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Maritzer's Axiom

18201820 views88 comments66 favs

We were just as bourgeois as Bloomingdale’s, one generation past canned ravioli dinners with cheap white bread.

3 Poems

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We have always been a trashy species./ We study ourselves by examining/ garbage-- a pile of mussel shells here,

The Room Below

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The closed door swallowed up both voices, and all I could make out afterward were muffled pleas and angry answers that died completely.

The Signal

18201820 views44 comments33 favs

I take the plastic off of the last videotape and stick it in the VCR. I make sure the channel is on 6. Still a commercial. I get my notebook, turn it to the next page and write today's date on top. I get ready. I don't really like the back and forth banter the other news…

Paperclip

18201820 views1111 comments55 favs

The Americans don't want us. They want knowledge. They want to eat with us. They want technology and weapons. They want the results of research they themselves are too craven to perform, answers to questions they ask themselves in whispers, in the dark. T

At the Number Party

18201820 views1515 comments1212 favs

and dreamed itself infinite.

Tuscaloosa

18201820 views1313 comments77 favs

a Ferris wheel gently rocks its last riders then dumps them to the ground.

Heart of Gold

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"Cooperation and sharing could eliminate poverty."

Fin

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She doesn’t answer. Ten minutes slide by unmolested in the anesthesia of cheap wine and resignation, the bouncers blurring and unblurring, the room dimming, quieting, the kaleidoscope of sundown giving way to the gentle sadness of candlelight.

Graduation (For My Mother)

18191819 views33 comments33 favs

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

TITLE

18191819 views22 comments00 favs

Someone had shown me a page on the internet where writers could have their stories analyzed, seeing whose work their piece was similar to. Normally, I only went on the computer to find apartment listings and pornography.

Faith, Hope, and Charity

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She wears three or four tattered sweaters on cool days. She pushes a basket borrowed from a grocery store. There is a plastic lawn bag in the basket with God knows what inside.

Sing Sorrow Sorrow

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Lean closer, she smiles, smell my perfume let yourself be taken to a wild forest where owls grow and trees fly.

Ten Little Indians

18191819 views1010 comments1010 favs

One day we went for a hike. We climbed a small mountain. It’s called Mission Peak. We got about halfway up a steep trail, decided that was far enough. We embraced. She said “I love you,” and I said, “I love you, too.”

A Clue Found Aboard a Zen Mind's Floating Iceberg

18181818 views88 comments77 favs

I do so want to bring you into the sacred linguistically eternal loop of all ordinary things on earth, but it can so easily turn into a very sudden unsparing trapdoor, or a hissing angry knot tying up itself into even more tricky sorts …

The Rhythm of the Cows

18181818 views77 comments44 favs

A cow wanders onto a roof and falls through the skylight. It's a calamity, but such an innocent mistake. Mightn't you amble onto a rooftop once upon a full winter snow in Vermont?Another cow climbs a gravel mound in…

Writing Coach Helps Blocked Women Tap Inner Meanness

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“Susan,” he says menacingly, as if he’s a husband who’s caught a cheating wife in a discreet liaison with another man. “I thought I made myself clear about this sort of thing.”

Molly was a F***ing Tourist

18181818 views2020 comments1515 favs

The boys drank in one room. The girls in another. Always the same, no matter the letters. Greek Letters. Shabby sofa on the burnt-out lawn.

Clockwork

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At any moment, she'll come outside to pick up the day’s newspaper. He can see it resting beneath the blooming crape myrtle, its plastic wrapper glistening with dew.

Criminals

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What about the goons? Those criminals thwarted and left for dead in every action movie for the past thirty years. I'm sure at least a dozen survived the slaughters. I'm sure at least one or two came out if it reformed. This one who quit working for Columbian drug smugglers…

The Red Suitcase: (Conclusion)

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—You must be joking, he laughed.

Why Things Are Just OK with Me

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With such demeaning precarity, I can’t read/ anything more than a thousand words

Gregory Dates a Witch

18171817 views99 comments44 favs

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

He Brings Things Closer

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Behind the plastic kitchen, where the special children sometimes sit, a large boy in tight dungarees had grabbed Stephanie's hair in one fist.

One Regrettable Talent for Tragedy

18171817 views55 comments55 favs

Vandalina embarked on her career of serious dramatic roles to widespread acclaim, her depth of feeling and potency of delivery winning her thunderous ovations and gushing reviews . . .

The Adventures of Tequila Kitty: Chapter 3 - by Brian Lepire

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I’d made it to the motel parking lot when I heard the footsteps. A sombrero may make me look good, but it does shit for my hearing, so the bastards were able to scoop me up real quick. The first one gave me a hard slap on the top of the head with an opene

Drift

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Dreams & foghorns.

entwined

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you and i exist outside of the chaos and noise entwined in eternal embrace

If we thought that love was gone

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If we thought that love was gone that out of sweetness none remained

Twin Lakes of Whiskey

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not that we ever had before