Most read stories

Excuse Me, There’s Some Suspicious Activity In the Men’s Room?

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Someone has locked themselves in the large stall They’re smoking one cigarette after another And pulling long stretches of toilet paper off the rolls God only knows for what purpose And yelling for anyone who’s outside the stall To go get them

Snacking Sneak

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He was sitting in the library, slipping the pistachios nuts between his wet lips.

3 Dollar Bills

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At home I cranked the oven and stuffed both pizzas in there and when they were ready I ate every crumb of both pies.

You're Never Going to Break My Heart

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Like any lovable lump of hidden rocks, these hills she breathes life into, blinking existence, are all well worth jumping up and over again and again. Just ask the little kids. Their endless landscape of discovery…

There Are Over 200 Religions In the World

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I am the man who was fired from a thousand jobs I was the model you saw pointing at the gleaming red Maserati At the Miami Art Fair, as if you did not already see it I was the girl named Calorie in that infamous diet commercial I was the boy named

Take Abe To Mass

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Near Christmas in Chicago they used to have these pictures of a five dollar bill on billboards all around the city, with the caption: Take Abe to Mass. On the front steps before going into the church, we encountered a ver

The Rag & Bone Armada Breaks Rank Upon the Barrier Reef like the Torpedo It Really is and Sinks Its Target with a Wink and a...

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When it's over and done the dangling skeleton walks away in one direction and the rushing wind pours itself into the other. My concern is always to be by your side. Most people probably think even that is giving it way too much of a movie plot,…

Acedia

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Nothing new this numbing year 'til now-/ a forced recovery of voice through// recollection of the catalogue of regrets,/ disappointments, and the long collapse

substance shadow spirit

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ride crests and troughs of ceaseless change, / without delight but without fear, / and once it’s time to leave, then simply go, / without regret, with no unseemly fuss.

I'm a Bohemian-American

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My first and so far only visit to my homeland of Prague was first described to me by a tourist guidebook, which laid out many of the fundamentals one must follow while travelling there. It was pointed out, for instance, that we would be “unlikely to encou

From the Writer's Diary

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I must pause in his discourse to step outside and relieve myself...

InSiDe

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dreaming in my cartoon life the car lifts its legs a hundred feet in the air

It was a Dark and Stormy Night

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One of his big failings was getting pissed off about things behaving badly but not troubling to immediately fix them. He was working on being more prompt.

Tragic Love

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So lie there like a sodden Brussel Sprout. Leave your paramour to thrash about in vain.

You Better Quit Your Runnin' Around

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I remember it was late at night I was with Johnny Appleseed’s younger brother Bruce Bruce Appleseed He was the lead singer for the band Fake Moustache Turns out he was just a bum Set on vibrate Who’d bought a 10-gallon hat once But h

Possible Wildlife (redux)

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This caused a problem when some raccoons, skunks and a fox were found lingering on and around the premises (separately, of course).

dancing in the theater of the soul

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It’s the audacious testicle dancing in its theater, isn’t it? Carrying the legendary names. The bad blood, the jealousy the heart retains, living again under its skin, rarely enlivened by one of its own. There was enough angel in you that we would g

festejo

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ocean and hungermy two companions at saillike Madness and Beauty separated at birth

The Day Felt

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Hoverboard plate glass of being upon within, splay palsy mothership. Sparks drift from beneath crouched workman's butt in front of a building that was ours last week. Tents with eclectic offerings pitched along thoroughfares winding through neighborhoods under dim…

Last Night I Dated The Universe

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Last night I dated the universe. What a hottie! I arrived on time and was feeling a bit spacey. Look at me, I said. I'm on time. Yeah, well, I invented time. I made sure you'd be here on time. Cool. Where do you want to go? Doesn't matter. Wherever we go I'm already…

A Day in the Life of a Public Transit Mime

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We got a lotta people ruinin' the public transit experience. Talkin' loud on cell phones, clippin' fingernails, even flossing their teeth.

Epistemology (Revised 2019)

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RE: The big stuff: We don’t know RE: The small stuff: Half of what you believe is true but you will never know which half

Perhaps It’d Be Better If This Were In a Sandbox

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I'd been sleeping on a couch. It was the couch of another artist, a friend, the kind of friend who makes you want to think in star patterns that dance across galaxies and warm distant life forms that are impossible to see. This friend made me feel more like…

Wandering Kisses

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Your wandering kisses entered my soul Then my flesh, then my holes You filled them all Like a Norwegian hall Like a Swedish sailor Drunk with ale You fell inside me And you’re falling still It was a thrill I can’t sit still I got a chi

The Optimism Of Despair

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He felt sick at heart, as if he'd just been told he'd been fired from a job to which he'd devoted 60 years of his professional life. And for no good reason; the profession no longer existed. It had slipped into obsolescence, like blacksmithing at the beginning of the…

Flash Wk 4: Cartography

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The surveyor began at the mouth of the Klamath and worked his way toward the mining camp. He'd expected to find a trail, but for most of the way he hacked through dense underbrush. The river shrubs clambered into the water, just skimming its surface. There were…

Neverfull

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Neverfull There are still things out there I haven't seen— a mere tadpole blindly clinging to the base of the pond. I reach for every star in the inkwell but none are close enough— even on toes tickling the edge you'll never…

Going Commando

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I have the fear of comedy I have the laughter of war I have the need of a commando To come sack and ransack us Over and over again, O I am a pillow, a rock, an ant A soft Southern deer in the headlights I have the mask of Anonymity Lyi

having a bad day

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My mom said, “Carol, why are you laughing?” And I said, “I just saw my last boyfriend and his wife, who got married six months after we broke up, and it’s funny. I mean, I just saw them. They’re in town visiting from California.” And my mom said, “C

Life in Outer Space

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Conveniently, the vistor had arrived when she was between tasks. It was still difficult for her to believe that it had occurred but she had the tangible proof there in front of her, within reach.