Most read stories

Prompts

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

Berthier Door

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On Day 1122 at 4:14 AM the door which has remained since installation firmly glued to the masonry behind opens and a man emerges blinking shielding his eyes against fine stinging snow.

Caprice Classic

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A cloud of light, white smoke floated out of the driver’s side window. Nate and Zach sat on the front bench seat, talked, and puffed away. “Breath in and say Mom is coming,” said Zach.

The Misanthrope Confesses

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I murdered my inner child/ at 7 and neither denied/ nor confessed the act until now.

Drum Naked

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

Quiet (from Grand Street literary journal)

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I know it’s nobody’s fault, and that one thing had nothing to do with the other, because it was this way for me since I was born; they just didn’t figure it out for a while that with one of my ears I could hardly hear, and with the other, I couldn

American Triptych

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It’s always fun and easy/ to punish the poor

Cripple

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"I know," Timothy explained, "he can't use it. He's a cripple." No one else seemed to understand.

Worry

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I turned on the television last night, and one of the networks had a segment about a girl with no nose.

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.

The 2nd poem.

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You came to me In the self made calm Causing quite a storm You want me to rejoice and relax? Not knowing my fears Shall we ever fly?

Drunk Sonnet (for Meg Tuite)

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perjured like a fickle impulse

july 23

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I get that drunk feeling right before it starts to rain. The sky is dark and heavy and the clouds break open with a flash and suddenly there is water running down all of the windows like one million pairs of eyes crying hard. The street is suddenly …

Thick Rib of the Lamentation Animal

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This violin of oneself, this rough strum of I, arc of wing over thick rib. This masturbatory chirping like the meat of God clenched in your teeth, an apostrophe giving aloneness possession over the inarticulate, a bridge between chords.

Listen To Our Birds

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We know a poem isn't going to stop you From invading our town. It won't get you to Listen to our birds any more than to our Sunsets. That's not why we do it. We know A poem isn't going to break the blade of Your knife like an…

Squishy

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Martin named it “Squishy” for two reasons. The first reason was because it was the noise it made when it came out of the hole in his basement. The second is because it’s what it did to Grandfather...

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.

Where the ocean ends

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For my Dad Happy Father's Day!

Silent Summer

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It's eerie. There are no birds. My friend and I take our morning walk in a bubble of silence.

Headstone III

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My only brother. Frantic flesh clings to bone.

13 Halloweens

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1. The Walking Heart Attack Man has two outfits. In the summer he dresses in a short sleeve checkered button down shirt and high waisted Bermuda shorts with sandals. In the winter he wears dark pants and loafers with a gray corduroy coat…

If It Isn't One Thing, It's Another

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My friend says there's some kind of bug that bites its mate's head off after they have sex.

Waiting to Disappear

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Phew! That was close.

The List

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There were one hundred titles on the list. One hundred books that could neither be assigned nor put on a recommended reading list.

Life Story

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A man lives with a woman he loves enough to live with, but not enough to marry and not enough for kids. He knows he could love others enough to marry, enough for kids, but he's not the kind of man to find those women when he's with this woman.Sometimes “love”…

Diptych for Saint Gertrude of Nivelles, Protectoress Against Mice, Rats, and Mental Illness

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So she set about eliminating the problem, all the time recalling some newsmagazine program she’d seen as a child: a discussion of hantavirus, nasty and deadly and spread by mice.

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

the symmetry of Aldo Rossi's handrails

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It would be another difference a building has from a “sculpture”. It would be something that even photographers would have difficulty in disguising, since many modern buildings, even many modern photographs of buildings, place such emphasis on symmetry. For both…

The First Soliloquy of the Interior Zombie

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But do come close enough for me to hear.