Most read stories

A Name

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I can still feel the texture of those humid Delta mornings, hear the rhythm of the voices of black children echoing down the halls. I still remember the sense of purpose that I had each day, knowing that this, here, mattered: a child’s education, their

3 Among the Possibilities

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While you can,/ find the beautiful

A Quantum of Disappointment

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Reality winks at us then scampers off

Ghost Searches Downtown

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No one told a story.

Love Meal #3009

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His knife enters the Maui onion. He minces garlic and applies heat to pan and melts sweet cream butter and browns the garlic first and then he adds the onion and more heat, but it's time that will surely caramelize them. Salt and pepper and splashes of wine for the pan and…

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!

Her Hair, a Braid

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She’s there, in a tin, loosely wound beneath sepia tissue paper, a braid to worry in your fingers.

Uncle Moscow

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

now

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koalas burning

Phantom

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I am in the hallway, but I don’t sense it. That is to say: I don’t feel my body. I am like a phantom, a limbless entity floating, flailing.

The Arks What Weren't

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Mrs. Noah eyed the thickening clouds from the front stoop. Noah was still out in the yard kicking up sand in disgust, arguing with himself the whole time. Piles of cedar timber lay strewn all about. Maybe if they’d lived even three days’ journey clos

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

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.

Cheerful but Awful

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With such a world/ one must invent a heaven

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.

A Rich Future

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Also in development,/ the anatomically perfect robot/ pool boy and naughty maid,

Frozen Shells

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I had some words, but the truth is they don't mean a thing because whatever it is I was trying to say to you always crumbles to the ground in front of you. I had some words, but the bullying wind was stronger than me and ripped them…

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.”

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…

Cathy

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"Merry Christmas, Willie."

Hawk

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Squirrels and mice fear her shadow

Pretty

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Is it victory or madness

like a child

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

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...

Lewd in the Library!

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The Sports Illustrated Swimsuit issue just came out, and all over America librarians are flipping through its pages and rolling their eyes. The swimsuit issue, which isn't actually about swimwear at all, but, is, instead, about young, beautifully shaped female…

What's in a Name?

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[CAUTION: THIS CAN CONTAINS THE CAFFEINE EQUIVALENT OF THREE CUPS OF COFFEE. PEOPLE WHO ARE ELDERLY, PREGNANT, OR SENSITIVE TO CAFFEINE SHOULD NOT CONSUME THIS BEVERAGE!]

Prologue: April 16, 1970

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The muster zone was south of U.S. 119, off the Halleck Road. The search began on a large parcel, some 75 acres of farmland, property of one Mr. Shakelford. Shakelford had allowed the earth to go wild; brush, thistle and small…