Most read stories

Heart of Gold

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"Cooperation and sharing could eliminate poverty."

The Blue Pear

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The pear is a bruise. Feels like desperation in the light, it looks soft and blue. She wants to touch it and doesn’t want to. How the blood gathers under the blue and the body grows tender. Swells. Slowly.

The Year Michael Got His Own Page in the Yearbook

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You can use your shoelaces or an Ace bandage. Loop a belt around your neck and toss the loose end over a shower curtain or closet pole. Pull. Try to lift yourself off the ground.

My Dad Builds the House

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Before the saw came my fist through the wall. Now I kneel on the crumbled drywall in my son's closet holding a flashlight, peering into the hole at the plumbing parts I'm supposed to replace. On the other side of the wall the bathtub faucet drips. It is my second…

Zeta Reticuli

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We've talked often about that night, where six hours of our life disappeared, about our shared experience, and the big question of why.

Ophelia

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Her ghost/kept coming back/to Hamlet

The Great San Francisco Poetry Wars, 10

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O’Toole signaled again with two fingers. The night was young. Suddenly I had to go home to my lovely Penny. All I knew was I didn’t want to end up drinking at a hole like this with my head down on the bar.

True Romance '66

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First thing each morning, Miss Murgy, a tall witch of a woman, cornered both of us like she did every day. "Girls…" with that she clinked a tea spoon on a shot glass, "do I have your attention?" "Yes, m'am," Vicky said. 6 a.m., six…

12 Dreams

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That dog again; enduring love.

The Virgin of Last Resort

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In a little dirt church at the end of the world stands the ikon of an unrecognized saint.

The Grilled Saint

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When asked to turn over the Church's riches / he brought before the Roman prefect the poor, blind, ragged and infirm.

The Underlying Order

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“Choices overwhelmed us,” Thomas continued, years later, “like waves crashing.”

In tidal relief

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the world slips under the waves

Anhedonia (excerpt 2)

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Crazy. I really hate when people use that word.

When I Asked You to Sing at My Funeral

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It's because poetry would not do because the fireflies were alive that night, aflame

Our Terror Closet

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"Honey," I called out to my wife. "Why do we have Spam in the closet?" "You mean unsolicited bulk messages sent electronically?" "No--the canned, precooked meat product made by the Hormel Corporation."

The Photo of the Bulletproof Man

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He was corporate then, young, his wife gorgeous, the collar flipped up on his twill overcoat, a lit cigarette in one hand, the other around his wife’s waist. They stood outside. It looked chilly. She wore a hat. He looked bulletproof.

PTSD

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My therapist told me I have post traumatic stress disorder My uncle had that He fought in the war I guess I fought in my own kind Not between countries Between children and father Between husband and wife Between addiction and sobriety When my father got…

Language

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this reaching, this striving to love like it's there becoming something we need.

Fascination

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Lying all over itself...

Stories of Love Under a Full Moon

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What do you do when someone’s in love and you know it’s wrong?

DANCING ON AIR

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You were at a saloon on Water Street. Witnesses say. You were taken out of the place and put on a sloop against your will. Witnesses don’t say.

Burning

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When she told me to write itI did; I scratched out what I wanted to sayin quick print letters. Not all of it.I could never get it all out in an hour but thegeneral idea was definitely there. We had to finish it in the rain becausewe couldn't light the…

Gregory Dates a Witch

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None of us took it too seriously when Gregory from underwriting said he was dating a real-life witch. Being an underwriter is not as interesting as say being a writer. That's why the greatest underwriter in America, Ajit Jain, gets paid per hour what Jame

Spatter

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Splat.

Four hearts and a vase of jonquils

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Yankees call them daffodils.

The Cat was Wrong

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Bitch My brother is the only person who dared to slaughter a bitch and its five puppies. It is sickening to write this story. Sickening to read it. This happened on Sunday night when the muezzin called for the prayer. The puppies were…

The Boss of Bosses

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The one thing my father told me that I want to believe is true . . .

Caitlin in the Y2K Museum

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Two months after Peter moved out, it opened on the eastern-leaning boulevard, a stone's throw from the water. Caitlin heard about it from a friend at a bar three weeks after that, found that the concept wouldn't quietly settle in her mind, and made plans

Dad, August 10, 2010

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Satchmo sings a love song over the sound system. People read books, tap keyboards, drink coffee, eat cake. In Barnes & Noble—more a coffee shop these days than a bookstore—I am thinking about my dad and his stomach cancer.The terror he…