Most read stories

a microcosm

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The right is empty, waiting to receive the load like a catcher behind home plate.

The bridge

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

My Affair With Tiger

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Face it girls, you want to claw my eyes out, don’t you? Or whack me across my 36 DD’s with a golf club, am I right? Well don’t blame me if I’m young, gorgeous, full-breasted and obviously the cat’s meow.

The Loss of a Child

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I watched as the light fled from your eyes, No slowly dimming lamp,

Neighbors

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“Hear that?” asks my wife Amy. Books in hand, we relax on our flagstone patio. A shaft of late-day sun borrows through the maples' leafy canopy and deposits a dazzling, sunlit pool on Amy's lap. …

HOUSE OF GHOSTS

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The blue Victorian at 1145 White Street shifts in its foundation, creaks, and settles in for the night. The girls are bundled into their beds. My wife, too, has gone to sleep. I’m alone in the kitchen, steeping chamomile tea, coughing phlegm into the wr

Mama's Boys

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A pale face was illuminated by the street light. A voice rasped, “Charlie?” “Do I know you?” “It's Bill.” The side of his little brother's thin face

LUPUS

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Unexpected Fever

The New Meow

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I'm delighted to report that I've come up with my own school of thought. It's called, "Dress Like a Cat Until You Get What You Want."

Swimming Lessons

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The trainers looked at her and smiled and they were still one creature with four legs and two heads. The old man’s left eye moved in sync with the younger one’s right eye.

Lens

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Night fell and the photographer slept, one hand between Prue's legs.

Arcana Magi Memorial - c.4

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Azure walked through the fog as though she were walking to class. Her hands swayed through the mist and felt the thickness of the cloud through her fingers

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.

Estranged

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

... and I liked it!

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... red lipstick shiny in the bar's light, raven-colored hair spiky and toussled. Jen opened her mouth to say something, stickiness of her cherry Chapstick separating with her lips ... and the girl leaned in and started kissing her.

Little Pi.ec.es

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I scare my daughter when she sleeps because she thinks I'm going to kill her.

Love and Destruction In A '67 El Dorado

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He had her pinned to the back seat, expressing his love. Do you love me? she whispered in his ear. Do you, do you, Jimmy Dale, do you love me? His only response…

Cast Off Thy Suffering

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Somewhere along tomorrow, I will forget I have the right to do this.

What the Father Said

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At night, instead of sleep, there were new and secret pleasures. Half-awake lessons in dexterity, in the limber material of human life.

When the Ocean Was Ours

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The Ocean used to be ours. When the stars were still fire and they were the only light burning though the dim, hazy nights, the ocean was ours. Before the smog, and the lights that were carried by the men who rose from the sea, the ocean was ours. We…

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…

Hat Shop Girls

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My favorite was a red bowler, a man's hat, which I never dared wear outside my tiny bedroom. My three brothers wanted it too much to take that kind of a risk. They'd poke me with various sharp objects: the serrated edge of the bread knife, the rusted TV

Why'd You Come Back?

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But there, up the street, just coming into the corner of the window, someone was in the middle of the road. Walking literally down the middle, dragging one leg like it was heavy or broken, carving a fat line next to the skinny one the good one made.

Laundry List

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• Don’t confuse the virtues of bananas with the virtues of banana bread

Ingrid Bergman Answers the Call

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Out the window is an empty birdbath, dry flaky concrete ring, no birds.

Curtains

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She wants her mother back and all I can give her is this—over and over. She doesn't want my mouth, wants no kissing anywhere even. Just this. Like this—quiet and rough. Quiet because her stepfather is napping in the bedroom next to…

Everything I Have Is Broken

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My mother’s old china no longer reflects. It’s value is now estimated as drywall.

Zig Zag

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Jerry tries to be funny saying, I think Charlie Brown should kick Lucy in the head when she pulls the ball away; either that or they start making out. Ewww, but they're both eight years old, Sandra says biting her lip, tying off her smile. Jerry won't focus on her…

Blues Machine

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Rockin' Joe Heath stumbled into the stairwell in nothing but a black Zildjian t-shirt, shushing himself, trying to see right, pounding head. He recalled the old lily pattern of the wall­paper and something about the tattered edges…

The Great San Francisco Poetry Wars, 19

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His wings were down when he got into the truck. It was a used UPS truck we’d bought from someone in Berkeley, and we painted out the letter “S,” so that it just read “UP.”