Most read stories

Texas Weather

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

Zeus Takes a Day Job

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That's demeaning enough, but not as hard to take as the customers. They're all jaded hipsters, thumb diddling smartphone freaks, pretending their online interactions actually count as relationships and that “tweets” are real conversations. It's sad, reall

Moon Over the Downs - excerpt

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Each drip off the corrugated plastic sheeting made a tinny sound that he could hear from deep within the damp sleeping bag and layers of blankets where he was trying to sleep.

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.

LATE NIGHT WITH MANDELBROT

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On Soapography, two actresses are discussing everyone’s personal heaven, and in another room you can hear a woman who is your dead mother combing her hair in a doctor’s smock in a dream,

The Shadow

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"Did I have a dream, or did the dream have me?" - Rush, "Nocturne"

Waiting for the Voice on the Line

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hoping for a happy outcome/ like a kindly voice on the line

Words of Departure

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Not a fuss, not a stink, The eulogy, deep, will make one think, Grandmother, sat in back, will wink

River Run

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yearning amid the waning

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…

the swan drives a car

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the swan drives a car ( window down; wing half hanging out ) …

A Brief, Protracted Reflection

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

Pretending Veracity, History Winks

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Mosaics are a trick of the eye, seeming

Out the Window

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

Fertile Ground

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Miriam forced herself to focus on the kitchen door and on putting one foot in front of the other. “Is everything alright?” she heard Ada ask the family. “Of course, everything is fine,” the woman said. “What could be wrong other than the impossible serv

In The Kitchen

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drips of blood vegetal

Landing

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She’s witnessed her mother’s terror on the day of the hurricane, and she demanded for the first time in her life that her mother do something her mother did not want to do.

We call them the Removal Men

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They came early and parked up, under cover of the night and the giant oak. I only know this because people told me afterwards. Watching us, they were. It was six o'clock before they smashed their way in, scaring the three of us out of our wits. Baby Billy screamed the place…

the cold the day left

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in our teens as tough as the cold/we wore denim and flannel with our boots/kicking at whichever wind blew . . .

Rowdy

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Flash’s hackles stood brushlike but he kept his head bowed just enough beneath the bigger dog’s stare to delay the inevitable fight. Flash, Mal thought approvingly, would pick the time and place.

Light Eyes

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Once, when he had been married for a year, she sent him a card which said, "If you have seen a cat smoke a pipe, you have got it made." There was an illustration of a big, black panther, standing up on its hind legs, smoking what looked like a big tub of

Black Bombers

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The missions never change:/ To plant a bed of fast-blooming/ Flowers of annihilation/ Across an unspecific plain.

Cogito Zero Sum

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

Read Me

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I won’t be eating much anyway if someone doesn’t start reading me. I’ve got to get a hook so people will be drawn to my work. I’ve got a few concepts I’d like to share with you. See what you think.

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.

Temporary Housing

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My cats are my world and more. They are rotund, little indoor-girl cats, though, who were taken from their mother too early to learn things like hunting and properly washing their privates, and so they think the mouse is just another interesting thing to

Birdhouses

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That year, if you asked Al, was truly the best of times, the worst of times.

Employee Review

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Resting bitch face strikes again.

Ghosts

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...ghosts still resentful, ghosts far from home...

The Nude Pianist: A Novel: Chapter 5

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When the cab dropped Frank at his address at seven that evening, he noticed the lights were on in Michiko’s apartment.