Most discussed stories

Matron

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His land lady was somehow thrilled that the Herr Doktor Professor had a visitor from the US and invited us for tea. She caught us coming in and without thinking anything, and at her persistence, I had absently accepted. My friend did not seem to want to b

Sweet Jane

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I feel so glamorous when I talk to Andy on the phone

The Men's Chair In the Women's Shoe Department

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We were going shopping, and they put me in the women’s shoe department at Macy’s so I would really have something to write about, and maybe you can imagine what happened. Well, this one woman sits down right in the chair next to me, which I thought a

Officer Friendly

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The last time Ray and I broke up, I flew my flag at half-mast. It was the kind of thing that pissed him off. He was very big on flag etiquette: how the flag should be folded, the fact that it should never touch the ground, when to fly it at half-mast, the rules regarding…

Maybe I Was Better At Shaving My Legs Than I Was At Spreading My Wings

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That new rain smell in your backyard, specifically I remember that, with you. And lying in the grass in a park with you on the 4th of July, maybe in Lombard, watching the blue/grey smoke of the fireworks drifting overhead after they went off, and the sm

If we thought that love was gone

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If we thought that love was gone that out of sweetness none remained

The Horror

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It doesn’t shuffle, wrapped in cotton,/ hungering for love and tana leaves.

The Dog

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They stood at the intersection waiting for the light to change so they could cross the highway.

World

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Making me hate language

Blackballed

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When I was a small child, my father was just barely a man, and he was independently wealthy. So it didn't matter that he was an adolescent inside. There was never any mention of "working." No notion of career. Just the girl he knocked up and the amusing…

There is No Logic in the Immediate Fact

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of a strangely found desire. I wanted to tell you something important, I'm sure, I mean it's pretty obvious, even in this funny breathing space, but everything has been said to death. More isn't always…

You Think Too Much

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This was my father's diagnosis of my perpetual misery as an adolescent. “If I thought as much as you do, I'd go crazy.” Probably true as he was an Auschwitz survivor. To him, it was important to substitute…

Misanthropy in an Age of Propaganda

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We have become// the sum of our appetites,/ the growth curve of our dominion.

Izyum

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The fire was so fierce,so fair like an opal;the most primal burn."Death haunts these trees,"the woman said, as she held the potof beetroot soup above the fire.They spoke from the basement; living in the dark space,nerves too locked up to to look out the windowand…

The Nondescript

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Her arm rests at her feet on the platform. She wears the remains of tiny leather boots. She is naked except for her boots. For a hundred years she wore a Russian dancer’s dress.

Flash Before Your Eyes

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It was the dead of winter. I took my father's shotgun from his closet. He kept it wrapped up in one of those khaki-colored gun tote bags that had a zipper running the whole length of the gun. It was a 16-gauge, single action shotgun. Anyone could tell wha

Pubicly Humiliated

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I was a late bloomer in the pubic department. I used to stare at myself, practically counting the little blonde hairs that never grew and refused to darken.

Scum

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I am in the bad habit of telling people they are the scum of the earth.

Villon, Stop Following Me Around!

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Villon, get the hell outta here!

Natural History

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It sits up tall on its hind legs to take in all of whatever this is, big and bluer than the sky, death's own taxicab parked on its doorstep.

she used to be really wild. she's calmed down a lot

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I remember distinctly the first time I saw Lynda. She was not a stunning-looking girl by any stretch of the imagination. She was short, with naturally blond Swedish hair that she wore in a long ponytail that dropped down her back. It was freezing outs

The Assistant

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The Assistant is lost again in a grid city. Again she feels disconnected from the world. Where she is the sound has been switched off.

Bringing a New Poet into Your Home

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You may want to pretend to leave once or twice, peeking in through a window from a darkened room, to see how they interact. Never leave a new poet unattended with the pack until you’ve determined that the new arrival has learned to fit in with the other w

The Little Dalai Lama at Grand Central Station

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He followed me through the crowds at Grand Central Station. Wherever I went, there he was, half my height, dressed in the characteristic gold and maroon garb, with a paper cup of coffee in his hand. He must have sensed something about me. Th

Epiphany on a July Morning

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It's that day in July when you feel really bummed because you can't find your favorite white sleeveless shirt that you wear on the hottest days of the yea

You'll Never Get Anything Accomplished on an Empty Stomach

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The Star Trek marathon ends, and he flips channels. An episode of Full House is on. The cheesy plot lines and attractive women (specifically, DJ Tanner in the late seasons) have become a freakish comfort. In today's episode, the Tanners are baby sitt

The Coming of the Apocalypse

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The Operations Management Guru was visiting the twenty-fourth floor on Tuesday, and everyone at the company was wicked with fear.

The Lobbyist

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I looked down at Earth and imagined this porn star who’d asked for my help.

Sky Without a Song

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He hung up and I sang some whiney lyric about wanting him back. You know the songs that say the same shit: I’m an idiot. Love me anyway. I’m Velcro with nothing to stick to and you’re a nappy surface that gives me a reason to exist.

Point of Grace

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Say the world is a smudged charcoal drawing. Slit from its frame, smuggled out of the Vatican. Don't say it couldn't happen. Who would know.