Most read stories

Anchored Leaves

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i.More and more, for Megan LeMaster, each beginning was its own end. She couldn't bear to buy flowers or dresses that seemed too beautiful. Friendships formed, endured, gave out in a handshake. Each deed in life had an immediate, inescapable…

A Taste For Music

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“Nothing we have here can stop them,” the Lumi said, “We were hoping there might be something in your world we might try.” “Even if we had something, how would I get it to you? ”We are working on that, in the meantime, will you help us?” I

Jack's

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We're not here for idle chit-chat, or ESPN, or fish tacos.

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...

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.

Beckett not Joyce

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Gorgonzola. It's what she was to bring this time. Plumtree's potted meat. What it was last time.

Martyr

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The waitress says, “That’s a memory,” as the smoke dances around her head.

A Walk

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I suppose the lazy trees would have a thing or two to say about love

Regret

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“Pupilo Durcál!” She yelled. “You stupid pendejo!” He limped along without another glance. Rosa suddenly realized her dreams all week were really omens.

Sack of Meat

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The Nurse left work at five o’clock, walking down Dekalb Avenue toward Flatbush. He didn’t frequent the bar closest to the hospital, although he guessed other nurses and doctors from Brooklyn Hospital did. But he liked to pretend that he cared about h

Fatuous Dialogue #1

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—Was it true, what you wrote in that poem? —Pretty true. —What do you mean “pretty true”? Was it true or wasn’t it? —It was as close as you get to truth in poems.

The Devil in Converse

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In se'enties style serenading strut A passin all the pretty birds in kin', The feathered Stetson ‘clipsin crimson suit, A whistlin Dixie blues ‘cross county-lines.

He Said, She Said

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Maybe she would get married and have a baby, she said. Not with me, I said

Letter to the Editor

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Some time ago, I began to write you letters with the idea of helping your newspaper become a more complete map of our little shared world.

Last Poem

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or the voice that wants/ to be inscribed/ forgets the sounds

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”…

My Love For You Is Real

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Caroline smiles before reaching out to touch a shapeless shadow dancing on the wall, closing her eyes as the bumps in the primer serve brail to oncoming dreams.

Just like I read the news

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She sang will you still need me

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

Kiss & make up

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“You wanna fight.” And I say yes. And he says – “First, we gotta make out.”

The Mitzvah

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There were only two students in the sculpture class: an 86 year-old Jewish woman and myself.

Self-Portrait of Someone Else (excerpt)

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Recently I think I became someone else. When the alarm clock rings in the morning, it sounds sharper than usual; getting up, my feet don't seem to quite touch the floor; looking into my bathroom mirror, my face seems to be melting, sliding, my eyes dri

The Garden Heaters Of Kilburn

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when women’s hair shrinks into tight curly balls and sits on top of their heads like scrunches of wool, blowing in the wind, hanging from the mouths of recently shot deer.

January 1980: Avenue A and St. Mark’s Place, East Village

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In the St. Mark's Bar and Grill romance is a speedy thing, a blurred whir of grope, kiss, connect. The tricky thing is timing: to leave in time for the boozy love of the hour to carry through to full, naked contact. Some succeed of course. Others overstay, hang past the…

i went to raves & wrote songs

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A short poem.

Super Collider

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I never pulled it off, never rode an atom through a super collider with a nose full of cocaine and a drink in my hand. Never was a bullet, zooming through the city, skin pressed to bone, nerves on fire. Never was an atom bomb, ever-exploding in slow motion, ripping off…

My Brother Outside a Cantina at Night, Mexico

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in his thin, swanky black leather jacket out on the town at night in Mexico with his girlfriend

The One

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Jack thinks I should carry a loaded gun in my purse.

Forgive Me Mamma

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His footing unsure and his clothes covered in vomit, he grabs the railing and stumbles up the three steps. He pulls off his shirt, finds a cleaner area on the puke-covered garment, wipes sweat off his forehead, dripping wet from the humid, stormy night, a

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.