Most read stories

Thoughts Recorded By My Wife and Sister Three Days After I Emerged From a Coma (Loaded on Dilaudid)

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Bake sweet rolls and make love to your new wife, fall asleep for three years and grow a beard.

The Sleep of Trees (Three Parables), part 3

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in a puddle of water, the butterfly rests on a stone

Haiku Haiku, Fattened Feral Kittens, Hobgoblin Test

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and watch the bird play and squirrel play/ and the twitching of cottontail noses

Daily Bread

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A little poem about prison

Hypnagogia

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The figure eight will fall on its side. Become infinity.

1053

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She pulled into the doorway. Uncertain where to spend the night. Certain there'd once been a place with food. Here. This place. She remembered. Curtains. Small tables. Coffee cups thick-handled and sturdy. Crockery. Some words came back.

The Opposite of Remember is Demember

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No matter how you do it, forgetting something doesn’t mean as much once you’ve forgotten.

Heart

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Usually I’m the only guy in a roomful of women. Some of them are foxy, too.

Wolflet

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She wanted wolf cubs. Not kittens, not husky pups given as infant gifts with red bows around their scraggy necks. No, she wanted wolf cubs. Even when it grew to pace the length of her hallway - proud as men - she could not love it. …

The Puppet Maker

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My sister Janis called me from Berlin and said to turn on the news. You could see the thick flurries of snow that were falling there and the flat feathers of peoples' breaths issuing from their mouths as they took turns swinging pick-axes, standing on top

Combinatorics

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“I'm thinking about math class,” she said. “The solution to three factorial.” “Easy,” Leo said.

That's It

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I am heading to work. It's early and Clare is still asleep. When I hit the breezeway I realize that I forgot my keys. I walk back into the house and start rustling through the junk on the table by the door. After a moment I sense someone standing behind me and…

Bigfoot Walks into a Bar

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Some claimed seeing him that first time in the grocery store staring in at the pints of Haagen-Dazs, his breath fogging the glass as his head rested against the heavy freezer doors, stinking in his Sasquatch suit. The second time he was…

Strange Disconnect

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The next time I see you, I’m going to pretend you’re a stranger, and that I’m meeting you for the first time.

The Baptism of David Swimmer

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The church pews were straining at the crowds who had come to see David get saved. There was no salvation in the water really, but the Baptists preached the gospel of immersion. There was a certain Baptist church in Kentucky that pressured a man who'd been sprinkled to get…

The Birth of Roget’s Thesaurus

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“Imagine a Shakespearean scholar coming upon an undiscovered work by the Bard. That’s how thrilling this is."

The Coach

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We sat in the weight room. The coach walked in with his clipboard and stood until we were quiet.

Pull Another String

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Now as my fearful hand goes unwittingly up I search the faraway trees for the closest possible answer I know I don't know. The clever waiting beast is looking my way with an intelligent roving eye that says he likes to hit. It doesn't matter. You're worse…

Processes

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How to Boil Water How to Cook an Egg How to Eat How to Think How to Love How to Die

Weight

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We flew./ In my dreams, I can fly.

Tethered Lashes

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Corina's skin is a circus tent. Her red-striped peppermint scars are a reminder of Christmas and family traditions. The obedient poodles of her childhood dreams jumped through hoops of fire until they became bald and grotesque. Poor dears, now, they no longer yap. They…

Five Million Yen: Chapter 72

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Ben considered his options in the taxi to Charles De Gaulle airport.

Monster

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My sister, Bonnie, is busy with the dishes as I enter the kitchen; I toss the mail I was sorting through onto the table and look around for Sophie, my four-year-old daughter. "Bonnie, isn't she ready…

Upon Reading a Book

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O' madam, betwixt the pages A story professed to love A wonder of descriptive prose Delights read enraptured “My favorite book”, so you said O' madam, your heroine is flawed Wounding herself beyond measure And those she swears she…

Eyes Without a Face

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It's tough when muscle gets in the way of memory. The way pain is the only thing I can remember about certain things. Fifth grade, that's what I think of. I think of pain. Not just abstract pain, not some we'll get to it later adolescent angst or ennui.…

The Jaws of Life

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You’ve known her since grade school and even though you’ve never copped a feel, it gave you a strange chill when you heard boys talking about her breasts, pressing against madras or chamois with some devilish life force, or how one day she’ll fuck l

The Day Nixon Died

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"I remember thinking, 'Good.'

Bash

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Luke was in the gutter, his face in stagnant water littered with cigarette butts, condom wrappers, and green shards of glass from broken beer bottles. A man was kicking him in the face with a boot the size of a U-boat, over and over and over again. Blood

A Killing in the Market

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Everyone hoped to be assigned somewhere they could just drop in on their way home for Memorial Day weekend. Someone said, Blake, you’re single. You hate your family, don’t you?

Horizon

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She liked talking to him, even now, when they’d spent three years talking. She thought about other conversations with other men at other bars, some of the bars on the water and some of them tucked behind shopping centers or off of different h