Most discussed stories

Waste

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Roger's assigned route had him picking up medical waste at most of the plastic surgery offices in town. He smelled it on his skin by the end of the day. The plastic surgery places were less of a hassle than the hospital and worlds away from the free c

Ode To Poetry Slams

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It is a dark and stormy night, naturally We’re trying to get some sleep at a Travelodge in Eureka when I get up at 3 a.m. to write “Hard motel pillow receives snoring from neighboring room” O Thesaurus, we need another word Maybe it sh

RailRoads

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We all have friends that would drop everything to save us. It’s the times we don’t need help that they’re not nearly as attentive.

the wicked daughter

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The air has its dark confessional, and I have mine. Hot is called raw by some, hate mixed with malice for others. I am only separated by this dark window of time from you, but you never feared the lovely or the lonely.

Conversation in a Dark Corner of Cafe Breton

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I loved you with the heaviness of crushed knives

Moi et Stendhal's Lust for Women's Eyebrows

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“Oh yeah?" I said to Stendhal. "I found six references to women's eyebrows in Travels in the South of France. That's all you think about!”

Dog, Deer, and Boy

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A black and white Malamute chasing down a deer to the edge of the water, and putting her mouth on it. The hurt deer fallen into the water to escape. Red blood floating out into the water like cloth. The boy racing down the slope into the reeds t

Ode to Flannery O'Connor

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Gert sat in the car and wiped at the inside of the window while the defroster blasted at full strength. The shards and slivers of ice that networked across the windshield were just thick enough to hinder visibility. Bane wrenched the door open and shoved

The Fixer

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When someone asks me what I do, I tell them that I am a fixer. I fix things. There is nothing that cannot be fixed. Will it ever be as good as new? That is subjective, but I will fix it for you.

The Company's Sprinkler Heads

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I am alive, and I am hungry. Angry, I want more. I am not content with what you're offering me. Forty hours a week, two weeks vacation. A mortgage and car payments. Wife and kids, a dog in the suburbs. It's all incredibly unexciting, unsatisfying.

Quixote Bronson, Savior of Neglected Suburban Housewives

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Saturday night in the suburbs west of Boston. As Pancho Sanza and I drift wearily from one upscale restaurant to another, we see an endless parade of husbands whose indifference to their wives borders on cruelty.

Everything Has Been Arranged (or, Chamomile Tea at Ten Thousand Feet)

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The building ejects my condominium like an enormous videocassette.

Keep the Change

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Jacob could tell it was a man he had just walked past, a broken man with an olive green Vietnam era military jacket, a man who had probably served his country as honorably as anyone chosen at lottery and forced to kill for a subsistence wage…

"Beautiful Boy! I am doomed"

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Beautiful boy! I am doomed / to have attended your presence; / time consumes us, but you / have changed so little...

Tomorrow

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You hold me now, and pay attention. Everything is new.

Lost Boy - Excerpt from Single Stroke Seven

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“How long you been waiting around?” he asks as he pockets my soggy ten-dollar bill. “For a jump or break in life?” I ask. He smirks. “I hear that.”

Toys For Tots

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Every year at the orphanage, a new trend sprouted fully grown from a Sears Christmas catalog, and even though our belief in Santa Claus was dashed early on, we still loved the season because it meant a Paint by Number, Pogo stick, Hula Hoop or whatever…

THE BOOK OF SUCH ~ a suite of poems

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A Being of Aether, who having appeared to me one morning, instructed me in the geometry of thorns. She seemed to be semi-infinite as her often melodious speaking voice was unimaginable in one direction and limited in another.

Animal Shadows

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One day when they were sitting on the curb together at 4th Street and Mendocino Avenue in Santa Rosa and Joe was calling out to passers by in a singsong voice, “Spare change for cigs,” she had persuaded them that they should try to join the circus.

Ticket To Ride

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And by God he made it to heaven! St. Peter waved him on in...

Digging

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I came to a field where, scattered around, were quite a few men digging holes

Spittoon (w.c.55)

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“I’m pregnant,” he says...

renewal

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A raininess envelops you already in the womb. The water that began in the mouth a generation before you, away from any explanation, reason, or need for speech, and now seeks out the same dear lovable blood in you as those who came before you – these are

My Brain is a Pre-Historic Babe Magnet

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Ug seemed kinda down in the dumps so, uncharacteristically for a male hominid, I asked him why he looked so glum. “Ug no find nice girl,” he said, poking a stick in the dirt.

a girl's mane

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Wild bore the wind down on me, coming out of the heavens that turned around the stars of the evening. The longing and the appetite at work in the body, all tickling to open a girl’s mane, gaping, health-giving crossroads to the body. Hail and farewell t

When I Met the Mountain Man

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I am young. This is years before I start to hide my accent.

Before California Fell into the Sea

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The trail wound through oak trees and climbed up a hill. The sun was high and hot whenever we came out from the cover of the trees. We stopped under a tree. “OK old man,” Leda said. She came to me and kissed me. Then she was unbuttoning my pants and kne

Bukowski in Hollywood and the Collating Party at his Apartment

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They called him Hank. We piled in a car and drove up from Irvine to his little bungalow apartment on DeLongpre near Hollywood Blvd. for a collating party for this Mag he started with Neely called “Laugh Literary and Man the Humping Guns.” No shit, that wa

In Dubai III

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The boy in the elevator with round glasses, / who carried a newly-purchased broom, / was tall and burdened with clothes

Serve & Protect

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If she was still breathing, Tom promised himself he would let her live, but right then his shoulder ached and his right hand was throbbing.