Most read stories

Woman

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When you move to the music of a woman

Her blue eyes floating on twin clouds of innocent beauty

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The girl I sat next to said she had just looked up in time to see it, Randy, and it was quick thinking that you avoided it. Randy said he nearly missed it and commented on how Judy was the only one in the world who could discover plastic bubble paste, bab

20 Things I Learned about Norman Rockwell from "American Mirror, The Life and Art of Norman Rockwell"

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His middle name was Perceval. He judged the first Miss America contest in 1922. He saw himself primarily as a storyteller in the Dickensian mode.He claimed to be an illustrator rather than an artist. He disliked driving but loved to walk, and preferred…

Training Exercise

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The other day I’m in the backyard with one of my kids, doing what he’s calling a training exercise, which is basically the two of us with flashlights, shinning the beams over the grass and up into the night to see what we can see.

Cream-colored Berets and Big Fish

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Alone on the platform, I waited for a train.

The Bear (April Fool's Day Challenge)

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Poor Daniel gets the ultimate trick played on him by nature when he encounters a bear for this April Fool's Day Challenge story.

The Invisible Corpse Candle

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Her eyes stared wide with panic, her teeth chattered intermittently with impressive intensity, and with her ineffectual stabs at the air she completed the portrait of distracted mania.

Refill Please

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“Hello, this is Natalie Silverman, I’ve been tying to get my prescription filled for over a week. ... Maybe you recall, you did my brain surgery last spring? I’m sorry that there’s still a balance of over eight thousand dollars. I hope you don’t hold tha

The Beginning and End of Comedy

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Puberty, for Ellen, was less than an overnight event—yes, she got her period in a more or less timely fashion, but what her doctor referred to coolly as secondary sexual characteristics—namely, boobs—took their damned sweet time in coming.

The Empty Bed

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But by day the birds / of prey were in control.

The Experience

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I decided this time I’m going right to the end.

The Waves

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...some years later I heard that an old friend jumped off that bridge to her death.

He Holds an Expired Visa and a Monday Grudge

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Somehow the world survives

The Kisses of a Satyr

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“I better go. My mom needs me at home,” she says. Soft. Smooth. Firm. Sweet. Maybe I’m pushing too hard. I kiss her on the cheek and she stiffens in response. My heart bleats.

The Watchman

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The coffins pile up gnawing dust on the glass panes to the rims of my binoculars. Shadowy cracks of stifling proportions, gliding over my eyes a requiem of mahogany. At dawn they heave between the workers’ hands, leave their resting places for a green tra

Just One Sentence

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Blinking, Eleanor frowned at the words she’d uttered. They were absurd… foolish. Unequivocally unscientific, but beautiful nonetheless. The notion of the sunless hours embodied as a clumsy artist struck the student as interesting.

The Clique

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On the other side of the world the Moon spun on its way.

The Majesties

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When the scrapbook came out this time, I noticed a photo I hadn't seen before, the Baroness with her arm around the waist of Princess Diana. A lavish display of blooms towered behind them. "Did you know her?" the florist asked.

This Thing

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I'm sure someone somewhere must havefelt something like it before. Imean I've never been able tohave this kind of deep longing asif you might want to forget everythingyou know. I always figured that funny stuff onlyhappened to folks in a foreignfilm. Not to some guy…

Out of That Bed 1963

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My father's hands were huge. His left knuckles gashed as a kid when he rode his bike too close to a moving train. When his fingers fisted around a glass, the scarred joints bulged from his grip like blind eyes.

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,

On reading the “Lives of the Poets” by Michael Schmidt

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And now its done! Five months read! This book is batoning in my head. Its eleven o'clock AM and hot as hell, even the breeze, billowing nets through the sliding screen adds sweat, cuts me down to size. I will needs again to…

Dairy Queen Lust

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I, personally, just had no interest in having some pimply-faced moron stick his tongue down my throat.

LUPUS

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Unexpected Fever

another night, another dream

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She can tell you seven things she doesn’t love about her face.

Tornado Diary

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The storm grew in might until it spawned the worst kind of tornado, an F-5 or Finger of God.

He knows better

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It’s time to let her go.

Always Vera

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“The price of everything's gone up,” I say. “But I don't have to buy you chocolate if it's costing too much.” She says nothing and bends her head again, gnarled hands slowly breaking a family-sized chocolate block into pieces.

Takin' a Break

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The place turns out to have a really nice ambiance, and while the pasta is only passable—though I ordered, I believe, the cheapest plate on the menu, so maybe I got what I deserved—the background dinner music playing is "Yankee Hotel Foxtrot" by Wilco.

The Sum Above

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The mandatory is not / your friend