Most read stories

Real Estate

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He drove down there in his truck the second time. Didn't want to get anywhere near that snooty car of hers.

Possum Woman

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They always referred to her as the possum woman back home. She scoured the streets just as the sun fell into deep slumber behind the sentinel, sun tanned shoulders of the mountains encircling small town anywhere.

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.

The Bond Trader Goes Hunting

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The Bond Trader begins his morning with coffee and a hit of LSD.

We Must Be Carefully Taut

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In the dread / of night, navigate by the sliver moon

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.

The Duende

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Now he took his guitar in hand, and at once he felt a strange fiery sensation rise from the soles of his feet, to the palms of his hands, to the tips of his fingers: the Duende. It was that mystical force poets can sense, and no philosopher can explain.

Buster Keaton

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I passed Buster Keaton on the way to work this morning. He was standing, hands in pockets, at the corner of Riverview and Keil. It was the young Buster, handsome and still strong enough to pin down the scars that marked his childhood. This was the Buster

The Good, the Bad, & the Ugly

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One of the women is a brassy blond, and when she takes off her coat, I almost choke on a French fry.

Brief Studies of Doomed Females

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She is unsure if it will work, despite all her reading of physics and flying carpets and propeller planes. The practicalities of aerodynamics in application remain to be tested.

The several stages of grief

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Robert was not in any sort of metaphysical or spiritual sense seeing himself, as in the scales falling from his eyes and seeing himself as he was. He was a long way from that kind of insight. He was literally seeing another himself.

Treading Water

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I was nine when I saw my first dead body.

Scrabbled Sensitivities

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It was fun, until he started winning every time.

All Will Be Well

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

RUBYRED AND PARSHOOTER

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This stage of Junior’s young life was static, moving very little off-center since his graduation from high school five years ago. Treading water both professionally and emotionally never worried him. Not until after what transpired that night when Pr

Suspended Heart

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The suspended heart became an oracle of sorts. Hung from a string, immersed in the kind of glass container in which tulips grow, it was located between Bath and Body Works and Kleinfelter's Jewelers at the north entrance of the mall. Someone had lost it,

A sense that something has happened

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hunting after dark,/ in the quiet they seemed to appear/ with every new poem I read, each new workshop, some hunting carried on/ by both animals.

Four Noble Lies

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When Carlotta left me, I cried / into my soup. I shriveled into / harsh mathematics.

Lord of Autumn

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Gordon He pressed the side of his face to the pillow and waited for the sound of birds. The room was black, the window open; when a breeze came the curtains billowed out against a lighter sky. He heard the clock. He heard the dry sound of Helen breathing;…

Lizard Back

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The lizard is like wearing wings on my back, makes me fly like a dragon in my dreams, which I have all day long, while looking at you, talking to you, right now, having dreams in some part of my head. I'd like to stick out my tongue and lick the part of m

Kung Pao Turkey

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It was my grandmother's idea of a joke, but I never realized she was joking when she repeated it every Thanksgiving. She would sit at the head table just before Uncle Leon would carve the bird and ask, "It's an American holiday. Shouldn't we be roasting an eagle…

Love Songs for Kandahar

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You worry that the mullahs suspect us, but that cannot be. We never touch in public. You weep and I shake when a neighbor knocks on the door.

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.

Fort Stark, New Hampshire

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Sometimes you have to make sacrifices to get where you need to be.

The Birdcage

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He blew out the candle. There was the tang of candle smoke, scattered by a sudden rush of wings, and the immediacy of another breathing thing in the dark. I heard the birdcage open, and the bird fluttering in there without crying out.

Who Will Carry Us?

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1. People avoided Mac, the Great White Hunter, which was how he liked to think of himself, even though he was not white. Mac was cocoa colored and stalked his prey nearly nude. The city was his…

Never Been Down to Lonely Street

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“This is not turning out to be a wholesome project,” my brother hissed into the phone one night. “Yo, Alan, it’s ELVIS. It’s American gothic, and the child needs to know the underbelly of the myth,” I hissed back.“Did you, or did you not, wear makeup to

I Confess to God in the Shower

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During fifth grade, I was called / closeted queer and tall faggot.

Fake Letters

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Dear Husband,

Clab's Craws

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I realized something must be terribly wrong.