Most read stories

ABSALOM

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He was still on the ground...

staircase

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i miss you/ at times unbearably/ a dull ache that won’t quit

The Space Between Words (Valentines Day)

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Looking for meaning in spaces between words.

Lines Written in a Honda Civic

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Raymond Carver used to write poetry in his car. / Tonight, I tried it too. / I have a car like Raymond Carver / but cannot write poetry like Raymond Carver. / The car isn’t enough.

Grand Union

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She suggested just moving in together. A lot less constrained by convention she, on occasion, did not wear a bra.

The Kid Who Knew Something

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Shannon refused to jump from the castle drawbridge to the gigantic truck tire sunk halfway down in the playground quicksand. He just stood there-arms folded across his chest, bony knees sticking out from beneath ratty cutoffs-in silence, looking to Rollie

Permission to Go

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Now that I no longer sleep to see you, propelled by this motion that is not magic

Ancestry.com

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Ancestry.com The Liverpool census in 1851 lists him:Thirteen years old, Irish. Occupation: beggar. Only that. I will do more for him.I will see him in torn jacket and too-short pants singing all day of the fields, the cliffs,…

Five

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". . . with the impact of a 18-wheeler jack-knifed into a Mini-Cooper as it hits the surface."

The New World

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And so we conquered.

Four Prospects from a Spanish Garden

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(For Dancer and Guitar) …

COSMOGONY

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I am sitting on our porch in the middle of the night. I can't sleep. The stars look like runway lights. Out of boredom, I reach out my hand to connect the distant dots. The tip of my finger hits…

Birthday Boy

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The sound of it wasn't right in his head yet. When he said it aloud he didn't really believe it.

Funeral

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After the funeral there was a luncheon in the church basement.

2 and 2

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I was a six year old with no bike. Only the males in my familyhad that privilege. So one morning I got up very early, before the older siblings awoke, crept out the back porch door where Iknew there would be two bikes in the yard just waiting for me and my…

Working Girl

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Suddenly a hand shot up on the other side of a hedge. “I’ll have one of those!” cried someone who remained invisible.

Algae Freunden

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She had a strange name which I am ashamed/ To have forgotten, seven times, maybe nine,/ Her lips transgressors, wet with sourapple ...

VCR CIA

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When VCRs were invented in the 1970s, the first big user segment was people who wanted to watch porno films in the comfort of their own home. Troy and Lynn's upstairs neighbor, James, an enlisted man in the Navy stationed at Pearl Harbor, had a vast porn…

I Don't Know What I might say

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But it all works out. I guess. Truth is something I'm sure I've never seen before, but the more time goes on, the Less I'm inclined to believe in it. Still I don't want To be one of those giving the finger to God And begging for a showdown with an…

Moon Stone

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It is late at night and you lean / over me to make sure your alarm is set.

Yesterday That Monday's Sun

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wrenched its lower back trying so hard to lift too many stacked November clouds off the newly shaved prickly heads of the slowly freezing trees,like ring weights,and had to spend the last of its hours setting in a small square box in…

Someone With Keys

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Mower hits a rock and the blades scream.

SHE HAS HER REASONS

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It is a well-known fact that my wife sleeps around. There. I said it and now everyone knows that I too know about my wife. Let me just tell you this one thing; she has her reasons. You ask me how I know that she has her reasons, but who would know better than…

THE ORCHID

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The orchid trembled on its long stem

January 2, 2012

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You always complained that Christmas/ ruined your birthday/ sister.

Swimming with Whales

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The plan was this: We would take our first vacation. My husband and I would take our 2 ½-year-old son Ethan and 13-month-old son Jonas to Mystic, Connecticut, a 90 minute drive from our home outside of Boston. We would stay at the Hilton, which was right near the Aquarium,…

The Energy of Girls

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Emma and I were in a shabby part of town with vacant lots and overgrown yards, and I wondered if something would happen as we loped beside Tom, who was slow-witted and 21. We were 13 . . .

Simurgh

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Some say the simurgh is an enormous bird with four wings, teeth, and a human face, able to carry off an elephant in her talons.

Life, in a slowly roasted nutshell

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You wake up. Slowly but surely. Okay, you're in the bookshop. Yes, apparently this is where you slept, on the floor, with absolutely no sense of irony, in the romantic fiction section...

Machine-Gunning Butterflies

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I was making good bread as a New York studio musician and jingle writer, anonymous back-room jobs.