Most read stories

After

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The next week, she sends a small white box in the mail / with tissue paper, a ceramic mold the color of bleached bone—

Early Tuesday Morning

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The moon hung in the sky, round and pale, under cover of some wispy clouds.

Impressionist Modern

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I'd never seen a dead person before, let alone one that was living just seconds earlier.

Five Million Yen: Chapter 6

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Sure my man. Show me the token I’ll show you the slice.

she has one of those names that only a southern girl could pull off

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“But I don't HAVE an accent,” she said. With an accent. “Tell him I don't have an accent, y'all.” Looking from one friend to another. Messy ponytail bouncing. I just stared. I may have blinked. A couple times. Every syllable…

The Concord of This Discord

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-Love is a rushing of blood

Egypt is Wisconsin is...

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Regime is elected officials ignoring constituents, ignoring protestors, ignoring history

Rocket

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The rocket shone in the distance. Cape Canaveral had never looked so pretty.

"The Misses Moses," from my collection Aliens in the Prime of Their Lives (Norton 2010)

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The Misses Moses by Brad Watson from Aliens in the Prime of Their Lives The Moses sisters lived together, alone, in the fine old brick house near downtown where they…

Impetuous Daffodils

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...the daffodils will fling/ their yellow petals, taunting winter

Monday

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The door shuts slowly to something that’s allegedly mine and it sits there and waits until I come home just like you.

Cantina

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It's good enough. Spacious. Then the cards but I am not for cards. Sasha directs the people, helping them, at ease and happy even. Strangers that have found a common denominator in games. A brotherhood and sisterhood I can't understand. I watch. I see green…

Greet Death

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where are you now?

Kanha's Dream

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"Look at the grime on those curtains. Not fit for an Emperor. Pull them down. Put up fresh new ones. Not a spot." "Oh! Look at this throne. All uneven legs. The gems are not shining. The gold looks dull. Fix it, fix it, fix it!"

Sausages

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When I cook sausages, I am afraid I will not let them sit in the pan long enough, and they will be pink inside. Then, even if the pigs have been handled humanely, I and the person for whom I've prepared this meal will be at risk for some terrible stomach poisoning.Let's say…

Food & Treasure

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She wakes up with rosemary.

Hip-Hop Elephants of the Golden Palace

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Hello floaty word man / suspended in smoke / chortling coughing with collapsing colon / spraying sounds into the day / making it night and ending the line

Hello and Thank You!

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She didn’t think of herself as an undesirable, no, she didn’t, but did find herself cowering in face of the presumed judgment of those around her. They had more money, more clout, more everything.

more horrid haiku

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a mere forty years/and maybe you become twelve,/maybe sixty-three.

The Search

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“Sixty-seven responses!” Al Edelstein announces at the first meeting of the search committee. It has been just two weeks since Rabbi Feldman dropped dead of a heart attack and just a week since the congregation ran the ad: “Help Wanted: Orthodox Rabbi. Im

The Kept Man

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If the Titanic rises from the bottom of the sea, I will meet you on deck, in a deck chair. Fully dressed for a change.

Rinds

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I miss Mother gentling the small of my back. She has forgotten me. Her little girl. Whose thumb she fussed over when a rose thorn scratched it and blood spilled like a secret. Whose smile she said was her morning sunshine, whose hug was incense. I yearn for her lips…

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

How To Write a Poem

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an EZ How to Guide in 50 simple steps

New in Town

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He had a handsome dial tone, we called him every name but his.

Mumbles

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We bobbed and weaved using our words like the sniffs of two unfamiliar dogs in a Wal-mart parking lot. Wary, but sensing we could be more than just polite neighbors, once we got past the normal darkness of strangers. There was no plot to our story yet, but we both seemed to…

Crazy Later

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A year ago, my neighbor was a sexy graduate student in fashion design, sounds perhaps shabby, yet if it is, then we in the Middle West are all shabby. That girl's father graduated from high school with Bob Dylan in Hibbing, not entitling her to a child.

Morning Sounds

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Morning sounds

Never Trust A Thief

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His looks were polished like his shoes, his hair as black. No one would have guessed he made his living as a thief.

Lost In The City

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They found it naught however as it was lost at metro stops, canceled appointments and in ever dimming light that failed to reflect what was instead of what could have been.