Most read stories

Trout Fishing in America Shorty lives on after the death of his dear friend Richard Brautigan, though sadly

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Maybe, after years of writing poems like letters, he began to notice that no one ever wrote him back.

Shopping Mall Santa

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The punk boys are my favorite. They come with an attitude, the piercings and the chains and the baggy pants with their underwear hanging out. I’m a punk myself, I tell them. The long white hair and beard? They’re real, my friend.

More Abandoned Sentences

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By morning it was over. I crawled farther out onto the ledge. The three year old was screaming like Donald Duck. Trains ran into the night. Several pigs entered the open window.

The Crescent Caretaker

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Enter Tipitina’s – the rotation hole where electric, shoeless uncles allocate their copper goulashes to catch white dripwater.

A Momentary Lapse

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She picked the perfect white wine that she poured in the carafe early to give it ample time to breathe before the guests arrived. She thought of everything. The first course would be Asian Carrot-Ginger soup with black sesame seeds and diced green onion

The Lost Boys

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Every day hurts, just a little, but not enough

Contract Love

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“If you guys ever get back together, I’d make him sign a contract.” I smiled, but cautioned, “Not sure that would work.” She answered with emphatic confidence, “You haven’t seen how good I am at writing contracts!"

A Blow to the Possible

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Tombstones are only granite symbols of a man’s life, Gus thought as he changed lanes. Children, they were the ultimate epitaph.

Potsdamer Strasse

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She stared unbreakingly, confident, knowing; and talked so close to my face I felt cornered. But her voice was something, low and smooth.

Jesus Had a Tat

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Jesus Freaks will go tat head... crowns of thorns for their noggins and so on. Christ had one too...

Crystal Tips

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by the time he's moves onto knives, she has appeared in next door's window: sliver of nut-pale belly, fingers wet with suds, nails painted bright as glitterballs.

Second verse, same as the first

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Most people assume I’m gay, and have assumed I’m gay since I was in fifth grade. Maybe sooner. Maybe fifth grade is just my first memory of recognizing what other people believed true about me. But coming out as a gay man in 1987, when I was in fifth gra

At This Particular Moment

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in time there is nothing more important for meto write than this line. It isn't defined in the way you'd like perhaps, but it doesn't matter because it will be true, and you will be true, and I will be the message you get. Some signal has…

Limboland

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She was a forward-motion girl. She never bothered to learn to walk as a baby. Instead, she stood up and ran.

Milton wrote his best lines blind

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the unhealthiness of obsession and control until the lines burn bright

Tuesday, Before Noon

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It came up heads so he is going first. He puts on a condom and gets in

Still Life in a Bowl

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I sprinkle seaweed over the water and all twelve rise to feed. Two of them went down the hole but knew to come up. A toilet has mouths and caverns, not a bad place at all for fish.

Golden

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No flinch, no stretch, no letting the cook get all golden about the chopping block.

Roadside Daisies

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The phone rang. Pete wiped his heavy eyes and squinted so he could see. He looked at the clock. It was five o’clock in the morning. He rolled over and tucked his head under his pillow. The phone rang again. He ignored it. It rang again. He picked up.

Godot Finally Shows!

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Vladimir and Estragon stood hunched at the corner of Ellis and Taylor in San Francisco's Tenderloin district. Bedraggled and spent, they looked dully around them at pretty much nothing. They could have been thirty, or maybe…

Tumbalalaika

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When the arguing started, their voices would get louder and louder, till they broke into my dreams. That night, I woke and listened in the dark for what felt like a very long time. Perhaps I should have been afraid, but I wasn't. For one thing, they never

Anti

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“What do you call this place?” I didn't really want to talk much in there. For some reason, talking felt too—linear. The words seemed to have a kind of reverberation into associations that seemed somewhat meaningless at the time.”

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

Wings

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Every lunch time the numerous small jukeboxes that are distributed about the dining area fill the air with webs of King Curtis and Benny Goodman.

Bad Heart

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You died from a bad heart.

Breathless

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I sit down next to a youngster on the couch. “Would you like to see?” she asks. “See what?” I reply....

Bookends of a Life: I

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You have transformed me into an aimless, sleepless wraith...

Suppose, I ask my friend

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nothing has ever happened in this or that or any other or maybe too damn many parallel universes. . . .

Dry Rot

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Sometimes Seattle's the next thing to heaven. The sky's diamond blue, the sun's a caress; your whole soul can breathe. You know what the shouting's about. But the sun quickly fades to Protestant gray and the gray last a long…

Class

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Class (appears in my book Breaking it Down; no journal publication) When your neighbor James Frehley cusses you out for hanging a block and tackle from the silver maple in your front lawn, begin to pull the engine from your Galaxie anyway, smile and nod…