Most read stories

Mount Baldy

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The most beautiful possible thing is to deprive all places of their meanings.

Testament (complete)

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Their nouns are few and stark./ Ours are numerous and dappled/ or subtly shaded and shadowed/ by circumstance and possibility.

Mortality

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The list of things to live for/ shortens with age. The list of regrets/ lengthens.

Considering a Career

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Mostly, though, reiteration of the old/ in an idiosyncrasy that strives/ to become fresh and fails

Death

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fate is an illusion we use to ease the terror of our mortality

Writer's Cough

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Ok, so I’m sitting here trying to write through a frigging cold. And I. . .Oops, . . . . . . wait a sec!. . . I’m stopped, astounded, stunned between coughing my left lung clear over my keyboard and watching it flopping on the back of my desk. . .

Collapsible Horizon

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Mama sleeps in bed with us. The blue of her ghost sleeps underneath me. I love her more than anything. What does she think when we are naked, when we yell, or mimic, imbibe, curse, cry, shake, make love, roll over on her, want to die?

MY WAR

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In May of 1982, my daughter and I planned a trip…

Flood

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My mother's afraid the dog will drown. It's raining and our street is flooding and the dog is standing on top of his doghouse. My mother is pregnant. I can stand beneath her stomach and not even see her face. I watch her from the kitchen window. She's shoeless. She holds…

Boy's Worst Friend

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After dinner, I looked forward to taking a shower and cleansing myself of the day’s mishap. Cher had other plans.As I left the bathroom, Cher nipped me in the butt, taking my towel, skin, and blood with her. I remember writhing on the floor outside my sis

Sowers of Nothing (ELECTRIC DELIRIUM 1.2)

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We dig up conscience-tunnels, pluck the play-flower of present choice for fun, run aground, past this dimly lit, though not to be underestimated, stage, and open door upon empty door, to nothing, for the lights are a pulse flickering in the perceptual per

Ascension

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He reveled in the chase, giddy when just out of arm’s reach. When to catch him, that was the question.

Biodegradability

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As a boy I fished under the Tappan Zee bridge which spans the Hudson River above New York City.

Lewti & Loki

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I had no portent this would occur, / Ne'er did I see this happening, / Not days before, nor those coming;

Couples

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She served him pie she knew was ruined.

Black Children Learn Derivatives

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The white faces of the train look up in an attempt to satisfy presumption, smoothing out any interest into glassy eyed gestures toward looking but lacking the very important quality of sight.

"If I die again, just let me go"

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Will wondered if Doobie was afraid that it might be nothing but the abyss waiting on the other side, but he promised Doobie he’d let him pass on if it was finally his time.

CfK

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A sturdy and goatish original by know-nothing punks from the sticks. Who cares if we were puny and smelled like fresh milk? For a few years we played and rocked, even turned the Appalachian soundscape a little brown at the edges. At least at first. Mainly

Flight

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Fortunately, when the bird hits the sliding glass doors in our den, I know what to do.

Sacred

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"What the fuck are you looking at, Carl?" She snaps, turning her head toward me as the truck edges off the road and into a field of tobacco, into those broad green leaves of ancient sacristy and modern ablution. This is not a blissful kind of field. It is not full…

An Irrational Poem

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Hollywood is the land of the slow no.

The Gate Before

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You were always goingto connect the dots. I was always goingto overfill a bucketwith poems. You wouldeventually drive off wavingyour hand like astar on a spring. I'dshoulder up another notebookfor the walk. Myhand would rather holda pencil. Yours wouldaccept a kiss…

Myra's Mother

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Smoking is like hooking up with an ex-girlfriend: you know she's bad for you and that it won't work out, but it feels so familiar and comfortable and so easy to slide back into.

Happy Columbus Day

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Oh to be young and vigorous.

Ibby's Falafel

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Dark hung over the night like an occupation force. Across the street a Cuban diner fought it off with green and yellow neon lights, Latin rhythm beating through the air.

Death Is No Big Deal.

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The suite of dark rooms/ extends forever./ It’s no big deal.

The Fourth Prague Defenestration: 13

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The next thing we knew, the KGB started tailing us everywhere we went. They must have heard about Lenin’s Paintings, was all we could figure. Because, what if they were real? That night we went out to a pizza place where we saw the worst graffiti in t

The Drone

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"He turns in his bed, and reaches for a body, like the blind to braille."

Reflections Over Jalpeños

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It seemed like only yesterday that she was making sure to remember bottles for Hunter and now he was eating regular adult food, and they were looking into tutors for next year, and Hunter was nearly four. Her runty Hunty umpkins was going to be four.

Removals

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Her mother was worried.