Most read stories

In the wee small hours

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If you're in an airport in the predawn hours, you are by definition a failure. You failed to make your flight; the airline gave you motel money but you're hoarding it

Bukowski

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that guy/ MOSTLY understood / endings

Why I like My Watches Analog

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watch/ the second hand sweep

Sweden 1958, I-IV

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didn't know how to do it just tried to squeeze on the teats didn't know I had to grab up on the udder and pull Unca Ole laughed

Librarians Love Me!

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Librarians love me, you want to know why? I don’t dog-ear pages, I don’t even try.

River Run

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yearning amid the waning

A Brief, Protracted Reflection

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

Fidelity

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The night before leaving, we have French toast and red wine in Matthew's kitchen, our packs and sleeping bags and tents surrounding us, looming like golems. Because we're nervous, and a little drunk, the conversation inevitably turns to grammar. "I'm sure I learned…

A Diminishing Verse on Diminishing Returns

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My banker said, "We've millions we can spare,

For Better or Worse

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I married a penguin. Her waddle made for a scenic view.

Squirm

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“We should start a virgins' support group,” said Cindi one autumn afternoon. We were sitting in the bay window of the Campus Coffee Cavern ...

Dad and the Red Light

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The light turns green.

Bones of the Amazon, Part I of a Novella

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Lulu Petite was sitting in a lounge chair by the side of the pool when she heard the man splash into the water, almost unnoticed by the guests milling around the backyard of the palatial estate. Everybody, seemingly, was involved in a balancing act of one

Republican Presidential Candidates Haiku

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If they were drowning,

Walking To Gibraltar, Chapter 16: In Which Frank Learns Six Lessons

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He can't breathe can't breathe can't breathe turns the handle can't breathe falls onto the front porch gasping in the cold night air. And Dad is lying on the smoldering carpet in the parlor. And all the kids are upstairs. And he swallows the air. And ever

Where's My Phreakin' Nobel Prize in Physics?

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Where I went to college, you couldn’t swing a dead cat in a physics lab without hitting a Nobel laureate. I know–we tried. They finally made us stop–it wasn’t fair to the cat.

Notes from Matrimony, # 9

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I arrived Sunday evening to a darkened house. Everything unplugged. Even the fuses from the breaker. Meticulous, this undoing. Silence has a sound. Cold has a voice, a pearly cigarette whisper. It says, “Metaphor?”

Sonnet for a Unicorn

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My sweet baby angel has baby hair Baby angel has a golden cross lit looking at the crystal pig and kind mare The drowning unicorn comes from the waves in fits. My sweet baby angel has baby talkBaby angel has a diamond shape scarburied heart shaped…

Superlative Land

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You are walking through a canyon made of shelving units lined with colorful masterpieces of three-dimensional minimalist design

Living Through Fuzzy

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They politely urged him not to get too involved with his creations.

Buttermilk

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I brimmed with sexual energy and it flowed about me like a buttermilk, silk robe. Rich and thick, musk-laden and fortified with my own particular brand of woman.

Real

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That was the start of it, the vigils. Every night at the foot of the Gilt Spears a group of people congregated in a housing estate to look up at the stars. Housewives with working away husbands, fractious toddlers hanging upside down…

Tia Alvarez

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Penny followed the woman into the warm, dark interior of her home, which smelled strongly of cumin and other familiar spices she couldn’t name. Penny noted that the tia’s hair had turned almost completely white and had grown very long since Penny had last

The Clarity of Loss

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This year I did not markthe day of your death.I let it slip by in an afternoonfilled with music you'll never hear,words you'll never read,a chorus of voices raised in protestat the unwavering passage of time.I don't need a numberto know that you are gone.Since you went…

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.

The Jig is up

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The next time I woke up there were several guns pointed at me. I opened my eyes to see my mom and dad watching as the local cops arrested me.

3 short poems (2)

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Clear as my conscience may be, you still haunt me as the brown settles to black sit there and recommence as if nothing had ever happened, your hands conducting the orchestra of your purity.

Absence

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Her mouth was sour; her forehead was still damp with perspiration. She leaned against the bathroom wall and noted her complexion had gone pale. She wanted to slide down the wall and rest until she felt steadier, but…

A Small Life in Slices

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It’s Sunday- no need to shave-/ but shave, I do. A little act// of discipline in the discipline/ of routine.

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…