Most read stories

Birthday Makeover

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Iris is beside herself with excitement that the most popular girl in her eighth-grade class invited her to join her circle of friends after school. On the sound of the bell, she charges to the door to be the first out of the room and to race to meet Ange

Friends Love

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She darted out of her shadow, deftly she maneuvers through the tables and chairs and their eyes follow her.

I'm Despondent, Yes...

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Do you remember who Laura S was? She was the one who tore out Shel’s heart. (It so happened that she was one of Lynda’s closest friends, and knew all her secrets.) Shel started seeing a shrink after Laura dumped him, and he would go around s

MS Fragments Retrieved from a Garbage Disposal

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Mrs. Death was walking in mountains where everything around was still. Mr. Death? —in another hemisphere, wandering (last she’d heard) through a vast forest.

A Journal of the Plague Year: Day 237: A pandemic miscellany

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Wheel turning, round and round again

Mental Energy

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‎" You know, the cure is not worse than the disease" Leon said to his therapist for the fifth time.

our measured treads

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—and the god presiding over all / a four-faced, double-Janused clock / its equal seconds clickt away / ticking us our steps and breaths . . .

The Tertiary Stage (he probably thinks this poem is about him)

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They say his irrational outbursts and insane rantsare the results of untreated syphilis. Well, thatmakes perfect sense to me. I've always thoughtof him as a tessellated spirochete, a narcissistic chancre,festering pustule of a blistered imposthume. And whywouldn't a…

My Yoko Ono

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When one hears the siren call of artsy high school love, there’s not much one can do except go ahead and crash on the rocks, sending incense sticks and candles flying.

the animal that's in me

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If I can’t lure you with this animal that’s in me, what can? I want to know. With this pain that was privately held for so long? That was acquainted with the fellowship of hell? I sang, I cried out when I was away from you, even while tossing and twitch

the wrap

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a whisper of wind

The Nude Pianist: A Novel: Chapter 57

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"Ben! Ben!" yelled Monique. "Did you hear me?"

The Page Turner

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Her hands are swift and supple as swallows, bouncing off the keyboard in rapid-fire constellations of notes, because she's playing Bach's Concerto no.1 in D Minor, which is busy and prodigal and all over the place. She is Polina Olegovna Osetinskaya, a beautiful Russian…

The Pearl

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“An attractive woman is at a ritzy brunch. She’s drinking a really outstanding Bloody Mary and decides to try a raw oyster on the half shell.

Ratatouille

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The body receives its embrace but / only by the anti-body.

I heard You Like the Back Seat, Honey

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It’s okay if you do

From Eternity To Here

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I don’t know how the nights can be so long when life is so short. Can you tell me that? I always thought you were maybe fooling around a bit when we met, with that evasive bull about your initials on that brandy snifter, with that JAM person! I ju

[insert title]

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[insert short snippet of text]

How the Sixties Ended, a new echapbook online

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www.echapbook.com/fiction/ratch

George H.W. Bush

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George H.W. Bush took his cock out and began stroking it. “The Reverend Sun Myung-Moon, of course, is a good friend, and the Washington Times[1] is an independent source.” He…

Valentine

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XO

Here, You Cry

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Once a week the kids at school got ice cream and popsicles. You didn’t, you never had ice cream money.

drinking together

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In fact we were all drinking together in banquet halls (on banquet ships) with an epic poet who invented things, made things up, while dying in thorough dissipation. Washed to shore, our souls with our lives, our shadows. And storms swept them away

Luminous Nights, 9

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Both of us agreed we needed to break up, and have some time apart before we ended up killing each other. Before Robbie left Chicago to begin classes out in California, he made a promise to me — that he intended one day to return and marry me. He sai

Viva la Doglady!

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The dog catcher appeared to be trolling the neighborhood in his doggy death van.

re-homed

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aquatic, free-swimming or earth-bound

John Nixon Cummin' in Matt Hogue.

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[FARCICAL STATUS ... Keep going to Ladd's, you fucking losers! #talesofatwentyFOURyearoldNOTHING]

Don't Know What's Gotten Into You, Young Man

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I remember one of my old high school intellectual friends introduced me to what he called a real wild blond girl named Sally or Marnie or something that summer of 1964. She was tall and blond and thin and looked like a model. Boys were usually afraid to

line breaks

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I wish

Five Million Yen: Chapter 27

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Gabe had told the stewardess that he wanted to talk to Ben. Her name was Claudia and she knew whom he was talking about. That foxy musician Ben, thought Gabe, he probably boned her on some previous flight.