Most discussed stories

Memory

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Jessica's face was so close to mine I had to focus on her left eyeball to keep my eyes from crossing.

Barely Spring

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On a business road

Rubber-Band Requiem

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“Now we lay you in your grave There was no way you could be saved You hate our lord Jesus and he can tell Which is why you will burn in hell.”

Love Songs for Kandahar

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You worry that the mullahs suspect us, but that cannot be. We never touch in public. You weep and I shake when a neighbor knocks on the door.

I Am Not A Careful Reader

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What's the weirdest thing you've ever used as a bookmark? I work in a library. I've seen that, and more.

Because

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Because I'm old and this is the Way I Do Things now...

The Crickets Try to Organize Themselves Into Some Raucous Pentameter.

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A secret search rolled from Odette's eyes. A gulch split her down the middle and she had the world believing this was the way she liked it. Odette was a woman who spent entire days bending backward within herself, never letting on that she was…

Who's Going To Defend the Love

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we feel entitled to, so unwanted, afraid for, from the billions of stomping oafs, leaping onto our hearts like squishing jelly sandwiches for fun, bullies in power out there? To be brilliant onits tiny behalf? I forget, exactly whyare you still here anyway? Don't…

The Heart

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My wife and I were looking for a "fixer-upper." We were strange that way. We were leaving a rental which had cat tunnels built into the walls. One villa we toured had a heartbeat. In the basement, in place of a well pump, was a heart made of fibrous roots which had…

Beautiful Plague

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Jacob Obrecht, you are beautiful. Everything inside your head and everything you’ve ever made is beautiful and singing.

Too Early, Too Late

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Things don't always go to plan. Gem knew what people would have said back then, of course. She wasn't stupid.

A monkey puzzle rocket burst

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The things we do for books, she thought.

Suky Tawdry's Cab

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yet fiction, despite contrary reports, from two ends of the American spectrum, does not mean lies, in my HUM

A Cameo (for no-one)

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I bleed my heart into my computer, peruse The fact they have proclaimed my root unfit for use But it is I! This manhood, this tower Extending up toward the heavens like a miraculous flower, Purple headed warrior of generation, See it standing…

Encore

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...something in her raw vulnerability and daring beauty drove these men wild...

Milkmen

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I can barely pick out the numbers on the houses

The White Dogs Of West Emerald Street

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I wondered if Mr. Slane even knew/ how many dogs he owned

mnemonic haiku

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skies electric blue,/limpid dewy air, the world/framed by a small farm.

Scattering like light

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He had long since quit listening to the incessant clanging of the bell. He stood, ringing the bell, squinting into the setting sun, nauseous from the car exhaust, his body aching for alcohol.

Estate

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In the kitchen they discovered the instruments. A flute under the sink tucked behind a rusted silver pipe. An oboe on the floor in the pantry. And a violin across the ice tray in the freezer, now dark. "Not ice," sister said, holding it up by the neck.

Me and Frisco on the Road

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I don't think I minded so much watching the trucks hit him, one breaking his spine with a decisive snap, and the other finishing the job by splitting his skull. I don't think I minded watching as much as I did watching those two boys poking around at his

This Poem Has No Title

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...Or perhaps it has; It depends which way you look at it. Perhaps the reader may cite laziness As my reason for not titling this Any other than I would have done As now, with such a title As it has, since for some reason I never…

diversion

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Nothing At All

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The ice in my drink provides ample cooling. The brew strength of my tea is just such that it combines in a pleasing fashion with the melting ice. My mind is clear and my belly absent hunger. I am completely sated from any physical desire at this very mome

the hunt

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Emma Louise

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Emma Louise is walking over a concrete bridge when she spies, out of the corner of her eye, a man fishing, waist deep, in the river tumbling below. She is thinking that the water must be very cold on this autumn day, when she sees an extraordinary thing.

The 24-hour Date

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We watched kids tweeze snapping turtles out of the park grass. They dropped them into a styrophoam cup and called it the snap turtle home. When they grow up they will bite your arms off, their father said laughing.

Adam, Eve and the Indie Author

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In the beginning was the Word and the Word was God. What on Earth does that mean? What the hell? Earth, hell, heaven, they were good concepts. He took a rib out of Adam and began to write with it.

Bread

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I am standing in the kitchen, kneading dough, because this is one way to say sorry. This is way to say, things will be different now, look.

Table Thoughts

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“You should've let him drown,” she once told me. Doesn't she see that I did? I'll let her drown, too.