Most discussed stories

Vanya

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That spring the war still moved north but we did not go to it any longer.

Kin of His

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I dreamed that coffee grounds had spilled on my Buffet. There was another clarinet, a silver one, that belonged to a man not in the room, that was clean of debris.

A Sonnet for Anna

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Toting a sawed-off shotgun at the altar

OVER EASY

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She slouched on one hip, scribbled on the order pad. “How do you like your eggs?” “I like them very much.”

Pie

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Some folks say your hands can tell the story of your life. Well, my hands cain't talk, but they've made so many pies, I bet they could do it themselves if you cut 'em off and gave 'em the right ingredients, I sure do.

Oh, Fish Eggs!

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A motivational speaker I know intimately cannot abide any form of swearing.

Son of Uncle Sam

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He’s hooked on the pinball / excitements of adolescence

Things I Should Have Done - #5

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When I walked into the local police precinct to meet with a detective about the scope of my rights, I was thinking about Rocco, the adored dog of a long-ago life.

Upstream

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But home won.

Take Your Gun to Work Day

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In a rousing show of support for guns and the owners who love them, the Legislature passed and Governor Greg Abbott gleefully signed a law proclaiming April 15 as Take Your Gun to Work Day in Texas.

The Code is on the Street

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They may have heard parts of it, the memoir in me. Then I took a trip—to New York, though they wouldn't have known where—and when I returned, I was entirely mum unless I had the phone with me.

Lens

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Night fell and the photographer slept, one hand between Prue's legs.

Executive sweet

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So

Sidereal

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"...they ran shirtless like pagans under southern stars."

Are You Okay?

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Moving is like moving upstream, like swimming underwater against a mighty current. You are salmon people: pink, vulnerable.

We Invented Stillness Just to Keep Ourselves from Following the Fall of Everything

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Even solid seeming concrete creeps/ in time to form the faint smile of deflection./ A marble rolls along the catenary grin.

Baggage Dreams

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Zero

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My round belly is deflating. I disappear a little more by the day. It's been weeks. Soon, I may not even be here.

Damned Writers

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Didn't Max Perkins die, like they said?

1998, What I Wanted

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What I wanted was long-in-the-sheets sex...

The Color of Pebbles

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...her touch held such wisdom that it put babies to sleep...

Stop.

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Accept that your husband's heart always belonged to his first love. You should've noticed sooner because she works in your building and won't look you in the eye. She takes the stairs because you ride the elevator.

Autobiography

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The story of my life/ would put insomniacs to sleep.

Because

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Paddle/ Pedal/ Piddle

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You say boxer briefs, I say pillbox hats

Dead Parental Units

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Each death a sonnet, every grief / fourteen lines.

Traveling North

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TRAVELING NORTH Though you are dead now. Though I walk covered in dust through this strip mall in Iowa. I remember the collection of tendencies that led me here. The flat landscape. The blazing heat of cornfields. The landscape and body are one…

A Wee Noggin - Paddy Whacker's Challenge

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On the eve of celebrating their patron saint at the public house, one of his particularly cabbaged mates was bold enough to ask him about his cranial deformity.

Why Things Are Just OK with Me

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With such demeaning precarity, I can’t read/ anything more than a thousand words

The Hotel Where Esenin Hanged Himself

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I walk by the hotel where Esenin hanged himself.