Most read stories

Carpe Diem

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It's true push often comes to shove

Leather

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When I was 17, they said in an e-mail that you would get too drunk to function and that you would abuse them, verbally, and do way more than embarrass them in public. They said you'd yell at them and hit their mom for any reason. They put a restraining order on you.…

Annals of the Naked Rowdies #78

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A true Rowdies fan begins every conversation about the band with a legend. She would be impressed if he knew the story.

Summer Waters

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A lifeboat came by in the night, And I finally saw we were sinking.

Snowed In

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“ I told you what she said, that she liked me better when I was drinking. Well, that's the way I feel, too. I liked her better when I was drinking.”

The Conversation Killer

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I stand corrected once more.

WOMAN DISPOSED OF

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sex trafficking

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…

Cathy

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"Merry Christmas, Willie."

Talking Down the Flames

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She'd always been an odd girl, nearly raising herself. As she got breasts and hips the boys complained that she was easy to get in the backseat, but afterward the car wouldn't run, not ever, like the engine died the moment they used her willingness up. So

On Being Bald....

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

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.

Fear Us, Oh Yes.

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Start now. Make lists. Call long-lost friends. Say what needs saying. Raise hell.

My Dog Was Wrong About You

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When it was time to leave, she lingered beside you, bidding you to come again. I flicked my cat, dog tail, indifferent. She wanted to lick your cheek.

Do the Funky Penguin--With T.S. Eliot

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True story: T.S. Eliot introduced Virginia Woolf to new dance steps including the Grizzly Bear and the Chicken Strut.

FANTASY

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Normally I would have never drank such a wine, but it was late on a Friday evening and the bottle was on the house...

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…

Learning to Love Your Permanent Stillness

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["GET UP, GET GET, GET DOWN ... 9-11'S A JOKE IN *your* TOWN!"]

The Great San Francisco Poetry Wars, 12

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But Von Rotten was up in Penny’s room right this minute, either banging her or haranguing her, or worse, both. I envisioned him with her, and my guts began twisting and turning, and my insides fell into my shoes. What had I done? She was being held capt

Game Day

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Being awake for the sunrise, that is the good planfor writing poemsand listening to enginesbirdsand bus stop silence.Now, I'm going to smokeout back on my roof porchfrom this atticapartmentin this desert land of big-titted blondesand listen to stadium fansrage…

RE[a]D

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Stop! the voice commands in a guttural shriek. Do not move. You are under arrest. But the voice is only in his head; he has created it the way a writer creates characters on a page, and it is just as real to him as if someone were really there.

The Sad History of the Tearless Onion

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Matthias Fenstermacher loved onions, but hated slicing them, and so he labored to produce a tearless variety. His first attempt was indeed tearless--instead of weeping, the slicer was overcome by fits of uncontrollable giggles. The potential hazard was

Let’s Make a Landscape

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Viewed correctly, nature is an inexhaustible storehouse of clichés. A successful landscape is their pleasing rearrangement.

With a Danish

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It wasn't hidden, exactly, but kept in a place where she wouldn't be expected to look: a photograph of Roger, naked and supine, looking at the camera without surprise.

I'm No Chickenshit

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Would a chickenshit leave her like I did yesterday?

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…

Wayne Recalls Rocking and the Power of Positive Thinking

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My mother told me I came out of her screaming and didn’t stop for two years. After that I took up rocking.

Arasoi Chuugi

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"We regret the inconvenience. Due to hijack activity, we have orders to secure this flight. Please remain seated. We will be landing shortly. Thank you for your cooperation."

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