Most recent stories

Watermelon

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It was like the time we broke icicles dripping from the low eaves and brandished them like swords...

Monster Truck

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In another lifetime the loft had been a shoe factory and I joked how in the dark of night I could hear the ghosts of lost soles speaking in tongues. There was the rolling of eyes, and when I repeated the joke to my therapist, who was actually sitting acr

The Hunter

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...I pray for the animal souls I have taken -- panther, gazelle, hyena, vulture...

Let's Start with the End

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Let’s start with the end—death. Upbeat, huh?

Maximus and Kimchi

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The dogs shit on the roof and then, every two weeks or so, the man in Apartment 311 climbs out the window with a plastic shovel and scoops the shit into a white plastic bag, which soon grows heavy with dung, dangling from his black-gloved wrist.

running tap

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Does the stuff at the dollar store really work as well as the stuff at Calvin Klein?

Wild Dreams of Reality, 14

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We both looked toward the house. We could just make out a light that was barely visible coming from the side where their bedroom window was. Slowly an evil grin appeared on Darrell's face. He looked at the knife in his hand. "This will do it!" he sa

Peeg and Brie (opening of a teen novel)

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TEXT TO VICKY This sucks! Sorry for the teen-speak Vicky, but it does. You saw me in the hospital. It's just as bad at home. They still don't know what to do for my smashed voice box. I probably won't ever speak again. (Maybe with a mechanical thing lik

Requirement

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She sits at home, on the floor of the kitchen, bathing her stuffed animals in molasses to match the ones on the news.

When Will the Poetic Violence End?

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Some corners of the world seem to be consigned to an eternal hell of never-ending strife. The Middle East; Northern Ireland; the faculty lounge at Oxford University.

Veld fire

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The crackling inferno sweeps across the ground Devouring all in its scorching path

And then the Heat Broke

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She did not know Robert’s skin was sliced and bruised from the twelve pound ball and chain locked to his ankle for sixteen hours that night.

Texas hold ’em

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. . . at midnight three zombies and a vampire gather for a game of Texas hold ’em.

The Burning Gulf

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None of us ever thought this would happen.

Dachau July 2010 The Sixty-fifth Anniversary of the Liberation

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Bubbling from the hairline cracks in the glossy pavement of the new Einkaufszentrum in the town of Dachau oozes a mysterious thick red substance. Not blood, the mayor insists despite chemical analyses. And keep it quiet. Just…

Honesty

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Bill decided he hated his neighbors on a Sunday morning in June.

The Semaphore of Civilization

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We're alone and besieged / by badness.

The Death of Tarzan

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Martín stood over the slow, labored panting as if it were a mystery he could not explain. The dog lay on the frayed pillow bed, a knot of fur and skin, in his father’s office. One eye, like an almond floating in milk, stared up at the boy.

SMOKE

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And so it begins, like this, waiting to long for a lazy train out of West Toledo...

Low On the Hog

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Living lower on the hog than anticipated lower on the hog than previously expected lower on the hog than desired Living on the underside of the hog belly pretty much bouncing on the ground beneath the aforementioned hog belly Living clos

Non-Renewable

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we wipe the blood of our progress from our hands.

Where in daytime nothing is

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I had imagined what it must be like / out there in the middle place

Piece of Mind

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Samuel wondered if Megan could hear the brains humming, but like so many of the questions Samuel had for Megan, it was difficult to find the right moment to ask.

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

Fractured Memories of Hope

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May as well have lived two lives, he thinks: one before memory and one after. And how can you remember someone else's life? You can't. After forty years of living, he realizes that there's no way of knowing what his own eyes have witnessed.

The Theory of Color

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The story of the black pen drawing a dark hole makes everything seem so elaborate and obscure. Or even a seven-year-old leading police on a wild car chase to avoid church. Or naming a new band Fuchsia, which looks like the beginning of an

The thing is

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It was not that he was boring – it’s just that he needed a lot of encouragement. When he came, he whispered to himself, ‘ohgodohgodohgod’ - like it was something to be ashamed of, to be sorry for. I wanted to hold him close against me but I also n

To Cancer, with love...

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Why do I love you? The monster that you are? I love you for revealing to me my strength My determination, my will My need to survive I love you for showing me the gift that is living

The Aunts

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My father's heart stumbles like a punch drunk fighter. I don't notice until I'm bending over him to help him up. He's lying a little down the hill from his truck, his door open, the motor still running. The…

Sunk

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The weight of my heart dragged me in dangerous directions.