Most read stories

1968: What I Wanted

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Her smile dazzled me from across the room.

Travis & Jared

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“Now I see clearly my whole life is pointed in one direction — there never has been any choice for me (Travis Bickle, "Taxi Driver").

Rubber-Band Requiem

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“Now we lay you in your grave There was no way you could be saved You hate our lord Jesus and he can tell Which is why you will burn in hell.”

A Catalogue of Ways to Die at Sea

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Quimby’s eyes lit up. “Oh, lads, there must be a thousan’ ways to die at sea! I’ve made th’ Atlantic passage a good many time; lemme recount some manners of death I’ve witnessed with mine own eyes.”

CBGB

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Lou Reed was sitting in CBGB, I was sitting on Greenwich Ave. and West 10th street. I didn't know him then and I didn't know him later either, but we were both there.

Dozen

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strung from her window to a tree

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.

North of Center

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Paulette lived on the east side on Paulette Avenue. Mama dropped me off when we wanted to play Barbies. Her neighborhood was a little green lily pad in a swamp of blight and disrepair. A ghetto moat ringed around those three fancy blocks like a first line of defense,…

The Shopkeeper

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“There goes that slut Kerri Stanton,” the immense woman behind the counter chuckled to her patron. “Who the hell does she think she is?”

Fancy That

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Little mercy, ten fingers, ten toes.

Root Causes

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Tour Guide

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“It is not your shoes the Americans complained about!” Roberto yelled, sitting behind his desk, cigar smoke curling around his purple face. “It is your UNDERWEAR!”

Send

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Send me a secret story in a song just for me

Everything You've Got

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I reach into my pocket for my keys and discover the cough drops Iput there a week ago have melted. Now my fingers are sticky. And I don’t have my keys.

Facing Mecca

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I was raised in a big city in the slow South. I know a little about cross cultural dining and where Delta Blues collides with Sly Stone, Al Green, and Zeppelin. Dirty rice in the Dirty South. Fried chicken, collards, and pintos. Fried velveeta…

Wattle and Daub - 3

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Walter met Danial at an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting. They didn't have much in common at first, other than AA, with Walter on the recovery side of treatment and Danial reluctantly just beginning.

Castor and Pollux

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Over the stained fence the spectres flew and that is where the rain was turning colder and colder in the time when the trees had become mostly bare.

Don’t Ask Me to Collaborate

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Except with the language I was born to./ Occasionally, with painters and collagists-// dead now, typically- who can’t voice/ opposition to my misappropriations.

Natural Histories I

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I feel about the universe/ as Abrahamics are supposed/ to feel about their Yahweh, /their God, and their Allah:/ I am in fear, I am in awe, /I am in love.

Sway

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

Robert B. Parker we’ll miss you.

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Summer nights in Boston, old cast iron streetlights.

Human Resources

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Lawrence Light had two degrees: business and theology. I liked the clean font he chose for his resume. At the interview, his face was open. His eyes were bright.

The Hour of the Wolf

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Beneath an opal moon, the open field and wilderness across it look immersed in varying shades of blue. A strong night howler blows across a little girl's face as she walks the field as if in a trance; her whole visage framed against the backdrop of this very act …

Valhalla After Dark

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In traffic I cry bloody murder, but my bloodlust subsides once I'm in Valhalla. Chip Whitehead wants to see me on the 22nd floor before I start my shift. Charlie and the other suits have been looking at me funny since I sent Chip a memo suggesting the recession…

White girl/boy angst

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I’m secretly hoping for a huge bouquet, a fruit basket, a pickle jar of urine in a lunch bag on my doorstep, even.

The Assistant

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The Assistant is lost again in a grid city. Again she feels disconnected from the world. Where she is the sound has been switched off.

The Stars in Illinois

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Only early June, but the heat feels like August. Eleanor and Shelby sit on the front steps of the old Victorian-style house in downtown Los Angeles, drinking homemade margaritas and watching the daylight drain away to dusk. Shelby slaps a mosquito away fr

Key Tone Deficiency

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Beware superfluous color

Shutter

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Background foreground life in the middle

Running

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On the way home, “Friendly honk,” he said.