Most read stories

The Lady In Green

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Jürg joins a group of culturally interested tourists, and amongst them, a lady in green whom he wants to seduce....

obituary unsolicited

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po-mo parchments piled high deep: / credentials earnest transcripts earned / coursework scholarships helpt buy.

it was just like in a movie, they said

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Yeah, sort of

I Can Sacrifice My Self

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The sacrificial tendency is a real ugly one A pound of flesh, because it grows back But gnarled and scarred For you, So you may smile or cry Whatever you need How about an ounce of truth? How about I make a maze And you walk through…

The writer as pugilist - one more time

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I'm cool. You're not. Attitude is everything in life.

At the Cafe

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The light on his face from a lamp Felt hat with a black band Scrunched down The nose creating a strong shadow With dark, straight eyebrows under the hat Red and orange beard Leaning forward at the café table, watching A damp curl of ha

Redux

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Is that who we are as a nation, or was that day an aberration?

Cherry of Menloves

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Miranda laughed. The cream of the retail industry laughed...

That's All Right

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People are yelling for Little Elvis

A Tender Button

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He looked at a man in a straw hat on YouTube and thought “that could've been me, if I'd learned to play the guitar.” He savored the wistfulness of the moment. The pluperfect always made him sad. But the conditional was almost too much to bear. Octopi were a…

Alex Kraft and the Otherworld: Prologue through Chapter 27

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Prologue Late at night, an old man named Drevin Philpott stands on the deck of a cruise ship, looking out at the sea. The man is hunched and very small. His arms and legs are thin and he's got a bowling ball for a gut. He's standing on a chair so he can…

Statue Of An Armless Woman

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It feels like I'm almost in love with the statue of an armless woman. So white, so much whiter than white, so white it makes you believe you're blind, makes you feel like gnawing the rind off a blood red orangeIn the town square near the fountain …

Hotel Venice and the Bohemian Blue

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“Time to check out,” I say looking at sailboats and surfers gliding on the blue Pacific from the open window of my hotel room in Venice Beach. I inhale minty incense and gaze down at a dark-skinned woman in a sombrero seated behind a cloth-covered fold

Hromada

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Not for the short attention span

R.I.P. Ann Bogle

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It is with great sadness I announce the passing of Ann Bogle on February 28, 2023 after a brief illness. Ann was longtime contributor and editor of these pages and a champion of small press and emerging writers.I knew Ann since the late 1970's when she was an undergraduate…

BEACH

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It's just me.An October afternoon.Ocean and Ocean and Ocean. if you keep looking, down the coastthere is fog.Only fog and me and sea.I imagine him before I see him.Slow walk just above the water line, the fog catching up behind him,fantastical cape.The rational…

Tangled Up in Glue

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Shhhh, my husband is trying to write...

George Santos' Dream

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he dreams of limp victims stepping out of the waves/ water draining from skin and hair

Saturday's Heart

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day dreams, at last! Timetables colliding, time tables alarm clocks Sunday stew

AltspaceVR

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BelizeIn Belize there is muddy water. Rivers turned brown from the silt and clay of the soil. Water that looks like chocolate milk but the kind of chocolate milk that came in a box like a juice box and not a carton. That type of chocolate milk.Belize comes from an old…

An after-image, a ghost

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It was also witnessing the emergence into explicitness and clarity of everyone's expendability.

In the Sun

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The light was bright andthey sat on the railing of the long wooden bridge in the sun. She looked up at her father."Oh Daddy, where did you go?" she asked.He was young with black shinny hair blowing in the wind. "To Heaven, little girl,"She shook her head."What's…

My Secret Pen Pal

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What if I let it be known that I've been enjoying a heavy correspondence with Queen Elizabeth my entire life? We began the correspondence on the very day she was coronated. February 6th, 1952. I was four years old and working as a bartender in Cheyenne, Wyoming. …

A Message in Red-Brown Style

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The important thing is to repeat the keyword

Reds and Blues

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The Magic of the Old Man

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As far as I knew it was just an old man and his wife who lived in this house, but not really. I mean if you had seen what every person on that block had, you would have realized that many lived there, well many beings.

FRAT JERK (1960s)

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I threw my cards on the table. The jerk was playing his classical records again. I could hear that lousy music a mile away and he was the kind of kid that makes your skin crawl. But he had a CD sound system and it was up loud this time so that the house

Rain (a sense of her)

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The Caracol, a snapshot

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waves assaulted black volcanic rock in briny harmony

Meanwhile It Was Nuclear War

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“Whup!” he said, as a lorry pulled up in front. ¶ “Here’s your lorry.”