Most discussed stories

Coffee Alone

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And pity us, this generation of sighing:

Tarzan on Mars

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Tarzan peers through a telescope. Earth, in its aphelion, is approximately 40 million miles away. A star. He lives alone. He is old. He worries about going blind. Mars is cold. But there are ways to keep warm. He reads poetry. He lets out bloodcurdling…

Grannies

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The four Grannies say, “GO!” and leap from the window. King's pickup is below, and he has lined the bed with his mother's throw pillows. Sundresses fly. Blue plastic diapers billow. They want cigarettes. I light their smokes with King's pearl-handled lighter as…

mermaid tale

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your words that came crashing over me/ so cold the clear shock was like salt water

Resurrection

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The superhero is out there in the fields, discovering herself.

A Tall Order

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There was something about her eyes that he couldn't shake. He stood in line, waiting for his chicken finger tenders and one large size 32 oz. cola. No salad (a childhood aversion he had never abandoned), and no mashed potatoes. Friday night and the eve

There's Love, and there's Marriage

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He didn’t used to smell that way, like a rained-on boot, like the insides of a lived-on couch. ... He used to smell like he wore light, subcutaneous cologne.

And when the moon went down...

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The Hors d’oeurves Plate at the OH Townhouse, Eureka

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They got slices of greasy salami On top of round mini carrots, celery Pepperoncini, slices of sweet pickles They got cinder block walls A Tiki Bar with glasses hanging Upside down from the stemware over the bar They got wood paneling, cottag

Speculation on the Quantum Mechanism of Death

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With whatever else physicists may learn . . . perhaps they will begin to see that the connections between the physical world and non-physical domains of existence have an explanatory power which has only barely been considered.

The Fountain

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The man looked at him for a moment, as if he didn’t understand him, “Mr. Wallace, you have a genuine miracle in your bathroom. This isn’t something that just wraps up.”

Liquor and Older Women

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"What is a vageena?" I wanted to know.

Mercator Projections

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the devil is beating his wife

THE TIDE OF LIFE

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It was an autumn day, late in the afternoon, a Tuesday, when the last murderer died. There was no official announcement. Indeed, she and her crime had been forgotten. Pancreatitis, her cause of death. Quite treatable, the cancer. Nothing could be done for the gene that…

we're already at the movies

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israeli flares light gaza/ casting incandescent nudity/ upon jumbled puzzle piece buildings.

I Wake Up Teetering

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I wake up on the edge of the mattress, teetering. The dog is looking at me funny.

our bodies were melting into each other

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I had a dream about you once. I don't know if I told you about it already or not. (If I did, I apologize.) I'm never quite sure who you're writing about in some of your stories (maybe a composite of everyone?) but I did hold you one more time. In my dream

Dreamless

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We call it the alley of the shadows, the low sunless concavity of earth between the stalks, the acrid scent of the ripened arrow-points.

13 circles of Hell revealed to the Bird King in a series of hallucinations caused by medicine for a urinary tract infection

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1. The Kingdom of MaggotsBillions of tiny naked bald men wriggle and squirm through a derelict mannequin factory.2. The Sea of KnivesThe crests of waves slice and slash. Maimed mermaids wail.3. The Eye MoonEnvious mirrors ape the sun. An astronaut falls forever into open…

Philip Guston Painting of the Courtroom

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While the head of the KKK stands by for the next order, ready to mete out punishment, and smoking a cigar. They are so efficient, like ex-Nazis.

Sole Music

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You're on the good side of thirty, probably with a little girl or boy of your own sleeping at home, and here you are dragnetting at three in the morning. We're all broken, and the scars we trade are all that remains of our fragile, once complex lives.

Intelligent Design

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Posit butterflies/ as evidence of heavenly design.

Twain

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. . .the clock of lips, timing their avid omens --

Lavender Blur

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Donna and I get out of the car...

Dinner in Mexico

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If he had not just decapitated a chicken, he was a man I could have loved.

Checking Out

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Minnie looked at her co-worker's nametag. "Destiny," she said to her. That's a pretty name. It suits you. You're an attractive young lady. Is your momma pretty?" "Not like I am," Destiny said as she smoothed her shiny black hair. "I'm honest about it 'ca

Assiduity Twenty Seven

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" . . . with twinges of dread and pangs guilt, I worry . . . "

Erased

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You took up residence on the dark side of things, a bolthole in a wind-flayed right angle of a tower block where pigeons and suicides tumbled blackly on the air currents. You set about drifting off from who you were on a tide of cheap whisky and bad poetry, graduating…

//i look beneath your skin:

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x ≥ ponds rise beyond where you & i have stood

I'm Never Going Home

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After the ship stopped shaking, the angry flashes of warning lights discontinued, a few people could be heard sobbing or whispering prayers.