Most read stories

All Fur and Bones

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I wonder how much time she has left. I think she’s seventeen. I don’t know for sure because she was already grown when I got her from the pound, just before Christmas, years ago this was --back when I had hair and hope.

Eighty-eight

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She realised that things you can't prove can be more intimate than the things you know to be true.

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

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.

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.

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.

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...

Poems Are Scary Things

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They will take you, naked, and put their tongues and fingers into intimate, erogenous openings

Golden

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

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.

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…

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…

The Waves

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...some years later I heard that an old friend jumped off that bridge to her death.

SUPER DAD flies coach

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“I don’t want to scare you,” the stewardess says, “but there are ten police officers waiting for you outside the plane.” I reach into the diaper bag and grab an Elmo raspberry/pear cereal bar, rip it open, take a bite, sip some apple juice fr

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.

Milton wrote his best lines blind

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the unhealthiness of obsession and control until the lines burn bright

'The Good Life' Not by Bud Smith

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I'm trying to read a Poetry in Motion poem on there wall of a crowded electric train

Tuesday, Before Noon

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

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

Daniel in a Den of Liberalism

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He had forgotten what the culture was like in certain parts of the city. At the lower end of Second Avenue, there lived an amalgam rare anywhere in the world, save other pockets of Manhattan. Punks, hippies, gays, the homeless, and artists of all strip

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.

Major Chaos

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Major Chaos came here one of those hot days. I was washing the floor, wearing old clothes, when he knocked on my door. Since I don’t have many visits, I let him in. At first, he seemed like a soldier, but upon reflection I realized he was a big green fr

An Old Sweet Song

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Rob thought he might even make it. He'd stopped off south of Seattle, in Kent, and filled up the tank and went back in the can and topped off again. He got back on the road, to all appearances blase, blase. The montages were muted, at least for…

4Beers

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I would ask for your name/if your tongue wasn’t in my mouth.

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.”

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. . . .

The Lost Boys

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Every day hurts, just a little, but not enough

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

The Leg

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They all looked for Vic's leg after the accident.

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.