Most read stories

A Boy Named Suicide

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Came to admire Kiyoko Matsumoto. Japanese. Aged 19. Lesbian. 1933. Jumped into a volcano.

We'll Always Have Paris

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“Tonight’s news begins with a Stone’s Throw exclusive. Intimate friends of hotel heiress Paris Hilton have confided that the talent-starved celebrity has agreed to marry Quaker Bob, longtime spokesperson and package icon for Quaker Oats cereal.

Migration

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She offers the girl a seat, asks her to stay for a minute, but she can’t, she just came by to say hello, and don’t you like my new raincoat?

Goodbye, Brother

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My brother died in his sleep almost two months ago. He was 25. He was addicted to pharmaceuticals. Two days before he died, he fell asleep at the wheel and crashed his truck into a highway sign. It was the last thing he owned. He had been living with m

The New Dark Ages

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It was only later, much later, that we would discover that the war we were fighting was a war between ourselves. Melissa and I left the machine, with Carlton lost forever inside. We abandoned the warehouse. Our backs were scalded from the heat, and the hole in the…

Dawn of the Planet of the Apes (Update)

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A group of scientists in San Francisco struggle to stay alive in the aftermath of a plague that is wiping out humanity, while Caesar tries to maintain dominance over his community of intelligent apes.(IMDB synopsis) That's the idea swimming so far as it is in…

Fragile Things

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She asks me what she should do, and I say I don't know because I'm no good at handling fragile things. She says, let's talk about you. I say I can't - phone signal, you know. She calls me anyway, twice, then leaves a message saying that she just wanted to

Bucolic

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He could smell the vestiges of alcohol on his folks. They’d let him stay up till midnight to mark the new year, and his mother had sneaked him a taste of her whisky. He remembered now what she’d last said before sending him off to bed, how strange it soun

The Great San Francisco Poetry Wars, 1

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In those days everyone ate poetry for lunch. It was considered essential for your good up-bringing and mental health. We would skip a meal in order to satisfy our hunger for words. To hell with a meal. To hell with dirty politics and meaningless wars on o

From Beyond

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Someday they'll find me face-down in a puddle of ink.

Shopping Mall Santa

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The punk boys are my favorite. They come with an attitude, the piercings and the chains and the baggy pants with their underwear hanging out. I’m a punk myself, I tell them. The long white hair and beard? They’re real, my friend.

Searching for Samuel Beckett

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At the Cimitiere Montparnasse he offers the girl his raincoat. I'm searching for Samuel Beckett, he says, and holds an umbrella over her as she consults her map. We're close, she says, pointing. I'll go with you. Then we can visit Simone de Beauvoir. My name is Scarlet.…

The Boy from Thuringia

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“The Boy from Thuringia” is part of a series of stories collectively called The History of Adoption. In it, a middle-aged man sets out rather obsessively to write a comprehensive history of the adopted child. In his attempts to finally begin this im

Tiger Milk-a play in 3 acts

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Imagine the poem written with a pistol at your head.

Clotting

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Train travel is listed as a possible cause for deep vein thrombosis, a condition that causes blood to clot in the legs. Ray did not tell me this, but I looked it up later, remembered the disability status on his Charlie Card.Baclofen is not used for the treatment of…

Hands of a City

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On the usefulness of hands.

Eldon vs. Grizz Sharks

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One sunny day after Christmas Eldon went ice fishing with Grandma and Grandpa at Haymarsh. He was not fishing for Ice Fish but for regular fish who swam under the ice. Craig was there too. Craig was wearing more pairs of socks than anyone. He was wearing 3…

Hag Masses

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Five poets were beheaded that day, their heads rolled off the scaffold to the dirt and faced skywards; the heads were smiling

Five Bucks.

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“For Chrissake! Just get me one of fucking Tony's half-assed, made in China bullshit, getaway cars. My plate is hot!” I had never hated cars so much before. Not so much the cars, but the sound the cheap ones made when they drove past my house. The…

two dudes talking

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“What about this shirt?” “I didn't know Gap had an ‘approaching middle age pimp' department.” “So… no?” “Yeah. No.” “Approaching middle age?” “So…” “So?” “Soooooo…”…

Cry Wolf

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"You are wolves circling, eyes burning in the dark...."

Physicist in love

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He saw symmetry, exquisite geometry, body and built world in harmony.

My First Post-9/11 Dream: In Which I Discover Life After Death

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January 3rd EST/January 2nd PST 2002 It's 1:45 am or 10:45 pm depending on your philosophy about changing your watch when you fly. My plane is scheduled to land in San Francisco soon, but I'm completely disoriented because I've just had my first post-9/11 dream. …

Frieden

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After each piece cancelled the other the generals folded up their checkerboards,

Alone

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It's not loneliness I'm afraid of. It's how I would be happy to be alone too much.

The Death of Narrative

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“Why, you tell a story,” one young fellow said. The expression on his face said “How gauche, how passé!”

4Beers

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I would ask for your name/if your tongue wasn’t in my mouth.

Tuscumbia, Alabama

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My dad at the wheel, my mother's ulcer inflamed, she puked her way across northern Alabama that summer, from Huntsville and the rusting rockets to Tuscumbia, the farthest any of us had been west. We drove through raw, blistered towns,…

What Remains II

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Duh. It’s all the same sky. Instead I nod, and don’t say anything.

DEFILEMENT OUTSIDE OF HEAVEN, TWO MILES

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The road that passed through the swamp near where the cemetery stood, that is, the road that passed by the cemetery that stood near where the swamp lay—but no, that’s not the case, because that’s not the same road. If I’d been on THAT road—