Most read stories

Why Don't You Just Take Off Your Top

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You were there at the beginning almost, when I wanted to write about the dead spider I smashed on my bedroom wall, comparing it to the blue/grey smoke of the blown-off fireworks drifting overhead.

When I Met Sally

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When I met Sally I was all Unsuspecting Of what powers Might be found In this world and In a woman.

It's My Life

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Look, “Wolfie,” (or “Pharaoh,” or whatever your name is now) a little too much information, don’t you think? I don’t need to hear all the details about you and Sharon. It’s my life, and I’ll cry if I want to – to alter the song just a

Retrospective with Mum

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I've brought a stack of old photo albums to the home with me. It'll be nice to go through them with Mum, I'm thinking.When I arrive she's doing her usual routine, where she sits silent for a time then bursts unprompted into laughter, lungs rattling, shouting at some…

I and a Friend Eat Burritos

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My friend and I were talking while having burritos (some days, it is as if all we ever eat are burritos, existentially speaking) and I was looking at the way he inserted that shaft of meat in his mouth and thought him prodigious for his technique

Ode to Tomorrow

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If luscious lips lusted for love lost, they wouldn't be mine.

Dust

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It was the absence of small sounds he felt most. The clink of a spoon against china, a floorboard’s distant creak, the swish of that old, broken-toothed comb through her hair. A thousand tiny sounds that had proved he wasn’t alone.

The Calendar of Minutes

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He was prepared for this event.

The Book

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“Are you comparing the communists with Hitler?” “Are you telling me there is no comparison?"

Woody met Louise

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Times were tough. They met out on the right-of-way on Highway 61 heading south, each trying to hitch a ride to New Orleans where they might find work. Albert walked up to her lugging a saxophone in a scuffed up case. Mamie had old cloth suitcase. After handshake bona fides…

Bohemian eyes

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I know I was hungry. I was hungry for what you had to offer, your fast cars, your dad’s ski boat, your beautiful mouth and its pretty words, your Bohemian eyes and yes, for the joy you could give me between the legs. But I was unprepared for the lif

Listen to the Wind

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Long ago, when I was a child, like you, my grandfather told me about the wind. He pointed to a willow whose branches were dancing in the breeze and asked me what I heard. “Just the wind,” I answered. He smiled and ran his hand acr

Anticipation

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Two minutes later Alicia Morgan stepped out of her car. Her smile faltered momentarily and he saw that she assumed the mistake was hers

Jacob Ellis

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My name is Jacob Ellis. I was thinking about school and all those years and years and how they go eventually away but always remain somewhere in the mind as if imprinted on an akashic record. I was dizzy there, dizzy with dread and always on the verge of falling.…

Childproof Your Chewing Gum, Will You?

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Have you ever heard a bird sneeze? Okay, okay, I was sitting on this branch, and you know how everybody loves to hate poetry, right? So, I ran into some hippies, who had named their daughter Echinacea, and you could instantly read her future, and

An Exquisite Fall From Grace

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He lay on a wooden pallet, which he had placed inside a cardboard box that might have once held a refrigerator. Except the box was labeled “Robotic Endoscopic Surgery System.” His head was propped on a gym bag that contained all his possessions. Outside, it…

LLC

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The formula is fucked.

Trapped

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They were overweight, diabetic, and trapped in a cellphone dead zone.

Hell We Were American

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We danced the pee dance after too much Seven Up and tasted odd Jello dishes.

Fall Guy

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Friends of the bride feeling out of place like a church key at a wedding

Literature

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My God is not a God of chance, she said.The year was youth and it was our first dance.She wanted to make sure we agreedlove is for God and lust is for Satan.Of course I do, I said. You're safe with me.Neither of us had moves and were relievedto stand in the corner and…

Teddy

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I'd had way too many drinks. My legs were quivering. Everyone had gathered there in the kitchen, my sleek and attractive ex-wife the center of attention, all the men fucking drooling over her. Seems she was a yoga queen now, a vegan princess, a dancer somewhere. She…

Mothers

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There's a surprise for you!Why did she think I would have been pregnant? I hadn't seen her for ages, neither people she knew, so it wasn't my weight ...She opened the door, a sigh of relief on her face, thank God she thought ... She isn't.The surprise was we came to visit,…

Nehwareven

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In the switched-off time of day's blackest rest-

Music and Books

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You're all I've got to keep me company, but it's a very fine company. So familiar, and warm as any cold digital fireplace. I can tell you've got more in your story, but it doesn't make you happy. I really do not feel well today. Fun I wanted to…

Handiwork

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People speak of wordsmiths, as if they hammer text into shape; smelting down clunky prose, recasting from white-hot ink.

On the Country Roads Tonight: I Don't Care - song

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Wheels are spinning On the country roads tonight I’m driving all alone No one else in sight And the wind’s in my hair And I don’t care Yeah, the wind’s in my hair And I don’t care

God Works Out of A Home Office

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with binoculars neighbor reads screen text:

Injuries Few in Annual "Running of the Cats"

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"We improvised to show our Spanish compadres that we meant them no disrespect, and the running of the cats was born."

Wonder as the Sum of All My Ignorance

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Questions unanswered proliferate/ across the April sky, blue// with wisps of cirrus white.