Most discussed stories

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

Apartments

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. . . there is nothing so selfish as sleep.

Galactic Butterflies

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will we become artifacts?

Bone Density

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Madame Fauve, / with a twisted braid, is dancing.

A grocery list found in a pocket at the end of another story

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Thornapples will make you dream things that never were.

Our Story in Ten Photographs

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1. The ghost that photographs my wife and me has a peculiar sense of lighting. In this one, we are sitting at the kitchen table of our old apartment. The table is made of glass. There is nothing on the table except our elbows. She has lowered her head between her…

Regarding Viet Nam

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At some point, my lottery number/ was in the mid 300s. I was safe/ for whatever reason. No need/ to burn my draft card.

Redux

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I peeled his tongue, word by contemptuous word, until he had nothing left but a scrappy shred of muscle flapping in his empty head...

Foundling

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They discovered the baby in the grass, under the snapping cotton sheets.

Fun Times at the Memorial Park

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Good times, underground.

Hotel Khadijah

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"A prostitute of the Hotel Khadijah in Rahab fell in love with my father...."

Masturbatory

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Back when I was fifteen, Svengal, Mohammed and I used to scamper up to the roof of our sixteen story apartment building and use it as our Masturbatory. We called it that because it served as a sort of observatory where we could diligently perform our rece

Clarinet

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It’s beautiful to look at and to hold/ though true musicians would be appalled/ by the black plastic

Cactus

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I counted telephone poles and the seconds between them. The old highway cut straight through the sand and it seemed the road would never end. No curves. No hills. Just poles.

Frieden

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After each piece cancelled the other the generals folded up their checkerboards,

His Days

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I thought to tell him I do not love raspberries, but blueberries, but he did not attend to the things I loved.

My Rat

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Today I'll make the call

Roadside Attraction

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There is a certain stage of sobriety among men who drink every night. In that stage, they are their best selves: they write novels, fix cars, care for their young. Then they change.

Anything Again

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...she lifts one shell, sips a little, then swallows the creature whole.

Counting

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For my father, my best buddy.

After this last death,

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After this last death, I lose at musical chairs. Rough strangers shove me toward the carved door. Feeling fierce, I yell, “Don't push me!” House racked with noise, smells, rushing, I turn the…

Disappearing Ink

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They didn’t run out of each other’s ink.

Dinner at the Whorehouse with Geraldo Rivera

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wear that short skirt and those high-heeled boots

Arabic

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I would see her at the gym in the mornings.

Rule Out Euthymia

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In her belief that Juni is lucky, Jade eases the horrors our mother suffers at night, not because Juni is stuck in a physical passion, but because the whole family and whole groups of strangers know what Juni is doing for sex.

maggots are small minutes in the trash i saw them

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maggots are small minutes in the trash i saw them

Summer Circa 1960

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A latch key boy, free/ to do the stupidest things-- like jumping// off the carport roof clutching a homemade/ flying machine that couldn’t fly

Crossing is Knowing

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Closed gate without fences

Simmer Time

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Usually the predawn light means bedtime for wicked guitar players, but not that bloody Sunday.

The Star of David

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Everybody in Amsterdam spoke English, and unlike the French, they didn't pretend that they didn't.