Most discussed stories

Waiting for a Terrorist

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Tents staked in desert land, a muted building of parched earth, in a thirty year old city with a napalm birth, they wait among gravestones in the sand.

Any poem is possible

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I wrangle word juice from the Oxford American, sighing at photographs of blues musicians with solemn lakes for eyes.

Your Last Rooster

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But his muscles fluttered and off he flew leaving the stink of barnyard on the sheets.

Hobo's Pastor

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The three of us traveled seven hours that day and Al traveled as far in the service of finding the right tool for his writing.

WITH A BOW TO DOROTHY PARKER

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WITH A BOW TO DOROTHY PARKERWhen his fingers sped along the keys, I'd need to sit. I'd such weak knees. I thought him charming, tall, and able, then he overturned the table. Chili, crackers, cheddar cheese crashed on me-he'd been displeased. I…

Chickens

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“Easter’s coming,” my wife says. “Should I dress as a bunny or a chicken?” she asks. She means for the costume party.

Purveyors of Leeches

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I am a purveyor of leeches. All my friends are purveyors of leeches. We meet weekly to compare our wares.

Bride and Groom

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He wears an old black tux, shiny at the elbows, and his gray hair has been styled and sprayed into a fragile tornado. On his lap sits a Chihuahua wearing a bridal outfit—veil and all.

Mick Dever

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The P-36 used for gunnery exercises was twitchy and stubborn...

An Episode of Boxes

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In this episode the children in the classroom will all wear boxes over their heads and will search the room with their hands. Their hands will be hands that have been reconnected. Their hands will wear seams as sleeves and curse in red. The hands that…

My Other Mother is a Ferrari

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******WARNING: Long-ass story****** Click at your own risk.

Decided

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Millicent asked me to stop over at her place for coffee after work because we needed to talk. While pouring, she said she was torn about telling me what her father used to do to her when her mom was not around, but she thought I needed to know how twisted her life was…

Running Wild in the Neighborhood Today

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The psychiatrist was a man who clearly meant to calm his patients, the students. You could tell by his sweater and his neatly combed, plumy hair and the wire-rim glasses he wore. But he was not good at his job. You could tell this by how bad he was at cal

The Bet, Forever Boy, and Dangling

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a boy with a gun, a skateboard, and spray-paint

Pi in the Sky

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The possibility for numerous outcomes – the possibility of anything, really – lives on the writer’s page.

When a Bastard Stares at the Sun

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The sun is going to slice your goddamn face open.

consolations

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we swim in failure

Cast Off Thy Suffering

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Somewhere along tomorrow, I will forget I have the right to do this.

A Shadow on the Summer Sun

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Shadows are so admirable in film noir less so on x-rays and mammograms

Of Tongue and Cheek

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Our beautiful currencies and stamps/ disappear into the digital vortex/ of accelerated appetites.

Blinding Light

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Snow sheeted on the river...

Stranger and the green gloves

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Yet More from The Chronicles of His Demise

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The Muse//has used/ me up

The Law of Natural Selection

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Once a student brought him a jar of black widow spiders. Tony put it on his desk. Somehow the jar got tipped over, and the spiders got out.

Testament (complete)

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Their nouns are few and stark./ Ours are numerous and dappled/ or subtly shaded and shadowed/ by circumstance and possibility.

Quitting

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The dancer was a little chubby, but I didn't mind. It gave her more to shake.

Landing

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She’s witnessed her mother’s terror on the day of the hurricane, and she demanded for the first time in her life that her mother do something her mother did not want to do.

Hemingway for Gloria

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He disliked intrusion and very specifically innocuous intrusion, nice guys, one might say, who tried to be near him to learn something from him or who admired him but who, as in that passage, came merely to disturb his work.

Stroke One, Stroke Two, Stroke Three

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On Monday, May 7, 2018, at the age of 67, I had a stroke.

End of Shift

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He was losing his fight with malaria, but you would never know it from his dreams