Most read stories

Heart

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She drew her hands out of the chest cavity and looked at the clock. ‘Time of death,’ she said.

Found Poem

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The waters rose / on the earth

Mr. Smashface eats fast food at Supermarket # 9

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“Now God,” Mr. Smashface calls me out by name.

What Is Life?

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He heard her crying out behind the curtain that had been drawn around the bed. Each cry was more strained than the last. She complained about the burning, called the nurses "putane" and threatened to rip out the device they'd inserted into her. He sat t

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.

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.

untitled

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I am a sunflower. I turn my yellow and black face, bruised, to the sun, hoping its light will heal me. With my eyes closed I can see my stamen, veins in my eyelids, bulbous where they intersect. The sun feeds…

Only losers reminisce about their show & tell days

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Somehow I always had to sit behind him. I remember because he had a constellation of skin tags on his neck. I thought about drawing stars on him; I thought about creating a new galaxy I would rule. I should have been learning math instead. I still can’t

Blowing Up While Fading Out

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It calmed the guilt in my heart while kids reveled, laughed, and "made time" with the neighborhood girls on that final night of freedom. No one would talk to those girls again.

Fallen Women 1010

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Like all professors, I'm required to maintain office hours to help my students so I'm at my desk every fourth Tuesday of months without an "r" in them from 10:30 to 11:00 p.m.

Arcana Magi Memorial - c.5

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Azure became silent. She never thought of her death before, nor thought about actually fighting creatures and saving people’s lives.

CONFUSION

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She asks if I would like to join them.

How I Spent My Summer Vacation... When I Wasn't Drinking

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This is what my summer has come to: me, out of a job, aimlessly driving around the city looking for places to write, places to read, places to occupy my time.

Out of the Loop

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Ed wants to watch the last half of the football game. His wife wants him to mow the lawn.

Hand and Thumb

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Often we sit in silence and age. We are observers of dust, fashioning ourselves into antiques.

Squirrel Boy, You Are My Toy

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unbury yourself from the silt and give me some seal love.

Cranshaw on the Road / Chapel Access

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"Why so ornery?" she asked.

The Way Back Home

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500 miles all the way from Omaha nine hours on the back of a flatbed truck

The Death App

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The phone owner pre-writes his or her dying words! The app stores them and releases them at the moment of his death!

Lovelies on the Last Shore

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All of those lovelies, pitched on the ground, ignored and ready to rot.

Rook

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What can I say about my brother, Stroman. We are twins and we hate each other. He is an honest, brave man with scruples. He is full of bullshit. He thinks I am morally twisted. He probably has a point there, but I don’t see what that has got to do with

Bedbugs

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I'm in awe of her frankness, how she takes my breath away, how I wish to rush off with her to a splendid hideaway where only the two of us touch the grape-stained mountains and the cerulean sea, wild blades of grass quivering with the breeze. Sometimes th

Turtle Summer

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He was her summer fling, the first cock to crow when the sun rose over her tequila smile.

The Yellow Butterfly

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Let whoever may read this know: I am an evil man, and I have done evil things.

Amoco Cadiz

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She'd liked the name of the tanker. The Amoco Cadiz.

Peripheral Anthropomorphism and the Fall of Troy

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For Hector it was animals. Rats, dogs, fish, and quite often horses – sometimes even lions. But for Achilles, it was always dead bodies.

Not from the self but from the Other

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meanings figure into traffic streams reds fade, trickle down the long ‘V' another passing human ear; tall, tall buildings paper poised on horizon. situations gape in and out of seconds corners turn to disappearance, witness follows fingers…

The Sum Above

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The mandatory is not / your friend

Snuggie your Life Away

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Who is the moron that invented the Snuggie?

Optical Delusion

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Veiled by tenuous clouds and dirty air,