Most read stories

Anniversary Waltz

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He hiked the hills of her condition She biked the path of his delight

Plucked

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I walked to work back then...

Little Women

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

Death

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

Substitute

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He wiped it with a damp cloth. He set it in a glazed clay pot next to the sofa and admired its scrawny handsomeness.

Ages One Through Ten

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Age Eight: Custody battle. Reassure your worried mother that it’s alright, this will give you something interesting to tell your children one day. Until now, life has been very vanilla.

The Great San Francisco Poetry Wars, 14

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I only knew that my heart was not in my life as I was presently living it. I needed the breasts of my Helen in my mouth forever, or I was going to die. Die! Ah, the life of a poet! I couldn’t go on living like this. Why should I go on living like this?

How To Build A Drunken Sandwich

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Kick your employer in the ass. Emotions are strange experiments in honesty.

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…

The Sugar

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To Build a Fire

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One frozen hand protruded from the snow.

Life on TV

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The television volume softens in the shadows.

This is a Tender Ache

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Sit back n enjoy the show in a puffy puffed-up chair

Off the Map

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It's difficult to remember, much less write down, the hard times you thought were unforgettable when you have a full stomach. It's hard to remember that dirty little room you rented in that house, from a Bosnian landlord, on 27th avenue and Missouri. The…

Daddy's Teeth

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At night, I wake up, and Daddy's in the bathroom with a hanger in his mouth....

Crooning

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It was a lover’s dark. They had been talking for hours when daylight lost interest and had gone elsewhere for sport.

Blind

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My mother saw the Devil everywhere, even in my dance teacher, with his black leotards and chest hair like bean sprouts. "You're flamingos," he'd say in class when we balanced on one foot; when we lept into the air, "Now you're panthers!" I pictured him in a dark robe,…

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…

Home Health Care

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But what if it grew into a nasty tea party-ish bimbo right winger -- a little Michelle Bachmann nubbin?

Not Lao-tzu's Magna Carta, lxiv - lxxii

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words have their own ancestors,/deeds are commanded by their own lords./ knowledge and thought do not make me understand—/no surprise, then, that I am not understood.

Out the Window

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she lifted and threw her legs out the open side front window of the speeding auto

The Preservation of Innocence (through Times of Hunger and Doubt)

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Alicia got to third block early and scribbled down some of the derivatives homework. Others trickled in intermittently, drifting to their seats like impurities getting caught in a filter.

Gogol vs. Quixote

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“We all come out from Gogol's 'Overcoat'," said Dostoevsky. Well, sometimes, I think otherwise.

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

Air

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In the gutter, the paper signs turned back to pulp.

Layover Memories

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It was a pleasant time, my thoughts were mostly good ones, with little effort wasted on regret.

The Grave of Rimbaud

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I visited the grave of Rimbaud. / It was pale blue

gravelortian part 9

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Unhook the newsfeed

This Is Why I Write

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I do it for fun

Old Egg

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He must have been pleased with his composition, as he repeated and repeated and repeated it. Paul joined in the song. Then the children at neighboring tables joined too, until the song rose into a dining hall chorus.