Most read stories

Howie Mandel

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We love the sparkling, speckless, spotless, spic-n-span, sanitary.

Godfrey part 2: Marjory's bag

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"when I say bag, what I mean to say is…"

Life on TV

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The television volume softens in the shadows.

The Paranoia Experiment

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I know this is going to sound crazy, possibly because it is crazy, but still, please hear me out. I'm a relatively sane person. Sane as any of you, or I was. Just, what I'm saying is that anything that happened to me could happen to you, and you might do the same things I…

Time Passed to Time Present

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Four Quartets is a slender book which/ can be read with intensity in its entirety

Like Worship

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The bartender keeps asking what you smell and you say: lemons, oak, and pear. I smell lust. We move to the reds. Pinot Noir. Cabernet Sauvignon. Port.

Linear Critic

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8) An exercise online calls for the first sentence on page 45 of the book nearest you as a suggested description of your love life. The book 9) nearest me still is _The Quarterly_, 1, spring 1987, that I have on my desk in preparing to write an essay.

Thunder Snow

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A farm girl raised on fresh eggs and weather forecasts...

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…

The Sugar

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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.

Regarding Viet Nam

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At some point, my lottery number/ was in the mid 300s. I was safe/ for whatever reason. No need/ to burn my draft card.

The Secret

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It was always your body that told so much -- lips working some secret out

Bibliophagy

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he knows that his wife knows. she can smell the adverbs on his tongue in the mornings. but he cannot get through another evening in that house without consonants.

The Street Of God Knows What & Other Stories

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One night he woke up with Underdog laying next to him, breathing softly. He marveled at how fiction could make reality so much better.

Sounding

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Grey would rather be in the trees or down by the river. When a wind comes up, he grabs the wooly blanket from the hook in the barn and calls Phoebe. They stretch the blanket out between them and sail into the grassy meadow that slopes down the hill from t

Watching

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An anorexic middle-aged woman walked up and watched me..

~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…

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

Robert, The Architect

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Robert Townsend had planned his suicide for ten years, and on July 10th, 2010 he took a long, hot shower to set the mood.

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…

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.

Gemini

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Not many people like Geminis.

December Can Feel Like April Here

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Today the isobars are far apart.

Eggshell White Frigidaire

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He ran for home, screaming for help in the silent ravine.

Truth Or Consequence

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Mass media thought control, from consumer advertising to political sloganeering, is creating a new generation of irrational thinkers. If this trend continues, one day soon we may find ourselves under the control of some genius gone haywire.

Vera's Nemesis

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The dog was there before Vera was there, so she supposed she couldn't hate it too much. It wasn't like she had to live with the thing, either, though she might as well have hosted it in her ear for the eight months it took that particular batch of neighbo

Proud Military Wife

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Back when they were younger, David was always gushing about every little thing in his head, and his openness appealed to her as much as his muscular frame did. But after that year they spent apart, he was always ... smiling. Smiling and vague.

Genesis Serpent’s Skin Found

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This may be too religious for you, as at first it was so with me. But I assure you, on my scholarly integrity, I have found the Genesis Serpent’s skin! Yes, that Genesis Serpent--though just a leftover piece of him,

The Grave of Rimbaud

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