Most read stories

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?

A Night Ride With the Conservative Poetry Enforcers

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We've got our gang colors on because we're out for retribution. T.S. Eliot made an appearance at a writer's conference on De-Privileging the Dead White Male last night, and the head of a low-residency poetry program tossed hot green tea on him.

Appeasement

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No, I’m not at the junior high bus stop. I’m at the dining room table with my parents.

You deserve to be choked around your lying throat and this how it happens, slowly.

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Writing as a form of imaginative hatred

Anise Fish and Colin behind the glass

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“What is the sickness that you have?” Colin behind the glass wondered. “Too much world,” said Anise Fish. “We have that in common.”

I Have a Hard Time Having a Good Time

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At the third or fourth discotheque I drink so much I accidentally find myself happy.

The Comedian

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Sitting near her desk, like a dunce cap, red

Power Ballad (Revised)

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Everyone else in the bar was looking everywhere else: it was as though they were alone while Journey played loudly all around. “Streetlights, people,” she sang. Time didn't move. What she must be like while driving, singing to herself with the windows fog

Invisible Grime

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Most everything is white because white means clean and hospitals are supposed to be clean. They wouldn’t let me leave.

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

Sacrifice

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They rise up, a sullen, sorrowful/ army of reproach, staring,// stone-faced but eyed with fire.

Cat Tales - a 55 word story

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My spooky cat got out again. Under the deck she ran. Out came the hose that chased her about. Fur spiked, tail pointing, yowling, she hissed at me, and back in the house she pranced. It's been two days now. She slithers out for food after…

Today: Journal, July 21, 2007

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Sex is a sad reason to be alone with someone.

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…

Swoon

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Tender veterinarian, even if you weren't so tall, or your eyes so warm, or your fingers so long, or if you didn't bend over my sick cat with such astounding grace, or shoot those quick, intense glances at me, I'd have woven dreams while in your uncommon presence. Vulnerable…

Snatch 8 (the zombie flash sequence--it never dies)

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Oh, gracious mercy, oh...

Guns in the House

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Jack would have felt betrayed, and my parents alarmed, had they ever suspected me of playing with Jack's guns, but I found the temptation overwhelming.

What is your favorite body part?

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Hideki likes the uncomfortable face one makes when trying to "break wind" after eating too many dried potatoes.

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…

Paperclip

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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

In The Kitchen

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drips of blood vegetal

Burned by Shoplifting, One Store Turns to a Higher Power

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Most loss control specialists wear standard rent-a-cop outfits, but notSister Joseph Arimathea and Sister Mary Clarus, who wear the grey, white and black habits of the Precious Blood Sisters.

True Lu

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Lu peeked at his cards again. They were still jacks, and they still looked mighty nice.

Listening to Neil Young on a Gray Day and Understanding Clearly What My Grandfather Told Me Long Ago

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I'm a lot wiser now but so what?

MY WAR

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

Nietzsche

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12 lines

Keep the Peace

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I thought, what are we talking about? Botox?

Framed

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We can apprehend beauty only/ by framing it with the photographic/ paper’s edge or the novel’s margins/ and bookends.

What We Give

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Oh, what jealousy does to us! What love does to the living!

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.