Most read stories

Quiet City

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I hope you'll have the time to read this before your attention wanders.

Comes After Cato

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When they called him down there to the morgue to identify the body, he drove behind the wheel of his truck like some steady maniac on a long haul. The Ford 150 cried out for new shocks, but that hardly mattered. Mud plastered side panels and…

You Were This Close

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I don't know if we'll meet again in the sea of light. Circumstances aren't only up to human beings. After all maybe it's all drunk circumstance, but that doesn't answer the blinding question, it only poses some more. This is…

Sociopathic Medicine

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True love may last forever, but the most I've ever gotten out of a lab assistant is two years, five months, three weeks, twelve days, and fifteen hours. And he was the exception.

Mona

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Doc and I talked for several hours. When I told him Mona was pregnant, he turned his head and looked at me. “Who's the father?” he asked. Don't know, I said. Mona didn't know, either.

Twedes

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“Last night the Scots invaded Sweden,” I wrote, “to retrieve the silver filched from the Irish the Norwegians had in their coffers when Sweden conquered. The Swedes offered the Nobel to a Scots writer to keep ... the peace."

Acceptance is to her a phenomenon

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You were given blame for action as experience by cause and effect now. If you take apart blame and even forgiveness is too rigid. She thinks of that purpose as to give men sexual destiny.

Arturo + Lourdes, 2005 and 4ever

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Here’s the story as compiled from the scantest of clues: The writing on the back of a stall door in the restroom of a twenty-four hour restaurant under the Gowanus Expressway.

The Captive

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....sees the beginning of a new day through the closed shutters, hears the guard washing up at the sink, feels the beginning of a cry in his throat.

Bitterness: Poem

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Standing hard at the windowCold clouds move, slowBlue horizon in the distance—It's just a slice of blue.All this beautyI miss it in the bitterness.I'm consumed by the missingThe emptinessThe unfairnessAlways some unfairness cropping upand capturing joy.Glancing high…

Estranged

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He kind of enjoyed living by himself. It was nice and peaceful.

About My Dad

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My dad drove a Model A Roadster and had a photo taken of him on a hunting trip up in Wisconsin with one leather boot up on the running board and a .22 caliber pistol in his hand like Ernest Hemingway and Clark Gable rolled into one My dad ro

the last thing

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salmon maple syrup horseradish smoke detector the list read, scrawled in purple marker on the refrigerator door.

Helen O., Grand Central, 1959

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No snippet to see, here. The piece is so short a snippet would be the whole thing.

Bison

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To make extra money, my father wrote music reviews for the Calgary Herald, and on Saturday nights, he went to hear the Symphony, or into recital halls to listen to the chamber music that was being performed around the city. He took me, once, to a performa

Cremains

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I need a different storage solution

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…

Years After

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Years After she can go home.

The bridge

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as long as you have some snacks up there I can be brave

The Nielsens (part two)

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[continued from part one...]After sweeps, my schoolwork started to slip. I had trouble paying attention in class, and my workbooks and tests came back from the teacher marked in ketchup red ink. I had always been a good student, and this academic…

Death At McDonalds, or How I Learned To Love

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"I sighed heavily. 'Goddamn it...' I spat under my breath. 'Every motherfucking time..."

Just a Joke

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The pizza was perfect, ingredients genuine, not artificial: crust charred slightly; cheese gooey; sauce steaming, requiring careful eating lest the mouth suffer burns. Such quality was becoming rare around town. The product in Manhattan, by and large,

Suzanne

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And I watched, from her warm bed, the curtains dancing in the window

Hail Mary Pass

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so for penance, the priest gave me the full twelve Stations of the Cross

Woman

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When you move to the music of a woman

The Shared Transgender(er)

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...I told Uncle Lou I thought it (trans-gendering) looked like a thoughtful way of occupying the world. It was a personal triumph, for some individuals, over the destructive affects of denial. Besides, it hurt no one, and it didn’t destroy property. I alw

Amiaivel

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Once upon a time a queen was blessed with twin sons, which she named Nosch and Amiaivel.

Arborist Abridged

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Besides, that might have been the area of his birth, and if so, Jacob was now the director, priest, pallbearer, driver, and custodian of a hometown funeral

Rude Awakening

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Vito suddenly found himself wide awake. He was unable to recall having fallen asleep or dreaming or awakening. It seemed he'd just entered bed, yet a glance at the windows told him it was already the middle of the night.

Banana Creme Pies for Sixty Percents

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Suddenly the auditory havoc dies down and she falls into a loop, saying BANANA CREME PIES FOR SIXTY PERCENTS over and over.