Most read stories

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.

DMV

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When you bring information, it does not arrive.

The Plunderer

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Bill (Gunnery Captain of the Left Hand Gun, HMM Plunderer), while not exactly obese, nor could a disinterested observer call him him rotund, was nevertheless the sort of man who'd never be caught by a famine unprepared. And because of this more than regulation…

The Guerilla Drive-In

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“Don’t you wish it always ended that way? The right people fall in love? Romance leads to marriage? God, that was a great movie.”

In Your Absence

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In Your Absence the yard-cat, Flower, has started sleeping on top of the fridge

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…

The Celebrity

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I love reading about myself. There's nothing more gratifying than seeing my name in the paper, knowing so many people are interested in who I am and what I do.

Marriage

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Freshly fucked, Shirley exhaled enjoying the lingering sensations. She always felt lighter after a good orgasm, and this had been one for the record books.

Honey

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Cellulite is legal to have, either way.

Decomposition

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She can never say why, but guilt rides her bones like the spirit. She rubs worry raw.

Novembering

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

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

Heart of Gold

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"Cooperation and sharing could eliminate poverty."

Father Must (from The New Yorker)

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It might not seem easy to breathe any love into a name like Father. It’s a stiff word—it’s not soft, like, say, Papa—but sometimes you have to breathe love into names you don’t choose.

The Karaoke Girls

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The Karaoke Girls are not appreciated. Not nearly enough and not often enough.

Block Island Sound

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So I’ll wait for her to clear all burden from her head and feel the ocean move us. Stand up, walk over to me and kiss me as we glided through open water.

Bread

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I am standing in the kitchen, kneading dough, because this is one way to say sorry. This is way to say, things will be different now, look.

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.

Oversleeping & Getting in Trouble for It

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A few people bristled and looked at Jim, but since he was avoiding their gaze, they had no choice but to return their attention to their own table and pretend to pay attention to the conversation they previously had been pretending to pay attention to.

The Great San Francisco Poetry Wars, 3

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That put a real crimp in our already crimped sex life. Actually I didn’t mind as much as Allison minded. It made her real grumpy when she didn’t get laid. I could never understand how she could bear so much pain, because she was so small that it was l

Plant Me

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If you find the place they forgot to bomb send me a hot pink postcard. The planet is only so big. We're already dipping our heels into the waters without wanting to become true believers, miserable followers. The bedtime stories will have to…

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 Tattered

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The snake-like veins began to pulsate angrily, and viciously about his body. Quickly he rose up about the girl. His heart was now pounding rapidly against his chest. Outstretched, were his wings, the width of the balcony, white and decrepit and old, yet s

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

A Message from Your Local Superintendent Concerning Sex in Our Public Schools

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Such behavior will result in no disciplinary action only: 1) if all blinds are drawn; 2) all doors are locked; and 3) loud groaning is masked by appropriate use of the volume control on the classroom’s closed-circuit TV set.

Early Decision

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Melinda said forget the kegger last night, what we’re about to do will help you figure out whether you want to apply here.

News That Stays News

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Some trick of the morning light makes the tattoo on her ankle look like the burn from a branding iron. She had watched her father as he slept last night. He was handsome and innocent, like a baby boy.

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…

Clarinet

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

Movie Star in a Mental Ward

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He was a beautiful older man, late sixties, who reminded me of a movie star with a thick mane of silver hair parted neatly from left to right and eyes the color of that stretch of Pacific Ocean between San Pedro and Catalina Island, the calming blue of a carefree weekend…