Most discussed stories

The Naming of Girls

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I sneak glances of her unhooking the clasp, taking it off, so that her back is bare, and I can see the muscles, the bones underneath move as she puts the new one on...

Even in the Same Room

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as you are, there's a big floating arm that separates both of us from each other. Widening, like a river, it touches us together often, but still keeps us drifting apart. The banks of your new life have different weeds and flowers…

Gun Love

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That was the year I got my Daisy bee-bee gun for Christmas....

Amputee

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He is my daughter's son and his father's worst enemy.

Stuffed Shirt

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It was the losers’ bar in my neighborhood.

The Whore

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The man and the whore lay in bed together. It was a cold night and they were warmed by the heat beneath the…

WHIPS, TEARS AND BLOOD:

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A needle passed through my lungs. My breathing made the needle pierce deeper. I felt anger rise up within me but I determined not to cry. – I had cried enough. No more tears. Arossi looked at me, probably expecting me to cry. I didn’t

Puppet On a String

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Spring break that year, (1963) I spent nearly every minute with Lynda. Her taste for sex was unquenchable once we’d gotten started. We did it in every position possible. The sitting position in the front seat of the car, which my brother Herb had to expla

The Misfortune 500

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When I first started out in my working career, I made it the habit of obtaining jobs with companies that were about to go under. (I wrote more books while on unemployment than by any other method.) I was a real bloodhound at sniffing out the pre-dawn od

There's a Panther in my Poodle

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There are glasses in the sinkfrom the water that I drink.And the books in my li-braryare not dumb and ordinary.There's a doggie at my door;did I go to the pet store?There's a puppy on my couch-ywho was happy, now she's grouchy.Was a writer, now an authoror an otter; no, an…

Stranded on Jamaica Street

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There are horse drawn carriages, gentlemen in top hats, it's the turn of some century, before souls were stored in jars.

Twenty Questions

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Did you take out the trash? Did you water the ficus? Did you cancel the cable? Did you take my black sweater? Did you tell the neighbors? Will you get the friends? What about the cat? Will you send me a Christmas card? Will I tear it up? Did you know…

The Mosaic Thief

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Bit by bit I was traveling away, we thought. Maybe I’d join myself, all together, in Toronto. Or in an industrial coffee can. Or in the closet. “Check the closet,” I pointed.

White Room

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A white room is empty but for you, a card table and a chair.

Some Girl

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Oh, crap! Once you leave your body like that, why do you have to come back down to earth? That’s what I want to know. I remember you wearing English Leather aftershave. Anytime I catch a whiff of it now, it brings back some intense memories! And I r

The Tourists

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They acquire him in a bar that is famous for its shipwrecks.

On Deciding Not to Be a Bitch

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Deny yourself that pleasure For my sake; that feeling beyond measure That you get when you finally, and with much angst, Decide not to be a bitch, to a round of general thanks.

Mumbles

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We bobbed and weaved using our words like the sniffs of two unfamiliar dogs in a Wal-mart parking lot. Wary, but sensing we could be more than just polite neighbors, once we got past the normal darkness of strangers. There was no plot to our story yet, but we both seemed to…

To The Little Mouse Who Started Feeling Slightly Nauseous

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I heard them praying to some god none of us had ever heard of. I'm glad I went to the funeral and still have the yellow rose that I did not throw into his grave. At some point you have to stop nibbling from the moldy cake.

I Dreamt I Was Vermeer

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I dreamt I was Vermeer For just a little while I took this photo of a criminal A mugshot really And claimed I had painted it From memories of a previous life He looked just like a Vermeer With the light coming in From the side of his fac

Shadow Play

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I was quite alone in this small room with the tarp and the dying fire.

D Evil in the D

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when the devil dies he divides enough evil for everybody

Strangeness

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The goose on the roof isn’t aware it is doing anything odd...

Don't You Think

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a war forever seems so sadly stupid, pretty petty on our perky part in the ongoing play, a terrible loosed thing to have to always keep holding up our hostage hands to-- at least when being compared to…

Bootsy Goes on a Bender

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Bootsy awoke with a hangover that only brain surgery could cure, a hangover that caused a seam to open in the known universe, leaving Bootsy on one side while all other matter sped away, away.

A Dream History of Outer Space

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Look. There's just you and me, that's all that's left. All the rest of them had already given up a long, long time ago. They dropped their precious, colorful dreams like rusted railroad lanterns, like abandoned pumpkins, and littered the Twitching…

Prayer

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Prayer

A Monologue About Skyscrapers

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Everyday the buildings seem to be getting taller and taller.

This Is Not Your Poetry

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Your begging hands are hacking me up again like garden claws that know not the difference between a delicate solar powered flower and a tightening choke of killing weeds.It's not like it's even mine to keep-- like a legal document I'd…

Mom at Night

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Mom stayed up all night again Tending to her papers Pushing them around Trying to make order of the debts, the dreams and the obligations She couldn't get the columns to add up, So she shuffled them around some more and Rearranged the piles …