Most read stories

With Ariel in Their Hands

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Sylvia Plath killed herself while her children slept upstairs, breakfast ready at their doors. Anne Sexton wanted to do it, but Sylvia got there first, making Anne just a little less remarkable, although she tried often enough, her death like a song put on repeat. …

do you ever read writing?

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“Do you ever read writingand wish that it was about you?That you caused the epic fucking swell of emotions?That you were the only one capable of the rescue? Do you ever read writingand feel it so intensely?Like every word is an angry and desperate misfiring…

Steve Jobs in Hell

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Everyone asks that question. The short answer is: he brought it on himself.

All Will Be Well

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Jesus will walk on the water. Judas will walk on a technicality.

55 words #4

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I drink with my thinking problem intact.

Leave Off Doves

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Midway through the fall semester, an unremarkable girl in Professor Woody's Advanced Fiction workshop dyed her hair an unnatural shade of dark, changed her name to Tasmina, and turned in a story filled with made-up words.

Smoke

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We both lost our appetites, her sense of taste destroyed by the tide of smoke sweeping across her tongue, wiping out her taste buds. Mine was limited to the four tastes the tongue alone could discern,

Phlegmatic

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Eddie Dorsett was a dumb kid. Nobody could dispute it. More than that, Eddie Dorsett was a fat, slothful, whining, shilly-shallying, phlegmatic zero of a kid, the lowest of the third-graders for certain and a prime contender for the lowest of the entire R

Crocodilian

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it ate her and then I was next in line

Resurrection

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Rudely awakened, confused and bewildered, he stood stone silent and watched me flee. I barely managed to keep my wits together, didn't and couldn't pretend that I wasn't running out of his bedroom as if my life depended on it. He wouldn't call me a cab,

My Hairy Thumbnail

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I was a gangly 11 years old, a year before the Watergate hearings pre-empted the afternoon cartoons on television, when I discovered an uncle's girlie magazine during routine reconnaissance of my grandmother's hall closet.

By 4th Grade at St. Paul’s Elementary, No One Believes in the Spanking-Machine-in-the-Closet of Sister Alice Elenita’s Office

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Arthur farts. Pandemonium. Miss O'Kelly shouts, “Quiet!” 32 nine year-olds freeze. “Close your books, fold your hands on your desk, put your heads down.” Obedience. Silence. Until…

Two Writers play Modern Warfare

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I watch as my character falls lifelessly to the ground. I press the square button and I am instantly revived.

Loose Lips Sink Ships

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I asked the Eskimo if he'd ever seen a vagina before. “Because I can show you,” I whispered. Albert Huffman, a recent arrival to Hamden via Alaska, was not, in fact,…

And We're Catching The Bus

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On the bus Jenna looked out the window at the bleak fuckscape.

Men Are Beasts

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Now when she speaks to him, he no longer responds with an interrogative but rather a cheery, "You're absolutely right, dear" or "I'll get right on it," or "What a great idea!"

Hello, My Name Is James, And I Am An Asshole

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By my calculations, all hell is uncoiling. At the moment, this fact is not really obvious to anyone, but I'm confident that will change soon enough.

He knows better

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It’s time to let her go.

For Carol: Life Bursts Out

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Life was small. It was tiny even, so tiny it was hard to see it sometimes. Life curled up to make itself even smaller, to fit into the kinds of holes that insects crawl into to get away from bigger insects. Life was sad. Life didn't want to be an insect.

Fake Letters

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Dear Husband,

Wedded Bliss

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Alaina paced around in the green room. She couldn't believe she had agreed to do this. Her friends had told her it would be an excellent idea. How can agreeing to marry a total stranger on national television a decent idea, let alone an excellent one? "Oh Lain, it'll be…

And Furthermore

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clickety-clack, not.

Killing with kindness

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I have a few medical issues.

Valley Rugstore

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He hunched low and forward on his bike, his 14-year old self, flying down the dusty back roads of this Great Midwestern Land, his head full of the smell of the algebraic girl he sat behind in math class just hours ago.

Riposi in Pace.

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It was too young to be love. We were 5, a buzz-cut me, and you, plated with babyteeth

Digging a Hole to the China Sea

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Could sampans fall upward, sailing from the bottom of the Earth? If so, which way would their sails bend—up, or down? And would the strange China Sea follow suit? Would salt water geysers spurt from the hole we dug, flooding the streets of Seattle?

Tremor

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I ask because she's the animal person, not me. She understands animal behavior.

Scrabbled Sensitivities

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It was fun, until he started winning every time.

Hundred Dollar Hit

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"My god," Toni said, bending over and tapping her head gently against the counter in fake anguish. "His ass in those jeans. Jesus. I should be young and lucky like you." Toni tapped her cigarette ash into the coin tray.

One Poem, Eight Rejections

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Do you suppose you could make your female protagonist a salamander rather than a human?