Most read stories

The Dirt

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The coffin-sized pit in his basement wasn’t freshly dug.

Where I work you cannot see the sun.

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Where I work people use words like leverage. They do not appear to denote anything.

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...

The Good Farmer

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He leans in close then, close enough that when he speaks, his words tiptoe out and tuck me in.

The Meaning of Life

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One must not confuse the meaning / of life with the joy of living

A Butterfly For A Married Woman

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A married woman requests a butterfly tattoo that won't please her husband from an old tattoo artist.

GOT

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I don't know how long I was down on the curb. When I came around it took several minutes to realize that it wasn't the moon overhead at all but a street light and the sticky feeling stuff I was lying in was, yeah, my blood. And the hand on my shoulder wasn't hers. I…

Hart Crane Pantoum No. 1

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One must be drenched in words.

When the Moon Blooms

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Your faded presence in sepia dream returns, firelight whispers and vanilla scented ash. We were a beautiful knot: sinew and hemp, burlap and magnolia petal, concrete and vapor. Gray kisses hovered overhead, misty…

Metastasis

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I am eternal/ as long as the power holds

13 fragments of a somniloquy, overheard by a burglar lost in the basement complex on midsummer night

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1. there's nothing more to say about it and I don't want to be drawn2. beautiful she couldn't hear me anyway I was desperate and there were moths3. they'd replaced his head with a picture of the moon he looked4. none of them were speaking English more like a ticking a…

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…

Wild Dreams of Reality, 12

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I went out behind Parker's house and saw Darrell's tent set up in the grass. The flaps of the pup tent were open. I could see him through the mosquito netting. He had a Coleman lamp burning and lay on his back in his underwear on top of his sleeping bag.

The Work of Beauty

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the steady, persistent work of beauty

Cheese (train writings)

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"This tastes like goat cheese," I said.

WRECKED

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There

thumbing through the Jesus book

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We’re on our way out, my brother and me, to the grave­yard.

Thanks for Looking After Sinamyn

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Here are a few tips/instructions to help you out (though I'm sure you'll do just fine by yourself!):Getting to the Apt.:If you're coming from Riverside, you'll want to turn onto Magnolia. So, if you're coming from north to south on Riverside, that means you'll want to turn…

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."

Cartoon Campfire

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This is the parallel room I keep my heart in. Got a solo fireplace. I don't want to invite anything else into the story. It doesn't matter if no one knocks on the door ever again. I'm too shy to hope for much more than a couple of Interesting shadows…

Why No One Writes Epics Anymore

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No one writes epics anymore. Why? Perhaps it's because we no longer share mythologies. Once there was a shepherd, and now there is a Google bus loaded with pricks. Yes, you say, but they are good at math. Each and every one of them. And this is true. I envy them…

Because words are insufficient

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The day you came to the wedding the sky was so, so brightly July./ I saw my face where I left it the last time . . . .

Flannery O'Connor's Tea Party

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“He's the one who took five tries to find your vein during your last blood draw, right?” This question spilled from the row of twenty EKG machines that now made up the hospital building's larynx

Charlotte and the Avalanche of Hope

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”My goodness how that child nurses hope,” Edward’s Grandad would often say, “were it not for her where indeed would this family be?”

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.

Thin Flame

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It was impossible that you wouldn't love me

Disappearing Ink

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Our ink was disappearing. All of it.

A Jungle Tale

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He awoke with a start. This was not the first time he did so. He couldn't afford these occasional bouts of sleep. And certainly not in the land of the Tsantsa hunters.

Faithless

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She was now sitting in her bathtub. The warmth of the water made her pale, rich vanilla skin flushed with the fullness of circulation as her pores continued to allow the passage of her toxins from her system.

SECRETS

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they don't tell