Most discussed stories

Hands of a City

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On the usefulness of hands.

anura

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still to early to dodge leaping bodies on misty roads at night

Barns And Ignobles

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None of us in the barn knew what to do about the lowing cows. Their slowly rising complaint started off as a half-hearted protest but soon gained in volume and unsettling portent.

Disappearing Dirt

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The mulch vendor is a crook but we have no choice, not with the shortage of soil. Have to guard the stuff, put alarm wires around the garden, leave a friend in charge to spot the thieves if you go away overnight. If you…

Amy-Loyd Plax

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When I no longer know you, what signal will you give to remind me that you and I once loved?

Some People

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But those burning red numbers persist in my mind and I can't rest 'till they're gone They always come back Like the cat in that childhood song.

Spliced from the scraps on the cutting room floor by a young intern from UC Berkeley while Brando studied her profile in 1959

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Bogart frowned, said, "How do you do that?"

Mob

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He is leaning back against a pillar watching the dancing; a spectator to joy – both planned and spontaneous – that’s unfolding in bodies fourteen and fifteen years old in front of him.

The First Time

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The summer I turned fourteen I had a job babysitting our neighbor, Pam's three year old daughter, Annie, three nights a week while Pam was going to Junior College, but it was hardly work because, after I tucked Annie in to sleep, I just watched TV, sitting in Pam's den…

Short Cuts

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The shop is swarming with little women.

Jane

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Jane knew what to do when she heard murmurs in the ceiling, knew what to do when she struck out on the moor.

Stinking oil

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When were you flash frozen?

It's a Wonderful Life

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My wife is making lunch. I suggest leftover pizza. We are going over to the neighbor’s house for pizza tonight, my wife says. I tell her that’s okay. I like pizza.

Little Meadow Simms

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"I looked at this skinny, little female child, Meadow Simms. It wasn't only that she was small. Meadow Simms didn't look like other children. Her parents were hippies."

Inky and Vague

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She was the blonde one and the dark-haired one and the one with curly hair and the one with straight hair, the one in the long scarf and even the boy with the camera.

Entangled

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Papa says an adding machine tape has gotten tangled up around his legs. He pulls it off his leg, but it's really his catheter tube, so he wets the bed. I tell him he's not in a tree, and I clean it up. He tells me all about it for an hour, and I to bed.…

What Ever Happened to Old Tom Joad

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Someone hollers Okie.

Hospice Valediction

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youthful pin oaks grant solemn attention to the aluminum gurney

next love letter

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Eat me so I can sink in your mouth, my paper fraying along the sharp topography of your tongue, lodging in the holes where your teeth used to be. There, I will storm an infection until your mouth inks my words.

Liked and Similar

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I haven't been here in a while!

I’m tired of being timid.

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“Later,” I say to the frisky crickets, verbal cash of the eggnog spa, spot of gum…

You Have Something I Don't Have

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So, as the lines on my face grow more pronounced, the lines on my finger prints are fading away? All I can say is that it's a damn shame it's not the other way around.

Lapidary

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You burnish what is left until it shines and call it your own.

If I Felt

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If I felt like reading a book then I would read a book

Jail Bait

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Jessie and Hannah drop mescaline together, and screw in an abandoned storefront crash pad. We call it the Rock Shop.

The Arms of the Sea

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The water lapped against the sides of the small boat, their rhythm all that I could think of. Sweltering rays beat down, frying my flesh, the insipid salty breeze that occasionally stirred my only relief from it. Gulls circled overhead, like white ravens,

At the Station on the Steppes

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The condemned, arrested/ and convicted as a consequence/ of cheerlessness, must be prepared

Dreams

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"Is a dream a lie if it don't come true, or is…

The Ex-Boyfriend Checks in on Saturday Night by Cell Phone

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(originally appeared in Lit Up)http://litupmagazine.wordpress.com/poetry/rusty-barnes/Remind me never to call youagain after you get home late,for the familiar fear of the deadbolt noise,the shifty creak of your linoleum floor,the way you throw your jacket overthe sofa and…

Erasure

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All else is unmoved/ and relentless in its indifference.