Most read stories

Still Strangers.

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I didn’t question any of it and instead sat motionless as she dropped my wrists and walked away seconds later.

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.

Salt

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I imagined the crystals in my mouth. Salt flowers blooming on my tongue.

Forging

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Taken by agents of the United States of America, Felix Six-Killer grows up at the Carlisle Indian School near Philadelphia, the city of brotherly love. His hair is cut and oiled. His shirts are starched and creased. For months he is startled to find himself seated for…

Salt Water

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A horizon shrinks a burden until it’s a seagull getting fat off vinegar fries. I’m in love with the way your mouth moves when you aren’t talking. When it fills with salt.

GONE

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The box thuds at your feet: mug, plant, wedding photo, the 25-year pen.

Archaeological Treasures Yet to Come

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The museum’s catalog description changed much less than the painting over those years. He wasn’t curator-in-chief of catalog descriptions, however, that task went to a curator arriving by another door.

Not If, But When

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She tells me I have to face the fact that I have the heart of the Tin Man. I know the story. He had none. She is very sensitive and I have to measure my remarks because words bruise her so easily. So, I…

One Last Hurrah, #1

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She was about 35 or so and noticeably pregnant. She was near hysteria when she knocked on our apartment door, right across the street in L.A. from a convent. But she took one last desperate wild look at me, standing at the door. I saw the animal in her ey

Waiting

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She saw no sense in waiting. Waiting was a weakness.

The Ex

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In his mind, he could hear Eve’s voice, “We had some good times, didn’t we?”

Grief Has No Welcome Garment

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Twice burned, it buries its graves.

Why We Need To Keep Writing

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We need to keep writing because the great ones aren’t always that great We need to keep writing to insure that the future even has a future We need to keep writing because the wind won’t know how or when to listen if we don’t

Now

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‘Miguel! A pint of Guinness, please!' I might as well have asked for his mother's immortal soul. A smile as benign as a stiletto. But he served a clean and tidy pint.

Puerility

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--So, why are you here?

Low Clouds

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We lay in what we have made, minute fleshy bullets in the target we have made.

Very Short Stories And Pictures Of Ducks

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...the loving and very painful hurt of our daily sustenance

On Socks

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There’s a hole in my sock, just large enough that my big toe keeps slipping out.

My Life As A Series Of Houses (1950-1968)

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There were three other guys on the bus. The landlord (or buslord) let us use the kitchen and bathroom in the house he shared with his wife. I rode into San José City College with the other guys, who were also taking classes there. I remember frigid autum

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…

Sex Tape

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When he suggested to her that they make a sex tape, because that’s what everyone was doing, she wasn’t really surprised. And there was a truly repugnant part of it that fit in with her desire for moral self-flagellation.

it’s a true story

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My only celebrity anecdote involves seeing Barbara Bush in the back of the Presidential limo ...

care & danger

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When Roger was small his two favorite toys were a tiny, squat doll called Care and a rubber millipede.

Do I hear Ten Thousand?

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I cannot begin to list all the ways this conversation can go downhill from here, so I hang up the phone quietly.

Sea Shell

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Useless.

Vienna

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I remember thinking the seasons are arriving later every year, as if the world has been slowed by the weight of graves.

Jonesy's Rhino

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After Jonesy entered the bear habitat, he walked up to the biggest bear in the group and punched it square in the nose. The bear was visibly startled. I mean, bears don’t get punched that often. And there’s a reason: bears are ferocious animals.

March

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Crows etc.

Bad Back

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Sharpie marked, Free Still Works

This Is A Warning

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Walking home, carrying his guitar case, Jed felt the sums of his life adding up to dangerously high numbers, the deadly inertia of vaguely comfortable apathy swallowing his time. His moment would soon be fading. Because, like many young men before him, Jed…