Most read stories

May the Glad Inherit

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All creatures know death at their very core, a tacit default--

Paying for Dinner at a French Restaurant So You Will Love Me

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What does she have / that I don’t have / that I can’t buy / for myself?

A DEBT

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A rose and two dollars. Where did they come from? I didn't know anyone who had visited my parents' grave recently, yet that evening I saw a white rose on my mother's side and two bucks on my father's. I took the money and placed my own flowers with the rose. It had to have…

~the scent of dead roses~

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i killed a poetic boy yesterday. the old ladies in theshadows swore at him when he was walking home proud ashell with a new pocketknife. they told him we dienext week so laugh like you got limes for balls. hecalled them drippy old vultures in his native tongue.they didn't…

Lizard (Valentine's Day Massacre)

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I travel over your body with small feet, reach your heart.

Biography of a Splotch in a Parking Lot

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She hadn’t died. She wasn’t a ghost. She wasn’t even invisible. She just wasn’t see-able.

The Edge of Night

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The night wrapped its arms around us as we drove west, taking the highway past Medford towards Philly. The kids were asleep in the backseat and we were both counting the mile markers, staring out the windows with quiet eyes. I listened to the drone of the…

If You Have to Have an Ism

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This is a lady who never got a break.

the ethics of graffiti

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The Case of the Phantom Paperclip

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I was sitting on the steps in the entryway to our apartment building taking off my running shoes when I spotted a paperclip on the floor. I assumed it had fallen from the mail that my wife had just taken from our mailbox. Once my shoes were removed, I went down to pick…

Bosch's Last Words

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I / go my / way alone

Grief Has No Welcome Garment

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Twice burned, it buries its graves.

Toweka: The Vanishing Elephant

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The elephant kept popping in and out of the savannah--which is to say, in and out of existence. It was an African bush elephant, which made this trick even more impressive.

A Poet in a Coffeeshop in the Motherfucking Nineties

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Look at her. She doesn't want to be here. The kiss and “wouldn't miss it for the world” was as empty as her crossed arms, crossed legs, and jittery foot were loaded. She attacked the foam of her latte with a tiny red straw. I wanted to scream. Complain about the…

Struggle Has Ended

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Shh! What? The downstairs neighbors. They’re at it again. What? It’s the weekend? They’re both home? Oh. Remember? I think so. Sort of. Shh! What’s that grunting? He must be doing the heavy lifting. Sounds like he’s hurt

The Backseat

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I always sat in the backseat of the Dodge when my Dad drove, never in the front seat beside him. It was safer there when he ran over the dogs that wandered onto the road.

Between

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You are a space-walker and a time-traveler...

The Tapeworm of Selfish Mammon Eats All the Good Will in the World

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She caretakes, he takes care

All Seeing

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Our Core Values define evil as the concealment of information. And those who conceal information are evil.

A Dull Roar

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The other night while we stood in the kitchen locked in each other's stone silence, he finally said, “You're waiting for something to get you to the other side of grief. But there's no such thing.”

Black Eyes, Blue Tears, and Dark Thoughts

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At five a family relative took my life away from me and no one cared

Sunrises and Borrowed Pages

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I'm sitting on the B-line toward Park, and there is a woman with the same black bob as Mad TV's Miss Swan, and she is leaning the whole front of her body against the whole pole in front of me, and even though there is plenty of space around her, she is pressed up…

Little Women

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The place is buzzing with little women, all clad in black smocks.

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.

Baking Bread

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the champagne foam cascades like cherry blossom ensnared in the first gales of spring

The Power of Bad Words

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Her skirt is so short, said the teenage girls to each other. I was 7 years old. I said: she looks like a slut. They laughed; I blushed. Later, the slut smiled at me. I tried to find the teenage girls but they were gone. I wanted to say: it's actually a pair of…

Children's Time

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During what's called "Children's time," one day at church Sarah slides her left foot halfway out of her tiny ballet slipper to show Davie her toenails are painted the same soft pink as the inside of her shoe. "Look," she says. "My…

The Butterfly Effect

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Now it turns out, the story doesn’t begin with the butterfly lady, herself, but with her brother.

For the Woman Who Has a Hundred

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“What would you get? What should you give a lady who’s one hundred for her birthday?”

Why Things Are Just OK with Me

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With such demeaning precarity, I can’t read/ anything more than a thousand words