Most read stories

Park Bench

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Then daylight's lovely lantern/ Dressed in yellow white/ cleanness/ Danced a ballet towards/ Her majesty’s park bench/ She did! She sat on you!

A Team of Horses

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He had coal black hair the day he died. He claimed to be part French, no doubt the offspring of a Swedish girl and a French soldier, although Ole did not mention this.

Giacometti

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He tells me that only a few things had happened in his life but some of them he had felt deeply.

How I Left Onandaga County

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So, like I said. Da. I have dealt with the men, when I was a lap dancer. The men they need the….manipulations. I have good hands. They want me to see them naked, their power. Here it is only the women. The massage, the facial, the waxing...

The Birth of Girma Dali

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Amid the swerve and pulse of hungry bodies Girma Dali picks his spot, a tissue-wide patch of net where's he going to strike. A green-jerseyed defender closes in on him his brute momentum unleashed like a kamikaze pilot swooping into enemy orbit, his lunging body makes…

Bon Bons

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love notes yellowed through the years

Jambalaya

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Your writing offended the editors greatly, and we would select certain word choices we disliked, but we truly hated every word, including mere articles, prepositions, and conjunctions.

Welcome to the Dark Walls

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“No one ever notices everything: but sometimes it happens, when no one is noticing everything, everyone misses the same thing in the same moment . . ."

Pumpkin Patch

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Artie invited me to go with him to pick out a Halloween Pumpkin for the house. I had recently moved into a communal living situation and we were still getting to know each other. Artie was the kind of person who made a special occasion out of ordinary life. Why…

That Which Does Not Kill You (Only Postpones The Inevitable)

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Harold Smithe awoke that Tuesday morning precisely at 6 am. He did this every day for as long as he could remember. Even on the weekends when his schedule varied. Well, varied slightly. He lay in bed trying to wake up and mulled over the things he needed to accomplish for…

A Chaos Theory

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—with spinster goddesses in the middle of things / circling looms.

"Hadrian's Farewell" as Tanka and Haiku

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Little rambling soul,/kind guest, friend: leave me laughing,/pallid stiff, and bare.

David and Goliath

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The giant hurled threats and insults. He brandished a knife that was a foot long.

Hermano Sandwich

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His mouth smiled but his icy eyes did not. "You like it?," he asked with a thin deflated voice. "Old family recipe. Enjoy."

The Madness of the Gods

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“Have you heard about Lucius?” The lawyer turned to the carpenter. “They say he's gone mad. Just gone; the madness of the gods.” Sitting in the barbershop were the former two, one in his forties and the other of his fifties; a gray-haired…

Three Network News Ledes on the Death of Jimmy Buffet

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“He spent four lonely days in a brown L.A. haze, and now Jimmy Buffet is dead.” —Brian Williams, NBC Nightly News “Jimmy Buffet—beloved parrot-head singer-songwriter—has given up his search for that lost shaker of salt. He…

The Same

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The bus is late; the papers disappear. The china breaks, and the suit does not fit.

Clicking

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Reining her small hands around the molded handle grips, her bottom bouncing athwart and wildly off the seat, Symphony wrenches her center of gravity inward, commandeering as much control from the road it would allow. With her breaks behaving as stubborn

Dragon Lady

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What happened later that evening is unclear. When Mickey got back to his quarters, he was in good spirits. Buoyant even.

Gateway to the Continent

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I got to Victoria station at quarter to eleven on a Friday with nothing but a small leather bag and the vague idea of getting out of London.

love poem for the homeless man who was killed on wednesday night

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it was your hands—caked with years-old clay & quaking from too much solitude

Is That You, Bugs?

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Poor kid. She didn't mean to leave my business card on her kitchen counter next to the telephone. It was a mistake.

PORNOGRAPHY

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PORNOGRAPHY First He went across the floor to where she sat. One sleeve of her shirt dropped to show her shoulder, salted and brown. One hundred fish filled the wave. Now, he said. Now is now. Second The car wouldn't…

Saga of the Sugar Ants

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They’re persistent, I’ll give them that. They keep coming. And coming and coming.

Interstate

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By Jackson, you called and said, I'll be too drunk to drive. Hell, if I do my very best, I could be blind by Shreveport.

We Don't Need a Guitar Man

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The courtroom smelled a lot like mold and it was hot as you could imagine. I sweated through my shirt and wondered if he wasn’t dying under his robe. He looked down at me from his bench and I just knew he was going to call me a commie and sentence me to l

South 55

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This is a wife pregnant with spiders

To All the Lights

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I have nothing in me but a raw loneliness right now. It's as if someone whirl-winded me out of the sky into the middle of the ocean in the middle of the red faced night. My fate seems immobile, sealed, doomed to a rocking nothingness, like…

Borges in the SUB

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"There's Borges."

No More Tears

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When Bill was in the hospital, one month bleeding into the next, his mother visited exactly twice, both times complaining of the things she needed or couldn’t get rid of: mop heads, bleach, dustpans, detergents, grease, turgid water in the basement. And