Most discussed stories

Fireworks

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You load the pipe and suck in the fireworks. Whistling missiles, slithering sparks, shivering teases, dripping embers. You fall asleep with flashing neon outside and the Fourth of July in your veins. When you wake up, your room is the saddest place o

A Felinist Critique of Macbeth

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Lady Macbeth goes around moaning “out, out damned spot,” when a well-placed lick would have solved the problem immediately, with no unnecessary and heavy-handed dialogue. Once again, clumsy work.

THUNDER

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not the sky

The Hater

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You look at people and despise them all.

Sticking My Head Out of the Car Window

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Standing on the beach, watching the waves crash onto the shore, before the storm. It is easy to understand why dogs like sticking their head out of the car window. Standing on my favorite part of the beach, merely feet from the beach house. The house you weren't…

We Should All Have One Great Love

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My dumb body that does not speak still cried out your name last night. Did you hear it, maybe in your sleep?

We Never Left

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Above our bellies we are beautiful women with luscious breasts. Where there is skin, believe me, it is flawless, irresistible. Most of us have long hair, but there are some among us who keep their heads close cropped for aerodynamic…

New Kid

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Wild are the woods tucked in the backyards, tame the front lawns of green, manicured, with a hedge and a few flowers, a well-maintained driveway, and a garage door.

Sinking to the beat

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I'd wear my pajamas too, fitting for the big sleep

We're All Guys Here

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The doorbell rang while Ron was masturbating.He closed his eyes tight. Tried to hold the image of Lori bent over the arm of the couch. No use. It was gone. Ron sighed, then levered the recliner down. Tied on the terry-cloth robe Lori had given him. He kicked aside an empty…

Read Chinese (from The New Yorker)

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Roy Orbison, Roy Orbison, Roy Orbison, Roy Orbison, Roy Orbison, Roy Orbison—right now that’s all I can say.

Writer's Envy

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You may think you've tasted envy, but yours was just a sour sip of wine at a civilized wine-tasting. Mine is bottom-shelf, well-brand gin in a biker bar with miss-the-urinal piss stains on the floor.

Lemon Citron

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Here it comes at long last. We just can't do it like that again. We don't have the same time. But something's wanting something more to be more than this. Here it comes again. But you bailed on me the last time around. Went silent as a…

Sauna

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The arid paramour, your breath is hot, dry, cedar. I sweat you corpus fluids and salt and the unnamably impure.

Theater of War

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We became The World Famous Shadow Puppet Theater because we thought that the best way to become world famous was to act as though we already were.

fealty

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just before my break,/ he came on the line,/ old and slow with computers now/ but wanting a discount/ he'd been told he qualified for.

Kicking Out the Enjambs

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I can be iambic when I want to / be!

That Was Then, Not Now

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Memory is unreliable, of course-/ re-coloring savored scenes-/ paler here, more saturated there-

Meaning

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His face was creased with sadness the first time in the room and he danced his tai chi like a young man half his age, and laughed, like headtrippers do, from the neck up.

Scene of Mostly Unwilling Players

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Chewing on peppered peanuts, thin flakes scattered carelessly around his squat, Father unfurls his turban and mops his clammy pate with an open palm.

The Meaning of Salvation

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I descend to my grave / where I will unbend / until the Coming of Christ

Mar–a-Lago

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A petition submitted to the Planning Department of Palm Beach Florida requests a zoning variance applied to Mar — a — Lago. Studies, backed by research, have defined Mar-a- Lago, an ideal location for shelter and protection for immigrants, fleeing from…

The Boyfriend

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As a boyfriend, he knows that such A.D.D. insensitivity could be considered a major liability in the eyes of most girlfriends, including his.

Conceived in the New Liberty

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Each mobile unit carried an Alsetex grenade launcher for dispersing tear gas. Any group of five or more people was deemed suspicious and immediately dispersed by roving patrols.

Movie Star in a Mental Ward

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He was a beautiful older man, late sixties, who reminded me of a movie star with a thick mane of silver hair parted neatly from left to right and eyes the color of that stretch of Pacific Ocean between San Pedro and Catalina Island, the calming blue of a carefree weekend…

To a Bright Pair of Green Eyes

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The sad march goes ever on. It stretches endlessly over an eternity of painful hills, as unnatural as lumps under the skin, into the deserted broken down streets, the forgotten unprotected alleyways, always adding more and more lost children to…

Love, Mortar

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My love for you is like a brick. It sits silent in me when you bring out my food at the Dine and Dart, red tray aloft, your skin gleaming like grilled onions. My love is rough around the edges but solid through the center, fresh from the kiln. My love for you is…

Ruins

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The camera moves slowly around the interior of a building inhabited by books.

ok, ok, so I concede

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some answers are enough to make you cry or laugh yourself to death

Mr. Wazzeldot

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Mr. Wazzeldot has seven legs. He lives very comfortably. He likes to sit by the fire. There's a large cushion for a chair, and in the evenings, he sips his Bloody Marys. I know because I visit him…