Most discussed stories

The Prince of Arthur Avenue

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There’s things you can change in this world and things you can’t. We have to figure out which is which. Though I never was much good at it, I guess.

Delphi and Parlor Games

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Ghosts// and the voice of God/ never actually visited you

Pretty Face

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The two girls who were my best friends had not minded that I didn't draw it in. It was Obie, as we called him for short, who commanded me to inhale at thirteen. "You're dead," Obie said, as soon as I did it. I fell backward in the tall, yellow grass.

The Girl With the Dresden Blue Eyes

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Your girlfriend with the Dresden blue eyes with the sleek belly & gorgeous scars from ripping off Avenue A dealers has you on a leash of short-term amnesia. You can't recall the last time you got off from being trigger-happy inside her & you formed a…

Objects in a Field

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Cacophony of an engine-braking eighteen-wheeler/ scatters the crows to fences, trees and wires/ in a startling chant of caw, caw, caw.

The Sum Above

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The mandatory is not / your friend

My 27th Great-Grandparents

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Early Spring, 1075, Northumbria: Judith, too ashamed to speak, too angry to cry, waves her handmaiden away. She wants no food. Wind drives icy rain across the thickness of…

The Bird

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We lived on the edge of a tiny Iowa town, and picked corn fields were steps away.

Second Wife

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If things continue to go bad for her she will become second wife in six years.

How Zin Prepares for Early Winter While Saint Bernards Cause Major Traffic Jams along East Houston

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She sings off-key while her married lover shadow-boxes his one-dimensional and split-off selves.

Hysteria

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On the birthday before he started school, he received a pencil case from his paternal grandparents. The violet, oblong pouch contained a pencil and a pencil sharpener in the same color. He didn't remember what had happened with the pencil or the sharpener, but he had…

Sack of Meat

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The Nurse left work at five o’clock, walking down Dekalb Avenue toward Flatbush. He didn’t frequent the bar closest to the hospital, although he guessed other nurses and doctors from Brooklyn Hospital did. But he liked to pretend that he cared about h

Winter

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I first met death in an alley.

The Light After Equinox

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Soon enough, October’s ragged/ lawn will hide its deficiencies// under withered leaves of oak,

Aphrodite in Ruins

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He needed an editor for his Yale dissertation, the shifting borders between criminal justice and the internet. But the sex was inevitable. He was six two. I was blonde. I don’t think we liked each other very much, but that wasn’t important.

chet baker

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chet baker shades my eyes rippling through the cool water sometimes we feed the fish

I Don't Blame You

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for going forthe river and being blinded by its millionsof invisible fish, all sparklinglike pink enchanteddreams made of rosequartz and shaped like glassroses, who would? I fell for an illusionaftermy own fashion,but I could alwaysadmit mymistakes and catcha laugh out…

If This Were Baltimore

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If This Were Baltimore East A spray of change in the lilies and loose rubber, she pulled close to the wall. She smiled at the trucks, her handful of loot. Hallelujah, he said, converting. West Like 4 miles of cakes, they counted…

At the Number Party

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and dreamed itself infinite.

Wednesday late, Friday early

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I wrote this during a poetry workshop at the Atlantic Center for the Arts with Carolyn Forché. January, 2015. So much more has happened since that stunning week.

MR. WOODCHUCK

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fat furry marmots who play hide and seek

HUNGRY

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Quiet. You sit quiet as a mouse in the corner. Push a little doll around and hum la-la-la so they forget you’re there while they have the cocktail hour. That’s how you find out they’re killing Grandma.

The Crossing

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There was nothing to do but dream ourselves forward. Nothing to do but not die.

What’s the Dark Matter Doing to Us in the Dark?

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Will it// scare us shitless when we can finally/ draw ourselves a likeness of it?

C-ing History

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Conjure calamity and calamity comes.

The Ardennes: Two Vignettes

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In the Ardennes for the the first time...

Godfrey part 2: Marjory's bag

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"when I say bag, what I mean to say is…"

Yeopim Pork Men

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The trio stuffed their grilling equipment in a battered van and left for Dixieland Speedway at 4:30 am.

"Fancy Me"

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He stopped the shower and recounted his life, now Kin-less and plain.

Po-cash

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“Black is up, red is down,” I said, knowing he turned to pleasant memories of lawbreaking when he felt discouraged. I asked him to meet me for coffee. He said he hadn’t bought a coffee in a year.