Most discussed stories

A Quandry

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On the river he rows a dory. It is filling with water. There is a rectangular hole in the bottom.

Jimbo’s Wish

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growing up fumbling for excuses your fingers, clumsy littlepads of flesh you don't recognize a scatter plot of acnethat won't erase by mirrorwhy this scene doesn't workkissing the detachable lips of bobby-soxed methodgirlswho keep…

Aguilas Range

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When I was thirteen and still lived in the desert I saw a ghost woman at the top of a dry waterfall in the foothills.

The Burning Gulf

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None of us ever thought this would happen.

Wheelbarrow

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He was ready for the rub. Tense. She could always tell. The legs, the shuffles. He had to be frantic before he would come to her, his own wife. Vanity, fright. She could read him like a book open on the table, turn his pages the way a fish flakes. "It's comfort night,…

Vitamin D

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I caught her a-feasting with her eyes and smilin' at that Jesus- haired Waffle House cook, Dennis Roy, again and I said, “Merlene, my tiny kitty-kat, they's no reason to carry no torch for him ‘cause he may not be with us very long ‘cause, if you notice, they's no…

A World of Possible Flowers

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"There are many dark places;but still there is much that is fair, and though in all lands love is now mingled with grief, it grows perhaps the greater."--J.R.R. Tolkien If the love never came you must have been Dragging your feet. If the hatred carved your…

The Jumpers' Pool

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The way that worked was you gave the bartender a buck, and he would write your name on a square on a calendar that was behind the bar. If somebody jumped off the bridge that day, you won the pot.

The Writing Class

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I ask if anyone has a poem or a story they would like to read. Everybody's hand shoots up.

The Sorry March to the Even Sorrier Sea

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goes on and on. Like it's a sad mad season on Mars, well it isn't, is it? Sometimes I have towonder whatever happenedto us, to make us forget how well we already know how tosing as good as any larks do? I have never wantedto drown, but I've…

Polly

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I taught Polly to turn on a flashlight with his nose. It became his favorite occupation and he'd sit for hours with the light between his paws, watching the things it lit—sometimes jumping up to lick the wall. He'd shine it on our daughter's…

Present Tense

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What fascinates me now is now, this instant, this moment. This fugitive, this delinquent, this indiscreet, this forever elusive now. Now now. Now is now and now it is not now. Now is the adversary of time.…

The Form of a Cyclist

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His legs were pedaling hard and his heart was beating fast, He's got his scars; He can't outrun his past, Down the hill he goes, wind whipped his hair, a new style with each draft. He broke his brakes long ago; He cut the cable and ripped off the pads. He cried…

What I'd Like to Say is That Something Special

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that doesn't need any words to arrive fully formed, or too many words to be believed in at all I should say, a little something we can simply send back and forth across your time and my space without having to talk at length about it, but being a …

Pieces of the poet

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This is the poem you leave behind that you die in the middle of.

M+3

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In the diffuse light of early morning you wear a sweat suit maybe and stand in front of a model-kitchen counter in a model-home kitchen

before Creation

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Before Genesis, digesting the primordial soup.

The Master of the Air

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He thought of it as magic, but magic that he understood, the way a magician knows about the hidden compartments in his hat and trunks.

Zin Is Not a True Vegetarian

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She wakes up lip-syncing the remnants of a dream: the throb of cherry blossoms, the whine of lotus flowers.

Rain Turtle

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The first thing Vera did after her dismissal from the mortuary was buy a pack of cigarettes.

Ah, You’re Funny. Good Thing

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I was talking to this famous female artist at the reception, (as if I knew anything,) “If you want to be taken as a serious artist now, you have to have one long serious eyebrow.” There was no reaction. So, I said: “Also, you should kn

Ordinary Fruit

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I was insufficiently abused as a child.

War ; a fragment

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Lela, my grandmother.

Staying With Mattie

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I invited Henry to go out with me and Marge, suggesting he ask Ellen who he dated a while back and who still asked about him, but Henry shook his head “no” and said “out things” were just too boring at our ages — and besides, since his…

A World of Hurt

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Cat fight. I rush outside and swinging my trusty broom I charge the rolling yowling ball of black fur.

No Exit

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The bar was packed. Fascinated, Tom watched the shenanigans going on around him.

The Journalist Sips His Tea

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It isn't fashion or politics, centipedes or Morgellons, but the sanctity of melons, the squeezing out of juices. Now that we are purified,addicted to the colour red, neon signs announceelectricity is dead.A tranquil crowd of strangers, anxious…

Hymen

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For me German was a school subject. For Hymen, who could pronounce German but not speak it, it was a poetic technique or element, shorthand for what ails the world.

Mercury Unbound - 3

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I've been mostly positive since joining up with Sister Helen. My previous pessimism involved spiritual degeneration, moral decline and decay, weak and weary instincts. I clung to life, afraid to die. Then I read something by Nietzsche, I'm not sure where but, like a seed,…

Dreams Should Come with Buttered Popcorn

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the brain plays impish tricks/ and entertains itself with avant garde/ home movies