Most discussed stories

Don't Touch

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Frank must have said "don't touch" about a million times over the course of the day

Farming, A Handbook (for Wendell Berry)

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out here the land/speaks in Quaker silence

Wonkie Eye

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The bad optical, crossed or dead or lazy or stray

Red Brick

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The child could hear frogs chorusing outside and she wanted to listen only to that. Inside her grandfather gasped for air and she tried to keep her eyes normal as he smiled at her and put the mask back on. She did not want him to see how much she felt like running…

December 15, 2012

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Already, I can see that, whenever Harold moves, some of his soul escapes, like an accidental exhalation, like breath on powder.

Reprisal

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Reprisal The bomb blew away hubris, shocked the arrogant bastards into humiliated silence. None of them had experienced hunger and they'd misjudged its effect. In the lobby of the palace, dirt, plaster, glass shifted, rumbled,…

An Open Letter To My Vagina

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Dear Vagina,You are my oldest and dearest friend. We have been through so much together, haven't we? I remember the first day I really got to know you. It was about eighteen years ago. I thought I was dying, but it turns out I wasn't. …

Fool of Me

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This no man's island I'm perched high above isn't always so beautiful to the casual beholder of newly printed maps. Oh don't go and get your clouds all wrong. Puffed or thin, everything I say I believe in is a real feeling, until the music dies…

Life After Les Miz

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There are many ways to cope effectively with your life after a Les Miserables run, and everyone is different, but here are some things that have helped others work through the process.

Bad Dad

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When they were seven, he’d taken them out to the desert and let them shoot a .38 at rusted cans. The explosions rocked them back on their heels.

THE RICH RIVER

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I must have been six years old at that time, but the events of…

Among the Missing: Family and War

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As Sebald says, I grew up in the shadow of war....

Having Read the Poems of Matt Dennison

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Having read the poetry of Dennison I hereby give up writing.

An Extremely Complex Fall Evening

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Soon the entire sky load of constellations was carried across the bumpy fields

People of Walmart

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You look at me with that contemptuous smirk while I'm here in Walmart dressed in sweats and house slippers, sloppy, a bit fat, trying to figure out which electric toothbrush to buy.

Sex on Other People's Lawns

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Miss Dolan was different in the way she wore her short, curly hair, and in the way she swung her long, well toned arms as she walked so flawlessly across the classroom.

Manliness!! *urp*

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It starts on the Fallopian Speedway

Autumn in the Afterward

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A year after we'd last spoken I can still remember your commentary, our ill-fated reunion at the baggage claim forever immortalized as this solitary instance of unobstructed joy.

The Keratin Experience

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Lisa Pottratz's mother illustrated fashion for Lord & Taylor from home in the 1970s. There is more to say about fertility, naming, and diabetes.

Spider on a Red Thing

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Equality became the next goal, rendering gay redundant in describing marriage. Gaelic life is ringed with sharing and lent the word slogan.

Seascape

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They had been wintering on the Cape under gunmetal skies...

Crumpled

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We wanted so much to find ourselves in a beautiful world. It was, and is, but every inviting leaf has got another hidden dangerous precedent that must be surrendered to in order to survive to see another sunset with the ones you actually…

ROAD LESSONS

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"Do you have to call your brother a loser? He is not a loser and that was just uncalled for"

Family Circle

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the far-flung Turner boys and their broods descended upon Pemberton like locusts

A Good Boy

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...I had a string of Sunday School medals that knighted me a warrior for Jesus Christ of Nazareth...

A Day in Dusk.

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And a delicacy in the right regrets.

The January Oak

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tiny banners, browned/ and wrinkled by time,

This Can't Be Blank

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I don't know where to start. We're gaining flight. Did you seeanybody we know? The trees are always a concern. I don't thinkI know how to stop this thing from crashing into parked cars,that is if we live. You can say it was all on a stupid dare. They don't have to know…

Nope.

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Can't cope. Got no hope. Got no dope. Call the Pope. Get the rope.

Please Blow Me.

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[TURN-ONS: willingness. TURN-OFFS: rejection.]