Most recent stories

Grace

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The instant you remember gratitude with enough focus to spring free its power...

Beach Bird Bliss

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This day, oh, this day… shoved joy and gratitude in my face, then tossed in beauty and just a touch of grace. A Piping Plover set my sorrows by the side, nabbing morsels when it could, then racing from the tide. Junior Eagle perched…

Big Money in Poetry!

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Perhaps you have heard the rumors of big money in poetry Maybe that’s why everybody is writing it these days Even Emily Dickinson must have heard these rumors Myself, I suspected as much 50 years ago And started early to accumulate my hoard of poe

The Telephone

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Stop talking the phone is asleep. / It is a resting wounded animal. / It is old and made of machines.

Intentions

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As Susan drove the last stretch home, she couldn't help but press the accelerator a bit deeper than usual. Her car zipped passed the neighborhood houses, which were of mostly brick construction, with two car garages and freshly mulched islands of spring flowers.…

Brothers of the Sacred Circle: A Prayer to Ares

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When our body falters, deny us rest. When our minds crack under the strain, forbid us sanity. When we are too tired to fight give us war.

What Einstein didn't say

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First you must accept / the speed of light as constant. / If you can’t do that, stop reading.

Charlatan Art

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I bought some charlatan art / and hung it on the wall

Dear Mei

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I planned and planned. I followed the veterinarians around and I took vials of panda tranquilizers when they were not looking, and it was often that they forgot to look. The earth kept shaking, they were hungry, and many did not know what had become of th

The Longing

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It’s the longing from another life inside that pulls me along by the fine hairs below my navel, exposed at the midriff, and by the short fine hair at my neck, also the dense bunch between my legs, as you might imagine. And it’s the longing of the love I

Roy and Ray

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Roy Carver owned a big tire retreading outfit over on the Mississippi.

Better Boys, Early Girls

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... tomatoes swelling and turning pink...

What Happens In A Bed

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Eight days before her 50th birthday they were married in their soft new pajamas, holding hands on his bed in the hospital. The pastor and witnesses wore protective hospital gowns and gloves; the patient was in isolation once again. A special dispensation from the head…

Stroke

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She doesn't regret that they hadn't spoken. What did they have to say to each other, anyway?

No. Please, No . . .

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["LIKE SAND THROUGH THE HOURGLASS ... SO ... ARE THE DAYS OF OUR LIVES!"]

Proprietary

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One by one the hundred matte black drones hummed awake. The buzz was loud on the tiny airfield but died out soon among the waving amber heads of Kansas wheat that surrounded the unsigned base.

A Haiku In Spirit But Not In Form On the Fine Art of Sumo

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Two titans move opposite one another

At This Particular Moment

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in time there is nothing more important for meto write than this line. It isn't defined in the way you'd like perhaps, but it doesn't matter because it will be true, and you will be true, and I will be the message you get. Some signal has…

Mental or Medical?

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“We wouldn't mock the recent Tornado victims, right? Why mock the mentally ill?” Jennifer Donnell, Fictionaut Member. The mentally ill are close to my heart, having helped the most severely impaired adults and…

Childbed (cenotaph song)

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Those who don’t die, desire, descend. No song aloft arises from my irk. The seeing chieftain, not of sea, nor sand, nor boat, I till nightfall stammer alive, dig boneless trenches against tiding dregs and lathe, hunt, wallow, plow the hours, call in awei

my apartment needs more culture

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the first night we visited/ i stepped on a splinter/ while walking to the car/ and half-limped back,/ hiding a wince.

A Start

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I don’t like telling stories. I’m far too honest and give far too many things away.

Attraction and the Forge of God

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Being burned with a branding iron really hurts. Everyone must have voted for the Forge because next thing I knew there was only God on TV

Milky Way of Impossibility

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Can we meet in the desert, I will stand with a cactus flower clenched between my teeth and balance en pointe. I will tame snakes and find your serpent tongue with my eyes closed. I will usher in the clouds, when it grows hot, and, should you becom

Notes of a Questionable Writer

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Once upon a time I was definitely a writer. I told tales everywhere and even wrote them down. Every one was a fabrication woven around a morsel of truth. Many accused me of putting them in my tales and ruining their reputations.…

Fictionaut or Not? Write On.

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Okay, I'm here; I'm participating. Enjoying the back & forth with other writers. Waiting for penises and fetuses to move down the "Most Recent" list, but working around them. Well, that's kind of unintentionally visual.This essay, like many other reads on here, is…

The Emancipated One

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The town was wet from storms and the church was full while the priest gave an exegesis. The world outside did not bother with words or cleverness busy as it was with the real wisdom of its own natural cycles. During the night before, many sheets of rain arrived…

Olfactory

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Life to her had come to resemble one of those mazes you find in a puzzle book, inscrutable except by those with exceptional IQs. Mary would run her pencil down one path in search of the passage that might penetrate to the exit, then another, but the paths

Doors

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Marge came home with a Doors CD.

Bestiary

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A woman posted a story on Fictionaut about discovering that her husband was a werewolf.