Most read stories

~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…

The Fereigner

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So, I escaped from the Iron Curtain out of Czechoslovakia, as was called then. That was in 1956 I escaped, and came to Chicago where all of you were for some time already. I know our grandparents came over in early part of century, but my part of family

Three Micros

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The earth moves.

Dinner in Mexico

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If he had not just decapitated a chicken, he was a man I could have loved.

The French Revolution

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Judith was a bed wetter. Judith was a first-year college student and she was embarrassed that she wet the bed.

A World of Possible Flowers

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"There are many dark places;but still there is much that is fair, and though in all lands love is now mingled with grief, it grows perhaps the greater."--J.R.R. Tolkien If the love never came you must have been Dragging your feet. If the hatred carved your…

EMDR

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She called it EMDR, which stands for Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing. Basically, it means training a part of your brain to longer associate trauma with a specific side of the brain. This meant that she had to direct all traffic of the repressed memory to a new…

Cogito Zero Sum

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When you encounter a body laying on the road, drive over it.

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.

BABY MOUSE

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BABY MOUSE She and the baby squeeze into the neon blue star-studded rocket ship in front of K-Mart, a tight fit because the baby's still inside her and the ship is made for under ten year olds and the steering wheel dents her stomach and the baby backs up and…

The Rising Tide

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I'm just a rental dog myself looking for the guardian of starlight peeing on the expired parking meters and barking up all the wrong trees.

Of the smokers I’ve kissed

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The man next to me on the Shinkansen from Tokyo to Kyoto makes me think of the smokers I’ve kissed.

Texas Weather

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I know this: the sky is vast here// and the sun unforgiving/ to any architecture not the best

Justice

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“Too dumb to live,” my wife said when cretins on a motorbike blasted around us nearly taking a side mirror with them.

The Adventures of Tequila Kitty: Chapter Two: Confessions of a Crazy Cat Lady - by Aimee Hamel

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He took off his sombrero and playfully placed it on my head. “And really, don’t be upset. You’re fine. There’s nothing wrong with loving your cat.” He was right, there is nothing wrong with loving your cat. But there is something wrong with owning a di

Out of Stardust

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Nor woke, as always, to a dark room smelling of the lavender she kept in little bottles to perfume the otherwise stank air. Outside, she could still see the edge of the moon hanging there like a lopsided smile. The early summer wind blew in and stirred the faded floral…

A Brief, Protracted Reflection

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...Loves and fights and retires; / And dies.

Small Budget Poems

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Toxins make a body happy/ as if acceleration toward// an end of consciousness/ is its own reward.

Indulgence

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I crave the confines of the convent

Workingman

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He died in the ditch he dug.

John Ruskin doing a Swan Dive

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She used her right breast. Lifted it to her chin, aimed at the can, and shoved it down as hard as she could.

Gold Digger

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Sophie hoped that Ryan would just stay in the bathroom and never come out. Her stomach turned just thinking about him, but wealthy nerds were easier to work than wealthy regular guys. No self-esteem, no experience with women…no problem.

trying to be honest but twitter is over capacity

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To be honest, I've always wanted to be black

Ten Dreams That Raised Some Of the Dead

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Dreams will show you a life that might or might not be yours, but you better believe that they've got to serve when you're asked to come up with a story."--Frank Baron, the night he made bail and left town1. First Blood in Dreams Long Ago The…

One of Us

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“We’re starting to get into weather control,” Mark said. “Can you really do that?” Rachel asked, trying to sound supportive and not skeptical. “There are people out on the west coast in Seattle, who’ve been experimenting with it,” Mark said. “Bec

You Can Go Now

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The summer when I was six and my sister Audrey was eight, she'd walk around our house pretending to be in a trance, fingers strategically hovering over my mother's vases and lamps, leaving smudges behind on my father's heavy oak desk and rocking chair. She'd lumber past my…

The Yellow Room

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...the knives she laid out on the porch before her husband left her, washed and dried, set neatly by copper pennies.

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

And the Canon Rap Got Played

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Back in the sixties, I chanced upon a list of books. That’s right. Sifting a black garbage bin, I found the long lost canon. Seizing the moment, I snatched the list, and cradled it in my palms. I felt proud and patriotic for saving such a noble list f

Liquid Sunset

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After work and wine, I Take some red food coloring and empty it Into my bath water. I submerge myself and open my eyes Like looking backwards at the world through A liquid sunset. I push myself under water, squeaking Feet…