Most read stories

The Case of the Phantom Paperclip

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I was sitting on the steps in the entryway to our apartment building taking off my running shoes when I spotted a paperclip on the floor. I assumed it had fallen from the mail that my wife had just taken from our mailbox. Once my shoes were removed, I went down to pick…

Table for one

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Black tagliatelle with squid and funghi porcini. He didn't understand why they called it a special, it had been in the menu since day one they had opened.

Jean-Michel Basquiat Invaded My Dreams

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"the rum tasted of hibiscus blossoms"

Yellow Pages

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Yellow Pages season is on us now, and Jimmy's drivin' a contract route. He'll head out to the San Joaquin where they print, and load ‘em in the back of his Tundra with the high side walls until the whole damned rig sags low,

When the Muse Abandons You

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I am abandoned to the mundane/ calculations of a small mind/ trapped by small considerations

A Locked Door.

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I look at that wall, it has piss-stain yellow paint and water scars from several years of leaky pipes. I say I wouldn’t mind that, if he took out some of that wall.

Subservient

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There's still a swatch of jelly on his lower lip. Did you notice? That's not the way it's done, even on the tractor.

The One Day Internship

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Poppy de Witte was content to spend her summers in Cape Cod, where her family owned a small beach house considerably less stifling than their spacious apartment on Park Avenue.

Safe

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He is drilling the door of a safe to access the keys he locked inside.

Down to Earth

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He ran his forefinger round the rim of the lid then sucked at his fingertip. The texture's like chalk, he thought, it tastes of earth. He hadn't anticipated this — but dipped his finger in again and swallowed. It was like scraping his tongue against a blackboard on…

The Promise

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Conjoined - her hardened nipple brushing, softly, against him, his chest hair caressing her skin like a thousand hungry lovers’ fingers – the perfect moment lasted eternity.

Cathy

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"Merry Christmas, Willie."

Against Romanticism

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And because the film is French, the camera pauses / long moments at the curve of her neck, it watches/ her finger vermilion tulips in a vase. Her new lover,/ a wisp of a man, looks good in leather./ The camera pans quickly across beige suede,/ rests long

With Emily Dickinson as Walt Whitman Walks in the Bar

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Oh no, here is that Whitman man I’ve heard he is a bounder. Don’t look his way or catch his eye- Just get another round, dear.

In tidal relief

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the world slips under the waves

Seven Things I Learned About David Letterman from Jason Zinoman's "Letterman: The Last Giant of Late Night."

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Never touch David Letterman's neck!

First Love

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What happened then was not entirely innocent or spontaneous. I had been impressed by a scene in Some Came Running by James Jones, where the teenage writer sneaks his girlfriend home and makes love to her on his childhood's bed.

Pretty

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Is it victory or madness

Spilled Milk

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(I'd appreciate some feedback on this very weird story.) A Frosted Mini Wheat walks in to a bar...

Uncle Moscow

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He asked me to bury him in Vegas. Instead, I had him cremated in Trenton.

Mermaid

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While the other kids blew bubbles, Maddy clung to my neck. She didn't cry or scream, and she held on loosely, not with the death grip some kids have. For five Wednesday afternoons, Maddy wrapped her pudgy arms over my shoulders and rested her bottom on m

Dancing Beneath a Gazebo

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We learned to dance beneath a gazebo / in Spring Lake Park / We were fourteen

A Story

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Like many little towns, ours has an archive. It is a catalog of everything that happens.

The Great San Francisco Poetry Wars, 17

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So back to Berkeley we went, and started our own commune in a huge rented house on Derby Street where we could tear the fences down in all the neighborhood backyards. We created what we called “The Meadow.”

3 Among the Possibilities

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While you can,/ find the beautiful

Two Cinquains

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SPOT ON OUR LUNG We sense A stillborn dawn. A furtive, lurking gray, A sleight of dusk, eclipse, that follows Us. TITANIC'S LANTERNS Upon My rain-glazed panes Wet lights from neighbors glow Like lantern beams from shipwrecks…

Aforementioned

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I flung the basketball at the hoop and Cooper shagged the ball. He was the luckiest bastard I knew. ...

The Solipsist Suffers

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I can confirm nothing/ but impressions of the world// that appear beyond my/ body’s reach.

Cheerful but Awful

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With such a world/ one must invent a heaven

like a child

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where is the magic at? the spit the dirt or the words?