must really hate you.------ What´s the most ridiculous thing someone´s ever asked you?- Please never die. - But you promised!------ I just want to go to sleep, I´m…

Little Red Riding Hood, The Woodcutter, Grandma, and The Big Bad Wolf: Their Ongoing True Story

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Grim though it be Little Red Riding Hood and The Woodcutter, with his hewing axe, eviscerate and skin the Big Bad Wolf, thus rescuing sickly Grandma. Grandma’s a bit worse for the wear after her couple of hours in Big Bad’s overstuffed stomach. But she cl

women in labor

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I am like a spice in wind, warm and gentle on the face, a reminder of your youth, tried and true. Lick the trapped silk from my soul, is all I am saying, with your high language. Get the core out of me and turn it under your tongue. Why shouldn't the egg

Five Million Yen: Chapter 42

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We had sex, but hadn’t established a strong relationship. We liked each other as more than friends, but I was worried that Claudia was acting as a honey trap and spying on me for Dan Arris.

Intensive Seminar Helps Cat Poets Sharpen Their Claws

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With a notch in his ear from an honor-mad fight And a tail that is shorter than at last sunlight.

Testament Part 2 of 6

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One must learn to give the Bull the things/ it needs: space, grass and grain, his mates/ and offspring, and elude the things/ its momentary fury wants- your death

the same, without wings

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and he'll be dead within a week but i'll still be ordering a large black coffee and smoking upwind

This is Not an Indie Movie

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This is not an indie movie about love and happiness and Al Green songs redone by actresses pretending to be songwriters.

Surge Of Green

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Already past the harbinger of yellow crocus

Return

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We head home, skirting along the coast, humble before catapulting waves; the lighthouse near invisible if not for a single band of red.

L.A. Blonde

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Then there was Marsha, the blonde bombshell, at Irvine, who slept over one night only. As in the original one night stand, your standard L.A. blonde beach-girl bombshell ex-cheerleader tear your heart out and spit it as far as she could. Wrench your bal