Most recent stories

Watercolored Different

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Simon Ridley only had one special power. Whenever he walked into a room, an awkward silence would descend.

Pandora’s Box

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I’m going to stop there, before the darkness sets in.

Taking Leave

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A walled city doesn’t let you out any more easily that it has let you in earlier.

Learning About Sonnets

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Sitting in the upper last row of Wyatt Hall, Matt stretched his long legs under the fold-up desk top. He looked down past his fellow students' heads to barely catch something Dr. Mock had said. . . .

Left Chest Pocket

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no entrance fee

Ghostbusting

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Jill's number was flashing on Carol's caller ID. Jill, the baby sister she had practically raised after their mother died of a stroke when Carol was 12. It had been months since they'd talked. Jill had been avoiding Carol because Jill's idiot husband Mark…

inflamed flower of your youth

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What was it about you that so inflamed the flower of our youth? That you could touch lightly that which illuminates all splendor and simplicity? That you could reach beyond mere flesh directly into the gates of heaven, and put me there, floating within

Mutant

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The fallout came tangled with snow. We thought the sea would protect us. But it came from New Mexico greasy with Plumbbob’s vaporized pigs.

My Own Skin

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Chubby. Plump. Pudgy. Portly. Bulky. Buxom. Rotund. Ample. Hefty. Corpulent. Zaftig.

Remarkable Depths of Semantic Ambiguity

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Thank you for submitting your epic poem I, I, I for consideration. While we are encouraged that you have relented from the ruthless self-endictment you affected so unconvincingly in your previous entry, Why Am I...

August

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One moustache hair at moustache level on a filmy bathroom mirror. A red velvet spread on a big round bed. Dear Ma: We saw a bearded lady.

Marry Me

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My mother told me never to trust girls who speak from the side of their mouths. But Kat, with her rainbow bracelets and flat vans, can't speak any other way. A creature of A.D.D. and zip up leather, studded belt and the next No Wave, has mistaken me for the last…

Summer recipes

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Instead of julienning the fava beans you could, instead, slip your linen shirt off your pink shoulders and hang it on a tree branch like a white flag yelling “I don’t want to fight anymore, goddamit, this aftenoon is beautiful.”

my future, maybe yours

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She went for the typewriter first.

Fake Letters

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Dear Husband,

Made in Japan

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It was in the spring of 1958 when I first arrived in Kobe, Japan, traveling aboard a Norwegian merchant ship, looking to make movies on a limited budget. Superior quality cameras, lenses, and film were being produced in Japan at a fraction of the cost for similar products…

Mothers

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No, no mother’s tenderness: she shows no sign of that … Do you know that she has them make their own bed? No, not the girl: the boys too! Yes, the boys. She humiliates them.

Postcard from a local

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Wish you weren't here, Moon man in your cargo shorts.

Squishy

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Martin named it “Squishy” for two reasons. The first reason was because it was the noise it made when it came out of the hole in his basement. The second is because it’s what it did to Grandfather...

Disappearing Ink

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They didn’t run out of each other’s ink.

Blue Line Southbound

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Brazilian girls yammer with their book bags up against my leg.

Blind Spot

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If the photographs made sounds, they would rumble like static from an impending thunderstorm, pressed between the pages of a yellowing dictionary. Compressed sound, searching for the proper words.

We are the rising

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I’m sick of you headless muffuckas searching for a facelift.

continuously uncomfortable

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I could feel myself slipping back into my old ways again and it always hurt like hell.

How To Pound Meat

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"She has a lot of time to think these days. What else is a woman to do with the rest of her life?"

Snap

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Sweet Tooth needed a little snack, so he ambled on down the hall to the kitchen. He figured to make one of his patented peanut butter, potato chip, tangerine, raisin, and banana sandwiches because those things just always hit the spot. Unfortunately, when he tugged the…

Mariposa

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He would not take Prozac and talked Jesus to her as if from a bucket.

Suspended

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In the beginning the revolution was all motion and energy. When the President for Life resigned motion and energy disappeared with the sounds of clapping hands.

My Night with Sarah Palin

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I admired her stamina. Her ability to Charlie Sheen it night after night.

wolf of my soul

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Happiness is the twin disobedience, to hear, to burn, to fret, desiring union. They shall touch flesh, bluish even, that elicited the happy city's sin. Why be silent? The untouchable nothing? Let there be that place, a little swelling therein, which