Most discussed stories

Professional Judgment

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Biting my tongue instead of lashing red stripes

2011

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This year, 2011, you bring about my thirtieth year. I'm apprehensive about this, but mainly because my father made me watch "Logan's Run" as a kid...

Swan Song of the Pareto Optimalists

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I nearly burst out laughing when I heard myself telling him in my accented English that she’d confided in me that she was preparing to sacrifice herself as part of an elaborate snuff film produced by a band of psychotic artists hell-bent on making up for

The Nude Pianist: A Novel: Chapter 17

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Friday night in Little Italy is a big night.

The Passenger

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I will not leave the boat. The sea has left you.

Worst. Party. Ever.

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"The food tastes kind of...off."

The Parallel World of the Tango

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I dreamed I might one day become the numero uno tango singer in Boston.

Industrial Revelation

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I tell my students about a timewhen seniority was told by the number of fingers on a worker's hands No weekends or overtime, children — bare toes dangling — twelve hours on the line I look for…

Bonnie the Baptized

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Also, our daughter had learned to splash, causing us each time to break into spontaneous renditions of “Splish Splash (I Was Taking a Bath),” which made us not mind so much that we were getting covered in water.

Postcards from a Private Park

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First movement I. The town that I…

The Country Star

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He’s got horns and a tail I found him on sale He’s got snake in his DNA Evil in his eye And plenty of chicken pot, chicken pot Chicken pot pie But he sure can play piano With those giant lobster hands In his ratty raccoon coat And his

Dancing Beneath a Gazebo

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We learned to dance beneath a gazebo / in Spring Lake Park / We were fourteen

Smart Bar

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Everything is painted black that isn’t glass, velvet, neon, or chrome. The club is cold, and the DJ who broke-up with me while I forgot I was stoned is spinning his favorites to an empty floor. Endings have a rhythm. I heard this one coming. I can hear it

Poetry is like baseball

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Poetry is like baseball.

(little miracles)

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The little miracle of leaking milk from our skin The miracle of two mouths attached at the lips The miracle of inhaling another human’s essence at the onset of remembrance and the extensive and naturally occurring miracle of seeing someo

Death

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fate is an illusion we use to ease the terror of our mortality

The Sound of Paper

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From the earth it erupts Growing longer, stronger, as the sun rises and sets Days and nights pass, bringing the wind, the rain, the moon, the stars A place of shelter it becomes

OUT

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All I wanted was to love her.

VCR CIA

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When VCRs were invented in the 1970s, the first big user segment was people who wanted to watch porno films in the comfort of their own home. Troy and Lynn's upstairs neighbor, James, an enlisted man in the Navy stationed at Pearl Harbor, had a vast porn…

Halfsies

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You and she might make love here, next week, and I'll buy my own razor, switch from baths to showers. I shave my legs in my imagination. They, like life, are smooth.

Chrysanthemums

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Seishin

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The Japanese sun, blood-red and vibrant, like a Cézanne apple, was setting far away in the distance over the snow-capped peak of Mt. Fuji. For a moment, the intensity of the light blinded him. He could not see the road ahead. His front bicycle wheel wobb

The Eleventh Brother, After the Swan

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I turned a maiden to a witch / and back again

Favorite Child

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It was in the early sixties when my mother discovered she was my father’s second wife. Four years before, they were married quickly, by a justice of the peace, because his transfer to the States had come through. He’d charmed her with his dark chocolate e

Frogs

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The frog was splayed after its operation in the science lab, but not forsaken. He knew that his wife still loved him, even though he was in an advanced state of dissection. “Oooooo, Mdntf, let's hide under the table and touch tongues,”

Rule of exchange

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She seizes my hand. I resist just enough to sense her strength.

Indentured Servitude

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"I’m wearing a white sundress with little strings tied at the shoulders, sheer white panties, and a lace push up bra." It sounded good, sexy, likable. The kind of outfit a girl he’d fall in love with would wear- if he was prone to love, that is. "That sou

Estonia

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Estonia wore a liver milagro charm on a thin piece of rawhide around her neck and slept with her teeth in a jar. She was dreaming as she often did of the four children she conceived in Mexico. They had  been born in bright colors and dust. Her first child Nina…

Playtime

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Her head was free from restraint...

Secrets; Opening to "Woolgathering"

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Some of us, however, turn our secrets over in our souls, churning them with the fury of the howling winds of a January night. They are eroded and shaped and fine-tuned with the precision of a jeweler; the deeper and darker they are, the more brilliant of