Most read stories

-And Lurking Behind Quasar 3C295 . . .

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“Let’s see that great big telescope of yours,” she exhaled hotly, “I want to grind your lenses!” The doctoral candidate dutifully stood between her and his massive telescope so her hands would encounter some instrumentation with no optical components.

On Being Bald....

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Hair today...gone tomorrow The sun beats down on my balding crown.

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!

Famous Female Artist

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I remember being sent a picture once from one of my old roommates, Louise, back in Chicago where I came from. The photo was taken when she’d come out for a visit to California. In the picture I am sitting on the front stairs of my house in the Rockridge

Lessons from a Pine

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I awake one morning to find that still, the leaves continue to fall.

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.

The Room Below

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The closed door swallowed up both voices, and all I could make out afterward were muffled pleas and angry answers that died completely.

Sports day at the School for Clowns

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The javelin was cancelled after the unfortunate incident with Mrs Parker last year, but no one could have predicted this year’s sack race tragedy.

Tuscaloosa

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a Ferris wheel gently rocks its last riders then dumps them to the ground.

If we thought that love was gone

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If we thought that love was gone that out of sweetness none remained

Albatross Antics

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Track One Johnny Burkemeister, lead vocals and flutist of the band Albatross Antics, sits on his bed thinking in silence. His elbow rests on his knee, and his palm on his forehead with his fingers running through his dirty-blonde hair. He is staring at a copy of Paste…

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

Junctions / Decisions

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Next to you, the mother tightens her grip on her stroller. The young teenager tears her gaze from her mobile phone for an instant.

Lockdown

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I'm explicating Emily Dickinson when the alarm starts: three long, two short. Lockdown mode. Only there was nothing in the staff bulletin about a drill. So I tell the students to get down on the floor, away from the window. I open the classroom door and lock it from…

With My Eye

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my space heater throws a pale orange light my white candles flicker in the middle of the night

RT @dadaism #amwriting

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How much do book editors earn? Peacock Love. (aww…)

A Gardener in February Thinks About June

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I want to be that daring gardener who ploughs up her front yard -- to the horror of the Neighborhood Association.

The Nest

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I am reaching out at you, to you from the nest. From the nest, please come to the nest, to see me and to hear my life story. From the nest I go, and then I arrive at the nest, suddenly, just in time to be…

Toothbrush

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...and he would stumble from bed in a panic and fling the toothbrush at the mirror cursing all the while "fuck fuck why can't I forget her".

Meander

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Things are a little out of hand. Information fills room after room after room. I have no bloody idea where I am. I have your photo, but the navigational coordinates are difficult to interpret. Where the hell are you, anyway? I don't like mazes — too much like…

The Parade Path

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Beautiful, a country left abandoned by the parade path. The soldiers that typically occupy this place, temporarily removed to neighboring lands; congregating together, backs to the native. I benefit from the accidental diversion.

Graduation (For My Mother)

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I know I’m slipping into my mother’s skin. I answer the phone with her voice; her hands grind the coffee beans. And who is this listening to NPR in the morning while the fresh-faced girls in the neighborhood trudge toward school,, peonies han

The Rare Air on Planet Teeny

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Half-pint Ball canning jars, each labeled in earnest capital letters, took up a whole wall of Teeny’s bedroom. Inside each jar was air she had collected from some place important to her life.

When the Muse Abandons You

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

The Serious Writer Tracks His Stats

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The officers carried him away in cuffs as he yelled "I NEED STATS! PLEASE! JUST GIVE ME THE STATS!"

Knell Quarternion

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The Jester sat down on the edge of his mattress. He laboured to bring one gout ridden leg up to lay across the other. The jingle bell at the tip of his pointed toe mocked each serrated movement of his limb with a jaunty tinkle. He grabbed his ankle to arrest its…

Novembering

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Cinnamon and smoke infuse the days that shorten, chill, accelerate.

Constable Pulce and the Sunny Dystopia

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Alessandro was no ordinary demon (what demon is?), insofar as he had Constable Pulce's number. In demonly fashion he had Pulce's number in a way Pulce himself did not.

The Conversation Killer

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I stand corrected once more.