Most read stories

1994, What I Wanted

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

How Would Jesus Drive?

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Contemporary persecution of Christians takes on milder forms of torture like having to explain away something Pat Robertson said, or constantly having to hear about Fred Phelps picketing funerals because he happens to hate homosexuals.

How it all started

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I heard this story from my grandmother who heard it from her grandmother who heard it from an uncle, who was a monkey.

For My Sons, a Poem

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In time, I will forgethow he said "smooshie" for "smoothie"and "eyebrowns" for "eyebrows,"how his upper lip dimpled when he laughedin that uproarious, wild toddler way.How he wheedled to be wrapped and rocked,after a bath, even at age five,his long calves uncovered by…

Divorcing Delia

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I held her hand through two divorces, I warned her that gorgeous Geoffrey was homosexual when she was oblivious, and I fed her children when she was off at rehab (four times before it 'took').

a chat between Li Bai and Du Fu

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graves left or graves lost, into silence death sinks:/it's leaving the living that leaves us such pain.

Ilex Cahokia and A Common Piece

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remembering Cahokia, a place we rent near the water's edge, for we dare not enter

'MY DICK IS SO HARD FOR JESUS!' by Christofascist Jones

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"Now, I'm not no Holocaust Denier . . . I just think it was a little bump in the road! Like Reagan said about Watergate . . . 'Mistakes were made,' and all. Well, shoot . . .…

Larry's "Gonna Die" Parrtayye

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When we started plans for the party, none of us wanted Larry to die, most of all Larry himself. Actually, when we first started plans for the party, Larry wasn’t dying.

Yellow Dining Room (from The New Yorker)

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...you should pick a VERY OLD millionaire. Very old, and NOT VERY WELL...

I Am Speckles the Clown

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Food is silly. Eating is silly. Yet the camaraderie of sharing a table is not silly. It is sacred. It becomes silly when the jello arrives.

The Shadow People

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Two summers later, the ritual began. Carol left her house at midnight, having served her husband and daughter a heavy dinner that left them caged in their sleep. She was like a thief working in reverse: she rose from bed with her husband’s first snore,

Under The Tree

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There were echoes all around them, their shadows delirious and only existed in short spurts under the breath of the streetlights. They danced as their cigarettes leaked calligraphy across the night sky and she tried to trace it with her finger. He asked her what it said…

Mississippi

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“I won't live here,” Beth said, waving her hand to indicate the small Southern town in which they were having dinner—the most delicious fried chicken either of them had ever tasted—in a restaurant located in an antebellum mansion. She looked…

Liking in "The Scarlet Letter"

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like the dome of an immense lamp like blades of grass at the sweep of the scythe like a line of cliffs against a tempestuous tide

Hobby Lobby

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In human rights, a man and a woman may marry and bring forth a family. It is a civil right in the U.S. but not a human right (as far as I know) to raise a child singly without the knowledge of the other parent.

Voyeur

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Morning's first blush, their world in repose. Sated, drained, spent; …

Boomer Tunes Pop Quiz

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If you're a Boomer, your brain is teaming with decades-old Pop tunes that you just can't forget. The real reason you can never remember where you put your keys? Too many of your brain cells are clinging to every last lyric to “Fire and Rain,” “Free…

A Paper that Changes Things

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The dowdy woman in fart nailed the vim.

Thanksgiving

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When our kids were very young, my wife and I believed it was important to give our children traditions that they could grow up with. One such tradition that we shared each Thanksgiving was to walk down by the cliffs along the ocean. We'd all go, our kids…

Meadows

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The whole thing is broken. It's like an egg. I'm not saying this to get you to say something else in the sunny opposite direction of the tattooed scar upon my painted backyard scene. I don't really care. It's only on me. Not on you. I'm glad as…

SNOW ANGEL

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I do this when I think of you. Today we took the first steps towards you're never here.

you're a james now. here's what to expect:

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fetal position can make a man seem small. harmless. like the child your womb won't carry...

The Need To Tell Somebody

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He just had to tell somebody. Anybody. So he called up his publisher, L., who agreed to meet him at Oliveira’s for a drink. It only took about ten minutes to walk there from his big duplex in the Elmwood, where he was still living with his wife among

HOUSE OF DREAMS

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Something was changing. We could sense it in the circling air. A loss of stillness - and we'd been still for so long.

Six Tiny Memories

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I took a lover on Ibiza either because he was clean-smelling or because he had a hotel room and there were none to be had.

My wife denies being my older self.

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What are you, my judge?

Mountains

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A Little Load of Paint

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Cézanne sags during a moment of paint. There is an umbrella in the room whose surface collects his thoughts. Outside, in the rain, the grass and garden smell strongly of spring. Fruit litters the table. Light through the window writhes in conversation with shape and…

Assiduity Six

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"Every generation is a new generation, isn't it? What's so different about your generation?"