Most read stories

Take-Home Quiz [DIRECTOR'S CUT: Now, w/pretty colors & font changes!]

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[PLEASE SHOW YOUR WORK!]

Heat

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It was so hot we walked out on our husbands. There were reasons, we supposed. They left the refrigerator doors open all day, grabbing beers when they passed by, tossing the sticky caps upon counters. They drove their Metropolitans to buy food, leaving th

Bookmark

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Some books are like old friends and when you read them, you no longer feel alone.

Clarinet

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It’s beautiful to look at and to hold/ though true musicians would be appalled/ by the black plastic

On Being Bald....

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

Poems I posted on social media, late night, when I was drunk.

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my God, I have no time, no time

Beautiful Are the Feet: Part Two

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Naomi saw an ad in one of those slick circulars that came in the mail. ' Wigs by Paula."

Fascination

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Lying all over itself...

Wednesday late, Friday early

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I wrote this during a poetry workshop at the Atlantic Center for the Arts with Carolyn Forché. January, 2015. So much more has happened since that stunning week.

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…

Emotional Gentrification - excerpt Single Stroke Seven

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Sunday, Nolan and I drop by the ice rink on 10th and Alma to watch the amateur hockey leagues battle it out in an unspoken yet assumed class war: the buff, unemployed rink bums who can grind ice, cross-check, and stick handle like the pros, versus the dou

Adultery and Africa

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“What would you think if I committed adultery?” She pauses very briefly before replying. “What, you got time on your hands?”

How To Write Funny

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I've never really been impressed with authors that write long teary-eyed novels about people dying of terrible diseases or uplifting stories about the armless boy who made the wrestling team.

Running

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On the way home, “Friendly honk,” he said.

Ghost Searches Downtown

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No one told a story.

Getting Sideways On Douglas

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Under the dirty orange glow of sodium streetlights, the glistening pavement looks slick, but it’s only just wet. The mid-November temperature is cool—quite mild, actually, for this late time of year—still hovering in the upper 30s—so far posing only the

I Am Not A Careful Reader

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What's the weirdest thing you've ever used as a bookmark? I work in a library. I've seen that, and more.

Lunch Bird

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The bird studies me, we lock stares, with no care for who blinks first, birds don’t do macho stand-off.

Ojibwe

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"Did I have a choice? Could I just open my eyes, did I have to ‘see’ as he was telling me now I could? I decided to go for it. What did I have to lose? This was all a dream, too much driving to get here, too much reunion, too much food, too much beer. Or

Journal of Puritan Minister, Jon Sorrim: Fragment 1

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It was the first time I had ever seen a possession.

A Tragedy In Three Acts (St. Petersburg Blues)

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His thought was shattered then by the horrible grind of the telephone in the hall. Surely not for me, he thought. One of the other tenants has a friend who’s landed vipivka, no doubt after 39 straight days of hunt. Booze is so damnably hard to find

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.

Jim Shows Me Twelve Jesuses

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in cinematic snippets, ten-second scenes of twelve Sons …

Tomatoes and Onions on the Bed

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That led to the first aid box on the bed at 3 in the morning, but what about those veggies?

the snake charmer

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God forbid you should break one of the camps precious “rules,” which were more or less like the Ten F'ing Commandments around there.

Burma

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Our mothers died in childbirth. Taken in by the village, our new mothers taught us to wave at the river boats, to sell our trinkets to tourists. They offered us coins of a foreign currency and little pathetic smiles. By nightfall, our fingers bled. Then came…

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".

Pour Yourself A Glass of Wine, Hop on the Treadmill and Read This Book

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I don't know if I'm going to get Alzheimer's, but know I don‘t want to. That's why I just read “100 Simple Things You Can Do To Prevent Alzheimer's“ by medical journalist Jean Carper. Doing simple things is something I'm good at. And while I'm…

The President is Giving the State of the Nation Address Today

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But the world is smaller when I see it / from the crook of your neck.

The Flute Player

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The man who plays his flute every day under the archway near Powell station is not very good. He never plays a real tune, just a series of random notes. There is no rhythm or melody either. In fact, it's not even a flute he…