Most discussed stories

Big Barf Theory

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We’re lucky it/ was chunky spew,

Orientations within the Zwischenwelt

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Licking bowl and spoon taste and foretaste follow.

Closed Letter to Management

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don’t ask me to set my goals./ I have none except safe air to breathe,/ a reliable roof,/ something aromatic in the oven.

Apocalypse in G # Minor

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"What's it like?" Like everything else. We all do it, so how bad could it be?

Life during Wartime

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Nothing good comes from being lowered into a well to take a photograph, boy

Three Short Poems

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no more trying to keep / the peace, no more trying / to keep every person happy. / Just this: no more.

1968: What I Wanted

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Her smile dazzled me from across the room.

Fish Eye

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The only way to get better at this writing thing, thought Melvin...

Tolstoy

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At first, it was tedious, those long Russian names, the convoluted story, but recess after recess he stayed in and became enchanted

The Argument

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"What mouths could not say, hands did."

Existential Dioramas

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and, under foot,// dark caves waiting/ with their unseen pigments/ adorning forgotten walls.

Best

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Two thousand and two was the worst year for love in the history of sports. People carried their sadness around in wheelbarrows.

Cancer Always Calls Collect - Part 1

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Again, that was not the man I once knew. If they were taking Las Vegas odds; I should be the one dealing with this first. Why was it him and not me?

THERE IS AN I.V. OF THE TIMES I HAVE THOUGHT, "I DON'T KNOW WHAT I AM TALKING ABOUT" AND IT IS SWELLING MY VEINS

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god bless my shapeless head. we are good at becoming older. i feel incredibly negative all the time.

Unclear Antecedent (Uncl./Ant.)

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When I mentioned my visit to the museum during an A.A. meeting, I wanted to know whether the framers of The Big Book had been aware of the Nazi hospital sterilization and “euthanasia” programs.

A modicum of madness

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for the moment/ you think you know what you’re/ doing and do it.

Exhumation

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the poems/ we never got to will remain,

Basal Distance

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are you like the rest of us and you disagree with war yes i said i disagree with war and he said only one man agrees with war but he won t go to the war

MY Last Lecture: Achieving MY Childhood Dreams

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The following is an excerpt of my commencement speech at The Hamlin Refrigeration Vocational Institute. Although I am NOT terminally ill, in all honesty, I haven’t been feeling all that great since, I would say, around April…

Aloha

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It’s a little known fact that eels are often lost in translation – only the spotted variety, not the striped or the common and certainly not the electric.... I think about that lovely hippie girl and her knowledge of eels, sometimes.

Attila the Bun and the Lost Paradigm

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I had a meeting with the editor of a well-known magazine. She said, “I think your paradigm got stuck up your monomyth.” “Oh dear. Is that bad?” “Bad? You want to be a writer, don't you?” “Well, I did. I'm not so sure now.…

The Sadness of Thrift Shops

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They couldn’t have done it better if they’d waved guns around in the air.

Boo!

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"Why didn't you tell me it was Halloween?" he asked. She shook her head. The doorbell rang.

September 26, 2016

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I lack the intellect, discipline, and faith in anything but our ultimate erasure.

Forgiving the Governor of South Carolina

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(Originally appeared in Fourth Genre, April 2011) The waiting room of the Rosenfeld Cancer Center in Abington, Pennsylvania is my new home away from home, and I'm eager to prove it. When I step on the ridged, black rubber welcome mat and the sliding…

Sunrise at the Cock and Cooter Motel

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Difference 'twixt night and day

The Woman Who Loved Water

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I hear the woman upstairs running water. But that's incorrect. I should say the woman upstairs is running from water. She loves water. And water loves her. She loves cooking and doing dishes but especially running water. She runs water all day doing dishes, doing laundry…

Jesus, Borges, Jelly Roll

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It was Judge Fogarty who said “Thirty days in the market—take him away. Give him a good broom to sweep with—take him away.”

Resource Management

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’m sure they have their/ cleverest working on it, though.

Proust's Moustache

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My brother and I had often debated whether we could get our father to shave his moustache off, just to see if his sophistication remained intact without it.