Most read stories

Protagonist Unbound

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Protag noted that Gertrud’s brow was knotted with stress and rage, as if she’d been drinking too much coffee and reading the latest translation of Simone de Beauvoir.

Lule of Raw

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A discussion at the homeless colony under the expressway overpass crossing the river:

Guardians

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His toenails were so long they curled under and into the black leathery pads of his feet. They lightly clacked on our linoleum, tap shoes made of thick petrified roots. He didn't seem to mind.

Divided

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Sasha and I had snorted a table of cocaine and I had her trapped inside my Joy Division bedroom.

January 1, 2012

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I couldn’t begin to give an account of the latest days.

How to travel with your Demons (4)

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I also understand if you don't think that's fair. But consider this: If she doesn't operate according to those rules, then where are we? Isn't that anarchy?

Bad Boys

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You the macho man shuffling one woman out the back entrance to let another one in the front.

LAST CALL: A Memoir

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We see o­nly the results which a man's choices make out of his raw material . . . when his body dies all that will fall off him, and the real central man, the thing that chose, that made the best or the worst out of this material, will stand naked. All sorts of things…

Trader Joe's, on a Sunday

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When you think I'm not looking, I always am. You say it's like nicotine, your best analogy as a non-smoker. The kind of hit that is hard to live without and isn't it human nature, you ponder.

The Deli Worker

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This is the story of my friend, Gil

Postcard from a local

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Wish you weren't here, Moon man in your cargo shorts.

Hangover

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“You wouldn't believe it.” Peter leaned in to whisper. “Don’t let the Kodak moment with the wife and kids fool you. That guy is totally gay.”

Ancestry.comedy

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all paths converge on Africa/ and Eden, and the fall from animal grace

Hemingway for Gloria

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He disliked intrusion and very specifically innocuous intrusion, nice guys, one might say, who tried to be near him to learn something from him or who admired him but who, as in that passage, came merely to disturb his work.

Three Flash Sonnets

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Poor souls. Likely they'll be poets.

Life as a Porno

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It could as well be late night infomercials/ saturating the screen// with medieval looking exercise machines

Saw Her

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Just like that. He heard her words clearly from the top floor of the five story apartment building. The unexpected change in weather made it mandatory for him to open his window.

IGGY (Iguana Iguana) — A Novel (Chapter)

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After he’d told her on Friday that No, he wasn’t going to sign that contract for the cemetery plots she’d picked out—“I don’t want to spend my whole life knowing exactly where I’ll end up” is exactly what he’d said—the marriage, as far as she was concerne

On Our Way

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  They met on a bus. The bus got lost. He had corn chips. She had a tuna sandwich. They shared. “This is good,” he said. “Did you make this?” …

Auto Imperative

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I drove to you in April / and you loved me all through Illinois

Smoke

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On his last day of high school Jackie York woke up to the smell of burning books. He didn't know it was his last day of high school. He did know the smoke coming through his rusty window screen was book smoke.

Blood By Pines

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But all that they found at the top was bloody red spatters on pure white snowflakes. And beyond that footprints that got smaller and smaller until they disappeared completely into the spicy green pines.

Minnesota Menage

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I peel off my shorts and tee-shirt, step out of my shoes, and crawl into bed. She wakes up then. "Oh, my goodness," she says.

Siam

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Our city is really two cities, conjoined. One lives during the day, the other at night. Those who live and breathe daytime air call the city by one name, a name which evokes the relative newness of the place, a name with words just barely invented.…

A Christmas Surprise

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"John is going to love it when he finds out that it pees," Bobby said. Kelly laughed and dropped a towel on the floor.

The River, Once

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once she went to quenchthen she went to scrubnow she collects dead toadsgrinds them with cornmeal to feed her sowsonce she ploughed the land toiled with her face deep in dark soil her back burning in hot sunnow she works in the paper millmaking laminated labels for the…

(5) Forgiveness

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“Charlie was right about you, Nan,” she said in a voice of pure defeat. “You are a gentle spirit. And probably too good for people like us.”

Arcana Magi - c.13: Along the Way

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The Sentinels flew low and through the woods. Carefully navigating their way around the trees, they heard the sound of birds chirping and frogs croaking in the morning.

Safety First

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I am not a gun, but I think I may have pulled a plastic movie trigger in some kind of real world action before, accelerated, pivotal scene, one way or another before, this new frame came into its paranoid view .You see? I am not a plastic water bottle,but I…

Pieces

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I was a whole man once.