Most discussed stories

au

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the way we fit...alchemy

Kneecapping the Muse

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In 1997, I was exploring a used bookstore in Camden, New Jersey, when I stumbled across a two-volume hardback copy of The Dictionary of the Khazars by Milorad Pavić, a book I had been meaning to read since it came out in 1984. At $10.00 for the set, I couldn't pass up…

Happy Valentine's Day From Your Librarian

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Is every librarian a poet at heart? I don't know, but a group of librarians recently put their heads together and came up with these library-themed Valentine's Day poems: Roses are red Your book's overdue You've had it for months Which is…

Love Story

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You longed to rip off her butterfly wings and watch her scream in agony. You ached to carve the steel from her eyes.

Feeling fences

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... he could feel the pointed picket spears.

riversong

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pulled the wool off my head found i was almost dead

The Night Mayweather Took It

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It is not really about boxing.

Helpless

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She stiffens and blusters and roars Not like a storm, Not like a lion. Like a badger, caught in the steel jaws of a trap.

Born of Flight

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I can walk among words, Scatter them like birds, to compose two thirds of a poem, when they settle on nearby wires, in an order inspiring wonder. What do they think, when I scatter them asunder. Bring them disarray, Shape them to a…

Myra

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When I got to Pete's house he was sitting on the curb smoking a cigarette, bruised and dirty, with a smoking pile of rubble behind him where his house used to be. I hadn't heard yet, but his ol' girl left him and blew up the house when she left.

Buddies to the End

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“Tell me how sad they are.”

A Fine Life

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It's really not too bad. The personI am was me. We laughed insidethose sacred places at all the monieswell spent. We walked in the gardenswithout any shoes on. Not one singleflower seemed to mind. And now it'sa forgotten mess or so I've imagined.I'd rather you think about…

"The Misses Moses," from my collection Aliens in the Prime of Their Lives (Norton 2010)

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The Misses Moses by Brad Watson from Aliens in the Prime of Their Lives The Moses sisters lived together, alone, in the fine old brick house near downtown where they…

How to travel with your Demons (5)

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She believes that this started with a phone call when she walked out of the deli yesterday. She believes that it started when it was snowing this morning in Brooklyn, waiting for her car to arrive, but the truth is, this journey began a long time ago.

How Circular Turns Infinity

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Saga of the Sugar Ants

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They’re persistent, I’ll give them that. They keep coming. And coming and coming.

Universal Theory #1: The 3-Step Secret to a Good Life

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1. Think up problems that don’t exist 2. Realize, suddenly, that they don’t exist 3. Elation

Puppet X, 8

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After too much I had forgotten how to fly. There was a small owl with me on the old dirt road by the wind. It was a very dark gray, like an ash. Its beak moved, it opened and shut, opened and closed, but I had also forgotten the language

Leox

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Whoever came up with the term kismet is an absolute moron. There isn't a single reason, or word, that can describe what exactly my brain has concocted in the face of him. No, kismet isn't what makes it happen. It's my own stupidity..

House of Dreams

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The cat wound itself around Megan’s neck, its purring curling through Megan’s consciousness. She was the cat and then herself, both things at once.

The Work of Constant Rising

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The poet said, ‘I feel the fell of dark, not day.” but day it always is. Bright! Bright! the city claims its blue salutes; its stopping in mid-sentence at a name where fingers roam a stone.

From This Distance

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Yes, I can imagine it now/ how we could each disappear completely/ connected only through memory's fault lines/

Intro to Philosophy

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We now live in post-Postmodern Absurdist fear of course, says our smiling Prof. That’s the price we pay he tells us. . . .

To Swallow Us Whole

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The east wind probes through the eaves, pushing at the walls, as though it wants to drag us out into the cold, to swallow us whole.

Smite the hindmost of them, Joshua 10:19

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Marlene smiles at me with her lips pressed together. The young girl standing with her can't be more than fourteen or fifteen although she is tall for her age. She too smiles. She has an intricate set of braces on her teeth. I can't tell if Marlene has teeth

The Dirt

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The coffin-sized pit in his basement wasn’t freshly dug.

Corn Porn (Uncle Pete Goes A’ Ploughin’ with Another Consentin’ Adult)

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When the sun saw what they was doin’, it slipped behind a sexy cloud and turned a blind eye.

Counting the Stars

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Everybody's trying to just not get killed. Cut flowers. It's an illusion. The grand smell of our deathly beauty. They were so afraid of the ghost dance once upon a burning time that they decided on murder to get it to stop. Those were the days. That's…

Leather

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When I was 17, they said in an e-mail that you would get too drunk to function and that you would abuse them, verbally, and do way more than embarrass them in public. They said you'd yell at them and hit their mom for any reason. They put a restraining order on you.…

A hushed something

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Her skin is muddy earth/ I'd gladly play in.