Most discussed stories

Some Splendor In Some Grass

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As they lay in the pasture on a warm summer's afternoon, with the sky blue, the sun shining, he looked across at her, peacefully asleep by his side. How he loved her. Their year together had been one of joy and happiness.He idly nibbled on a blade of grass, remembering the…

Jimmy's Glass Eye

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We weren't supposed to talk about Jimmy's glass eye. We just had to watch it stare at us all wonkie, without knowing a thing about it.

Artist's Statement: Stepbrother

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Mark Reep is that stepbrother you had a thing for, the one who turned you onto Steve Vai, Stoli.

Against the Wall

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happily fling Molotov cocktails// against ICE agents in armored vehicles/ and sing the pain of their burning deaths/ as triumph against asininity.

Night Swim

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She wrapped her legs around him. His hand barely held the rope and later he could not have said if it happened above or below the water’s surface.

Un(en)titled

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Our trouble decided when the CUNY PhD student, a poet, cried out, “Racination!” during discussion of my poem.

Swimming Lessons

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I’m from the Land of Sky Blue Waters. I grew up in a lake. I think I’m half fish.

Gemini

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Not many people like Geminis.

Burn

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No one believed me when I told them this: I took all of my novels and tossed them into the fire.

Return Trip

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Lou Ann and Bobby drove in from Slidell and had a small, New Orleans wedding with just a one night honeymoon at the Monteleone because the next morning Bobby had to go. It was barely daylight as Lou Ann kissed him goodbye several times and blew him kisses as his cab pulled…

I Am

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When I was a boy, I always wondered if Dad were black. No one in our small town looked like Dad. He had the thick features of an Arab. If he let his hair grow, it piled up in messy loafs on his head. Of course, I never asked Dad about any of this. I wasn'

Hail Mary Pass

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so for penance, the priest gave me the full twelve Stations of the Cross

Because words are insufficient

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The day you came to the wedding the sky was so, so brightly July./ I saw my face where I left it the last time . . . .

Possible Candidates for Reading to a Crowd

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"Possible candidates for reading to a crowd" the subject line of the email to myself read. You see, writing can be hard - or writing can be easy. But writing for a crowd you'll see is something else entirely.

Let me tell you about the smell of the rain.

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You are lonely. Let me tell you about the smell of the rain.

Keys

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life, bro/bra

Ars Poetica (for Anonymous)

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Poetry is my rebellion/ against being what I’m not.

my love for you

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my love for you/ is like the falling snow

Living Guilt-Free in These United States

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Back when Richard was still skinny and mean, we fought at The Island. He broke a pool stick over my head. I bruised more than his ego. We fought over a woman, as always. We were best friends and that’s what we did. W

Bloody Vodka

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Broken glass attacks me

Gone

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Erased. Like chalk across my body, a fine powder of forgetfulness, with a few swipes --- all those names and faces, gone. The letters burned.

Welcome to the Dark Walls

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“No one ever notices everything: but sometimes it happens, when no one is noticing everything, everyone misses the same thing in the same moment . . ."

Tiny Window

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I remember the living room heater

Trumpet Voluntary

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"There's a concert next month," Sherry said. "Why don't you come to that and I'll introduce you? Then we can go from there."

My Boogie Man

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We'd both done well to avoid crying before today and I couldn't stand to see him like this. I crawled on my hands and knees to the closet. “David, come out of there. I…I don't like this any more than you do. But you can't come to college with me.

The Optimism Of Despair

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He felt sick at heart, as if he'd just been told he'd been fired from a job to which he'd devoted 60 years of his professional life. And for no good reason; the profession no longer existed. It had slipped into obsolescence, like blacksmithing at the beginning of the…

Threesome

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Six kinds of crazy, he said. That told me everything. It told me enough.

Horny

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Cornelia stared in the mirror wishing them away. She'd locked herself in the bathroom for several hours now, but no one had even noticed. Her surprise at cutting her hand while washing her hair was nothing compared to horror she felt when she realized exactly what she'd cut…

The Dead Make Plans

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The dead tongues chuckle/ in Etruscan

this never happened and yet i tell myself it did each morning

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i watch my mind not wanting to touch the vanished rusty notes remain objects of consciousness heaven and hell inside us each moment birds fly through mental speech dark garden rain olive green cool breath of betrayal siempre mixed with greed awakens…