Most recent stories

Just Before the Funeral

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We had been on the way to the church when we found them. The handkerchief in my breast pocket was folded just so and I'd tried to recreate the perfect ribbon in Ashley's hair, …

Tragedy, Ecstasy, Doom

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John 1.46 "Berkeley! Can anything good come from there?" Bilbo asked. "Come and see," said the ring.

Is That a Floating Postcard over There in your Shirt Pocket, or Are You Just Happy to See Me?

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We came wind-milling together ,up and over the blue and yellow stone bluffs, like a couple of empty yet racing nowhere fast plastic grocery bags, catching onto everything and anything in our way, and desperately trying to get free again,…

There.

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There: you see a woman who has laid hands on the man she walks with. Tomorrow she will kill herself. Let me speak her life. Born alone, without event. Moon, gibbous. Month, Julius, the tail end. A Leo. Many other signs and wonders seen to have been…

Island Music

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Of all the things Shelly hated about her job, the music was the worst.

The Tourists at the Museum

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For the camera she smiles otherwise not and only when she is standing beside him But for the camera? for the crowd for posterity yes For their children for the future? yes, again yes a thousand times until her face be

The Palatski Man

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He reappeared in spring, some Sunday morning, perhaps Easter, when the twigs of the catalpa trees budded and lawns smelled of mud and breaking seeds.

sunday morning lie-in

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i'm staying down here

Every Headache

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It’s possible that you’re dying. Every headache a brain tumor, your friend once said. You laughed then. Now you begin to see what he meant.

A Brief Meditation on Smoking

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There are two kinds of stupid in the world of smoking. The first kind includes anyone who smokes – knowing well that it is likely to cause terrible pain at a later point in their lives. The second kind includes the people who tell the first kind that sm

What if god was one of us?

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an old Black woman, a sequined black cap poised on the left of her crown of black infused gray hair.  A gray wool shawl that seemed to perfectly match her hair's color wrapped her all the way down to her hips, where a battered pair of blue jeans rested

February 7th, San Diego

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When I step barefoot on sand you're here again warm and soft and you let me sink in while you hold me up and make my legs like running drunk in a dream; away from all the nice things everyone said about you. And it seems like you're right here…

Why is a Hog always Corpulent ? (or Another Special Exhibit at the Met)

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"the initial hors d'œuvres, those good offerings that he would present to his select and redoubtably upstanding guests, at some grotesque banquet where elegant sows, in couture gowns, and astoundingly decorous coiffures, preen and plume about all through

Australia (from slushpilemag.com)

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Now Ninalee gets up from the table. She starts to put some snacks in a bag for Janny and Benjie, and some storybooks in there too, to read to them in the park: books about trains, mostly, and there’s one with a bus and one with a car...

Wounded Animal Songbook

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I pull into the parking lot and see a group of roosters squawking and trying to overturn an ‘87 Pontiac Bonneville that's caught fire. They're pouring whiskey down their throats. They're weeping over a bag of economy sized frozen breast fillets.

The Palisades

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These are not the caffeinated men of barbaric lore.

Lawn

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white-gray mounds persist

Lakota

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The cabin has windows all around, like ribbon tying a birthday present.

The Puppet Maker

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My sister Janis called me from Berlin and said to turn on the news. You could see the thick flurries of snow that were falling there and the flat feathers of peoples' breaths issuing from their mouths as they took turns swinging pick-axes, standing on top

PAPA'S TEARS

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Darkness was fast approaching. I stuck out my tongue at Naya, and she reached out as if to grab…

tacos are a flowering plant just south of here

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"we are all headed to be forsaken by animal hearts a mountain of poor"

Tissue

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A tissue, she was saying - hand me a tissue. Her seat belt was locked and she was rocking back and forth in it cinching wrinkles into her favorite blue silk blouse. I can't remember her wearing anything else. Her hands were gesturing - on and on- an endless loop…

Until We Died

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. . . hot sand and quiet ocean only.

What the Trees Were Expecting

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that day is my barking up and leaves falling down story, but in their elephant slowness it seemed no more than the regular run of the sun slightly disappearing here, and then maybe reappearing there, like a lost color, way over the horizon, or the…

The Faceless Girl Tells Stories

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spreading gilded pages with a tlickt

Apology + Opportunity

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What I need to secure from you now are two swears on this copy of Camp Bylaws for the Hearty and True that you won’t let my misinformed intrusion dampen your beginnings.

To My Future Ghost

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Oh, by the way here’s my old phone number 548-7899 Remember? Call me It will ring somewhere in the past We can make amends

Love and Destruction In A '67 El Dorado

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He had her pinned to the back seat, expressing his love. Do you love me? she whispered in his ear. Do you, do you, Jimmy Dale, do you love me? His only response…

Three Point Back (from epiphanyzine.com)

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“...you should have something moving around here.” Tracey looked around, then said, “Paul, you should get a cat.”

Creative Handwriting

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I found the hand eight months ago, after I planned to grow a meadow of tiny yellow blossoms in my yard.