Story
Manic Mode
Jonathan Shaw
An excerpt from "Narcisa"
“The sick woman especially: no one surpasses her in refinements for ruling, oppressing, tyrannizing.” -- Nietzsche
Carnaval was over. Weeks went by. The city of Rio de Janeiro was slowly goi...
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Story
Blue Portrait
Jennifer Adams
Matt was a blind date, the only one I ever went on. He was an acquaintance of a girl who had the locker next to mine senior year. She thought I’d like him because he was an artist and was sort of in a band. He played bass....
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Story
Knot Frum Hear
D. Scot Miller
My face is cold. A salty breeze numbing my cheeks. I have the black book in my lap, and a pen in my hand. Sunlight casts through black water, a murky aquamarine spreading its roots towards the edge of my boat. I’m awak...
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Writing
Crazy Mike
Mike DeCapite
an excerpt from RUINED FOR LIFE!
On a thick night in June I was waiting to hear from Luke and Crazy Mike. Kitty’d gone to bed, knowing it would be late if they showed up at all. I opened the fridge and stared at the pro...
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Story
Bully ’72
Michael Gonzales
It was the fall of 1972 when I transferred to St. Catherine of Genoa in Washington Heights. On the first day of class a bugged wild boy named Tom Lowe, a short cat skin the color of a Hershey bar and a perfect Afro, served a...
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Story
Chocolate Delight
Eddie Woods
Summer of 1980. I was again in New York for several days after a couple of weeks in San Francisco and before flying back to Amsterdam. One balmy evening I felt like a stroll along Eighth Avenue, up from Times Square and head...
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Story
Freeman Alley
Drew Hubner
An excerpt from East of Bowery by Drew Hubner and Ted Barron
Buy it on Amazon - $15.95
Also available in Kindle format - $9.95
The next morning I was awakened before dawn when a squad of SWAT cops in vests stepped into ...
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Story
Daddy’s House: On Discovering Playboy
Michael A. Gonzales
Going to daddy's gaudy Harlem apartment every other weekend was one of the highlights of my childhood. Living in the heart of the hood, he worked as a full-time barber and part time hustler. A sawed off Puerto Rican who stoo...
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Story
A Meating of the Minds, or, Who Minds the Meat?
J. Boyett
My lover and I decided to stop using our bodies. Of course we had to keep using them—for things like breathing, eating, being alive—but we decided to stop using them when making love.
“Because isn't it a spiritual th...
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Story
The Evil Elves
Darius James
Clunkitty-clunkitty CLUNK-CLUNK-CLUNK!!!
This was not the clatter of the goat-hooved devil girls on the roof of the Froggie Family home.
Clunkitty-clunkitty CLUNK-CLUNK-CLUNK!!!
Nor the gentle patter of ballet-slippered...
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Story
Mandy, Charlie & Mary-Jane
Stewart Home
was told the fastest route to Hell was by Metro. I took a train to South Hades. The local information map had Mount Olympus and numerous other mythological sites from the major world religions marked on it as being located ...
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Story
The Milky Way
Jill Rapaport
The children of George Washington can thank their thirteen-plus stars that wooden teeth like his do not mar their cheerful visages; and I speak as one descended in part from the brave general, and specifically the daughter o...
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Writing
Beer Mystic, Excerpts 35 and 36
bart plantenga
Two more excerpts from the continuing sage of the Beer Mystic, by bart plantenga.
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Story
Mercury
Craig Clevenger
Lyle let his engine rattle for a ten count before he killed the ignition and stepped out. The snuffed porch light and the blanket nailed across the apartment window served as warning that he had best signal his arrival, that...
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Story
Maupin Row
Ron Kolm
We were totally unprepared for the winter of 1968; it was bleak and cold, and it seemed to last forever. My wife and I were from the North -- Reading, Pennsylvania -- and we had joined a government program to help organize ...
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