Most read stories

Jean-Michel Basquiat Invaded My Dreams

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"the rum tasted of hibiscus blossoms"

Low-Country Squirrel

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Maddy knew how to make a sauce. It embraced the meat in a thick, buttery ooze.

What Do You Mean, You Don't Sell Pigs Feet?

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“Excuse me–where are the pig’s feet?”

::HARD (excerpt)

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It wasn’t funny. It wasn’t scary. It wasn’t great. And it never is with people. Except..eventually..when you meet the right person..it is.

Bookends of a Life: II

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The clacking ventilator reminds me of ice cubes rattling in your highball...

Elusive Ideas in a Pineapple Under the Sea

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I cannot find my way back to the bubbling navel of the universe because of Spongebob Squarepants.

Absence

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You anchor the real You make love to the true I am bound to you in consecration

The Mish

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So begins your new career in the car service business. In some ways you enjoy it, too. Sitting alone in the cab each day, totally your own boss; you get a surge of excitement inside thinking about the money you'll make in a way that requires so little work. Clearing two…

The Eagle and Her Chicks

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On the day they were born, the old mother eagle named her chicks Faith, Hope, and Charity.

Good Home Wanted

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In his fridge he had one piece of meat. He hadn’t been expecting me. I cooked it for him and watched him eat.

For the young couple in the stairwell passed on my way to teaching Medieval World Literature

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I have/been you/years before/of course

Phantom Energy

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She called it phantom energy. She said it was costing us money every month. A few cents here and there, sure, but it all added up.

When I'm Sixty-Four (Semantic Satiation)

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Every day is exactly the same.

Snowdrops

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'Do you feel that, my little one?' Stillness. Calm. I felt the baby move her tiny little feet and smiled.

SECRETS

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they don't tell

On Living in New York City in 2009, After Watching a Documentary on New York City in the Late 1800s

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God's honest truth, I wake up every morning when my clock punches out its dulcet, insistent clangs, a setting called Ultra Zen Up & Out. I brush my teeth with a blue dollar store toothbrush and watch one of the five morning TV shows designed to let me know the weather…

Walking To Gibraltar, Chapter 9: In Which A Cause Is Proffered

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"I think you're a great candidate for a sentinel node biopsy," said Dr. Kartes. They sat in the small, dark office. On the sofa, not touching. She still wouldn't take his hand.

Abandoned

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How could you run from me now? The loneliest child in the house

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 Rare Air on Planet Teeny

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Half-pint Ball canning jars, each labeled in earnest capital letters, took up a whole wall of Teeny’s bedroom. Inside each jar was air she had collected from some place important to her life.

Hearts

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She thought of an animal checking a scent before mating, and imagined that he said to himself, “All I need is for this woman to be hitting on me.”

secrets

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Don’t worry about what went aloud. I said nothing.

Ophelia

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Her ghost/kept coming back/to Hamlet

Ackermann

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When he took Medieval German Lit in graduate school, Ackermann read Der Ackermann aus Böhmen by Johannes von Tepl. His professor was amused both by his last name and that his grandparents were Germans from Bohemia. Of course, only his grandmother was from Bohemia and…

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…

Just leave it and get out.

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The money stank on the table. Money is dirty she said, one of the dirtiest things. So many people touch it. This pile of brine would not explain its reek, only demanded that we accepted its stench as requisite. It had to have been the cash that stank, prior to its arrival…

New Homes / New Fears

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How would you like to leave the land of your ancestors, the place of your birth, the home of your identity?

The Heart

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My wife and I were looking for a "fixer-upper." We were strange that way. We were leaving a rental which had cat tunnels built into the walls. One villa we toured had a heartbeat. In the basement, in place of a well pump, was a heart made of fibrous roots which had…

In tidal relief

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the world slips under the waves

Running Out of Gas on the Highway of Love

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“When I get like this? What about what you get like this? If you know my answer you know you look like my answer. Otherwise, how would you know my answer?”