Most read stories

Portrait of a Sunday Afternoon

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Your grandmother has gotten old, in that way where one day you wake up, and you realize that someone you've been looking at your whole life suddenly looks different. That hands which used to gently place band-aids on scraped knees are…

At the Fair

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You're on the Ferris wheel, and the wind is blowing just a little bit, and the sky is invisible behind a wash of white clouds, and your little yellow box tips when you look down, down to the fairway swinging. In the boxes below grandmothers are shrieking …

Life Apart

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Practice has perfected disengagement.

Merry-Go-Round

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I thought the Ferris wheel was dumb. All it did was give you a high altitude view of the little Minnesota town where I had grown up.

Assiduity Four

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Her clothing style varies from grunge to glamor and . . . she always looks good.

Things You Probably Should Know About New York City

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It is a misdemeanor to fart in NYC churches. In 1857, toilet paper was invented by a man living in NYC. No one knows how long it took for the idea to fan out from there. God only knows why it took so long, or why NYC was at the epicenter of it all

Victoria Gate

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Maybe she was crying before she got on the coach at Marble Arch, settled in the seat across from me, but by the time we reach Victoria Gate, tears stream down her face, mouth open to receive her own sacrament.Indian, ageless in tasteful floral, a blue sweater despite summer…

From The Chronicles of His Demise

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I am not the wind./ I am a stone eroded by the wind

All is Ready

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All is Ready I have bathed in patchouli oil and my hair gleams, lustrous with brushing. I am wearing my gold ankle bracelets with the ruby charms that my love gave me when we had been married one year. My robe is fuschia silk and under it I wear…

Smart Bar

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Everything is painted black that isn’t glass, velvet, neon, or chrome. The club is cold, and the DJ who broke-up with me while I forgot I was stoned is spinning his favorites to an empty floor. Endings have a rhythm. I heard this one coming. I can hear it

Confederates

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I knew I spoke out of turn when I asked my father's old friend Charlie Jobe what he thought would come of moving to the veterans' camp, or "Village of the Deranged", as the newspaper has since taken to calling it. That was their description after all the

sunday morning lie-in

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i'm staying down here

Stillness

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You were sitting on dark leather meringue, wearing slit ivy, epilated thighs sliding through, roots showing beneath your anaemic skin, fighting with the pale bluegreen of your veins. Quills extended from your left hand, bent about 10.2 degrees or so.

That's all, folks...

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I’m supposed to be writing poems but it’s Saturday morning and I’m watching cartoons.

One of Four

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She stood with her sisters, pretty maids in a row, felt cold despite the scorching spring sun. Heard what the man said but didn’t register; words from the Lord flew around her like the flighty trill of the robins up above. The birds made more sense.

Song of Another Country

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And she warms her hands on fresh-cut gizzards, And he forgets the taste of honeyed peaches

Volume

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Something reached into Avi and took his voice, turning his volume to zero.... A short story of one day. A man going to work, a little magic, a car crash, and a wedding.

Sewing the Labyrinth

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If girls have keys for fingers then locks cannot hold them.

gravelortian part 9

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Unhook the newsfeed

Low Tide

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Her whole life was lived between high tide and low tide, moments of giggling grandeur and moments of sheer emptiness.

Truth

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…assume...

Lost

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I can't find my way back to the library. I've heard of this happening, that if you leave even for just one day and for a very good reason, as good a reason as mine, you may not find your way back. Now why should this be so? I do not understand this library. It houses…

Three

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Revocable Love It was easy lying there with My head on her left breast Listening to the strong Business-like beating of Her heart. She looked down and said Quietly, I told you my love Was revocable. I give it To many men and then I take It back. …

Haiku for the Worried

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Real life escapes you.

Cleavage Cont.

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"My tits, " she instructed "aren't for public consumption".Everything was actually muffled and my ears began to bleed because of how progressively louder the thumping was in the center of my chest. Stacy decided to emphasize her point of disliking the objectification…

Concubine on the Ginza Line

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so I tighten hands with my castaway and say/you failed to impress in your folded peacock dress

Big Heater

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they got some heat here in the West

River Run

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yearning amid the waning

Full

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The trash is full. Again. I open the bathroom trash—because the diaper genie is stuffed—but there’s no room. I try the kitchen next. The lid swings open, catapulting carrot shavings onto the floor. I lay the diaper on the counter for later.

Night & Day

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It was oddly quiet, and the air had a strangely urgent quality. The sun came out, and water on the leaves and branches turned oaks and aspens into Christmas trees.