Most read stories

Why the World's Fireflies Are Being Counted

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We got Bob Dylan on the wall wriggling from the lack of music and light among the spheres A great doubt has been raised and can be seen from far, far away for they are even afraid now in heaven that things can’t be going right and to

The Little Things (three versions)

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It's the little things that trip us up: a small hole in a level field, an innocuous root in a well-trod path, a disinclined sidewalk...

Good Help Is Hard to Find

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Some of them are notorious tweakers. Nobody epitomizes the cowboy-outlaw biker more than the ironworkers, who are wired on Black Beauties they sell on breaks.

Residual Flashbacks

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Residual flashbacks; just tiny bright lightning bolts that flash in front of my eyes, just like standing watching a soaring bonfire on a cold and frosty November night, pinprick sparks flying up into the endless darkness of the night.

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…

Hands

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I love to watch Kim work. She styles and cuts hair. When she is working on a customer, she is all business. The look on her face is priceless.

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.

Reflections Over Jalpeños

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It seemed like only yesterday that she was making sure to remember bottles for Hunter and now he was eating regular adult food, and they were looking into tutors for next year, and Hunter was nearly four. Her runty Hunty umpkins was going to be four.

Ghost Searches Downtown

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No one told a story.

Dealing With a Small Box Epidemic All On Our Own

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Sometimes you've just got to dance to Be heard. You have got to sing out loud To be understood. Other times No matter what you splash 'n' paint on 'em The beauty goes on shamelessly Not arousing any type of newfound Curiosity. We're…

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.

Good & Plenty

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From across the crowded bar, past the be-suited lobbyists and in between the plates of fried calamari and glasses of cabernet being hustled to and fro by the Salvadoran waiters, Travis could see that John had changed. Not much, but enough to be noticeable. A little grey…

The Criminal Intern

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"Look, Ted, I'm on a timer. It's really hell here, you can't imagine. And I have a chance to get paroled early, if you do me a solid."

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

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.

Paul Gauguin: Annah la Javanaise

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It's the outrage of the red monkey at her feet, And the nude thirteen-year-old woman sitting upright In the blue velvet chair, and the hints of blue at her navel, And at her lips and belly and crotch, that so upset Paris. Gauguin had his nerve

Sky Without a Song

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He hung up and I sang some whiney lyric about wanting him back. You know the songs that say the same shit: I’m an idiot. Love me anyway. I’m Velcro with nothing to stick to and you’re a nappy surface that gives me a reason to exist.

To Know but not Really

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So strange this feelingTo meet someone I've haven't really metTo know someone I don't actually knowTo desire to learn more but sure I never willTo feel connected not knowing what I'm connected toTo read words, thoughts, feel moved by them, but never hear a voice

Aforementioned

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

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

The Cicada's Cry

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In the cicada's cry No sign can foretell How soon it must dieBasho "Hear the locusts?" The woman lifts the child's head. "Hear em, baby?" The child looks blankly in the…

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…

Bukowski and the Greyhound Bus

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It’s a grey and stormy day naturally We’re crowded into a tiny bus shelter as it pours 57 varieties of cats and hounds They keep hitting the pavement around us with the splatting sounds those animals make when falling out of the heavens

The Nanny

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     In the dark, alone after she was gone, he would whisper her name into his pillow and fight the tears more out of shear exhaustion than anything else. He had mourned for her even before she had passed, as he watched helpless while the disease marched slowly and…

The Untold Story

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I kept a journal for so many years I've forgotten everything I wrote.

Scandal, in Eight Parking Arrangements

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4. Hers blocking driveway, his diagonal in grass

Kingdom of the blind

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Learned & wealthy but slowly going mad from seeing, he did the only thing he could/he turned to love

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.”

Miss Havisham's Fire

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. . . catching her breath somewhere between ecstasy and surprise. . .

Detroit: I'm Emotionally Invested

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I grew up in Detroit, and even though I haven't lived there since I was 18, I'm still a Michigander at heart. I'm also a (retired) bankruptcy attorney.You can probably tell where this is going. I own a Detroit municipal bond. It's a sewer bond, which means…