Most read stories

13 machines from the Bird King's private collection

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1. The sparrows' heads revolve slowly when you press the red button, but the boxing glove attachments don't work.2. A weird weaving of voices, unmusical harmony. One phrase punctures the texture: “The empty slot.”3. Poems are processed into more useful verbal…

Sway

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It is said that lovers find lips in the dark through secret brain circuitry.

Etienne's Voice

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And suddenly, I have this crazy impulse, so crazy and so puzzling I do not possess enough vocabulary and grammar skills to describe what is invisible and what is visible about it. The reader must excuse me and be attentive.

1994, What I Wanted

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Xanax, A hand gun, And the courage to pull the trigger

Third World Problems: On Breaking My Kindle in Africa

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I blame the fucking mosquito net.

en/core

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(vogued.)

Four Queens

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She rolls up at school with the word MAYHEM marker-penned across her stomach, wrote so big the first and last letters graze each inner thigh bone. She says it's in honour of some rock star I never knew.

A Night at the Opera

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I picked out a book to read on the airplane. The title was The Function of the Orgasm by Wilhelm Reich.

The Man Who Defied Gravity

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Let us be stranded in the Andes and have to eat human flesh or at least toothpaste to survive! Let there be an earthquake! Let there be a flood! Let there be a tornado, a new ice age, an invasion from Mars. Only: let me survive.

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.

Smiles Etched Into Stone

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A section of the baseball field that curved inward was filled with clear water. Birds were dipping their feet and the tips of their wings in. The sun set them apart enhancing the ice-sharp oblivion in their eyes. I swore I heard them say "Marry me.

What Old Tamber Had to Say

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“They say she lives alone out there.” “What, like out in the woods?” “Not like way back in a cabin or anything, but in a little house out there off the road. I'm not even sure she has a car.” “What, does she…

Martini

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She drinks a chocolate martini. I fold myself up and slide into her pocket.

On being offered a seat on the Bart train

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Remember when I entered a room and turned heads is my youthful charm a sputtering fire in the hearth

Parallels

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“I honestly can't believe how much you eat, honey.”, Lenora said as I put down the fork after gorging myself on breakfast. Twelve pancakes, four eggs, two cups of coffee, a glass of milk, and half a pound of bacon had passed through my lips this morning. …

Kidz Love Klezmer

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The clarinet and the accordion are brothers, I see. Big, fat men with curly, klezmer hair.

PARK

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Shadows from a star Never too close Never too far

Here

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I am reintroducing myself.

What's Wrong

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I’ll tell you what’s wrong

The Planet Will Erase Us

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We control/ nothing.

Dithyrambic

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What's that snitch doin' here?

A Brief Conversation With A Man Who Fell Off a Cliff

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I asked him where he hurt and he said everywhere.

The Light After Equinox

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Soon enough, October’s ragged/ lawn will hide its deficiencies// under withered leaves of oak,

Hoop Dreams, Harvard Style

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“You have no idea what your lives will be like if you can get out of the ‘hood. You could be driving Volvos, eating Tuscan cuisine, getting MacArthur ‘genius’ grants!”

The Diaphragm

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They had a deal, she reminded him. If he didn’t want to wear a condom all the time, he’d have to help with her birth control.

Someone for Everyone Parts 1-10: A work in progress

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“Well, aren’t you the cutest thing?” Shelly looked around for the source of the line and one of the better looking bar flies met her gaze. He wore a faded t-shirt with a swoosh graphic that read ‘Just Do Me‘. True to its mystical nature, her indefatigabl

Family

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For instance, my sister's husband. If I say brown socks, yellow boxer shorts, fishnet undershirt. If I say plastic bag and two tepid beers. And a voice that glides to falsetto when he: you're a tad too obscene for my taste, Julia, while he tries to light the filter end of…

6.0 in Eureka

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"Shit," said the Charge Nurse. "Not again."

The Grinder

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"For several days thinking they had found a dead man’s boot beside the highway..."

taking work home with you

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the sound of ashes/ being poured in the kitchen