Most read stories

Intro To the Great American Novel

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First, the title: How George Bush And the Lovely Danielle Saved Planet Earth From Zork the Galactic Destroyer. A little unwieldy perhaps but still, a grabber. Already you're thinking, George Bush? Saving Earth? Did he die by his own fucking hand?…

HUSBAND (opening door & shouting): 'Hon . . . WHAT'S FOR DINNER?'

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WIFE (calling back from kitchen): "Dick Cheney's penis!"

Not Lao-tzu's Magna Carta, xlvi - liv

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the Great Way itself is very smooth and straight,/but folks take to the challenge of rough, wild roads.

Some Kind of Change

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She was flying back in the morning, returning to a long-distance boyfriend I believed she had cheated on while she was here but didn’t ask about because I thought it would have been too obvious and somehow ungentlemanly.

Summer Reading

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The summer everyone read Faulkner, I read Hemingway. Out of spite.

Night Swim

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She wrapped her legs around him. His hand barely held the rope and later he could not have said if it happened above or below the water’s surface.

Closed Curve

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What the heck to believe in??

Drum Naked

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Where truth is revealed To all, transparency In policy, including The REAL reasons We are at war.

A MAMMOTH UNDERTAKING

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My best friend and roommate Eliza woke up one morning with the sudden conviction that she had to become very fat, as soon as possible.

Carlos The Impossible (Part 2)

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La revancha! The rematch between the great matador and the impossible bull was set for La Fiesta de la Objeto Inamovible. Red-lettered posters announced the event on shuttered tiendas and busy bus stops and papered-over graffiti on the city’s walls for al

Better Days

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I peeled off a hundred. For the screwdriver, I said. The kid shook his head, made a pushing-away gesture. You need it worse’n I do right now, he said.

tears, et cetera

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ghosts are local plagues/of unexpended grief—tears/can't be bodiless.

Vernon, Last Seen In Hawaii

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Dear Bess — I go to the First Assembly of God's church. (a Praising Spirit-Filled Fellowship.) It is in Maui. Dr. James Morocco, Senior Pastor. He has been pastoring the church for over twenty years. My, what a big change I am finding in my new l

Elegy For the Old Republic

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You call the shit in this paper news? ‘Dog Accidentally Shoots Man With His Own Gun, Swedish Man Bursts Into Flames on Train Platform, The Truth About Elvis's Hidden Extraterrestrial Daughter.' Seriously? Enough about Elvis already.

Hard To Know You Can't Go Back

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The light against the nylon walls of the tent gets me feeling a little down. The air's wet inside, but it's warm. The whole world outside is creaking and chirping, everything that wakes up with the dawn's first tepid blue light does so and starts making n

Prompts

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Write a poem in which your father is a dog and you are his leash.

A Country of Husbands

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The first husband was young and lovely. He had a little nose and long fingers he used for things like planting begonias in my clay pot. I did not do flowers. So that was nice.

Men Respond to Women's Tennis Grunts With Armpit Farts

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An armpit fart is a simulated sound of flatulence produced by creating a pocket of air between the armpit of a partially raised arm and the hand, then swiftly closing this pocket by bringing the arm close to the torso.

What The Hell Nationality Are You?

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It’s confusing enough to grow up in a place like America, a country without definitive culture, except for ranch dressing and reality TV, but it’s even worse to grow up half one thing, half another, christened a hyphenation of names without connection to

Of Life

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beware the slice of the knife cutting like a curious comet blasting through solar systems down the throat of the bad ass milky way

Witness

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The violin hung on the wall after that, a witness.

Hot Cocoa and Bourbon

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Walking into the living room and next to the tree, he handed his wife Kathy her Minnie and plopped himself on the couch. Their three kids, two girls and the youngest a boy, tore through the wrapping paper like a pack of rabid wolves tearing through a deer

Toward a Critique of Everything Existing

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You got a lot of people, out there

Woman Gives Birth At Cafe, Refuses To Leave Until Latte Finished

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There was a man crying, walking his dog and a woman drove by on a flat tire They brought coffee to the tables in large glasses on white saucers There’d be long silver spoons with which to stir in strong

The Caveman Attends the Symphony Without His Club

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“Would you consider renewing for the next season?” “We’re not interested.” “Can I ask you why?” I considered my reply. I was thinking of mincing my words. The man on the other end of the line seemed, how should I put this, somewhat s

WE NEVER

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No news spreads faster than news of a death. Word of the death of a child can be heard simultaneously in a thousand places. . . the word spread by telephone, in back yards from clothesline to clothesline, with whispers in grocery stores, in the looks on faces stunned into…

Independent Living

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The transformation in their domineering, sour mother revised her children’s memories of their childhoods.

Epitaph N+1

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We die in order to get some rest

Escalation

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Don't fall to sleep.

Aerobics 6 p.m.

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Dizzy but still alive Inside this conversation I ask if you have a sister And if she'll know me If I'm with you.