Most read stories

Wintering

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Winter makes me reconsider.

A Skeptic’s Faith in Four Parts

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The universe will fuck you over in the end./ That’s what it does, what it’s good at—

People Who Go to Poems for Truth

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People Who Go to Poems for Truth

Creative Handwriting

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I found the hand eight months ago, after I planned to grow a meadow of tiny yellow blossoms in my yard.

Ransom

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The Snowman grinned malevolently as the Sugar Plum fairies shook in their tiny powdered boots."Santa has one more hour and then you're all marshmallow toasts!" the Snowman said. He laughed and he laughed. His evil plan? He wanted the key to time delivered to him personally…

Milk

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When he smashed his plate in my lap, the dog hung around, licking my wrist and hoping that he would get some milk, too. With my luck, he'd jump in the pool, getting grass clippings all over the edge. My nails were sharp that day, I had to cut them, and I did while…

The Interview

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What follows is an interview George Bush gave to Barbara Walters in 2006. He came off like something out of a swamp. Dick Cheney made them deep-six the tapes and we never saw it on prime time. I got the transcript, however,…

My 50th birthday

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A customary phone call from home. What are you doing she says? Playing football I retort – what else. The usual sigh and a faint giggle followed. Much unlike how it backfired back in the late 20’s and we were going to make it the reason to break up! The p

Candle Illumination

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Mint upon my palate, I rub sleep infused eyes and crawl under the covers. Oh blessed sleep, please descend upon this body and transverse this fatigue. Eyes closed, bring a wavering blackness upon subtle lids. The conversation begins…

Everything Has Been Arranged (or, Chamomile Tea at Ten Thousand Feet)

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The building ejects my condominium like an enormous videocassette.

It Isn’t Personal. It’s Business

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because you pay/ for it to matter to me.

The girl laughing in the dictionary.

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Trigger Warning.

War Then

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They were just boys, the Nazis I mean, young in their twenties, not much older than my brother Cyril.

The Glass

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Not only half-full/ but stress-fractured

Assessing Beauty

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We can’t be sure. Perhaps it is/ some slight exaggeration of one/ or several elements that steals our breath.

Poem: Admonition

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"Why, before the summer has passed You won’t remember her name. . ."

Souvenirs

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It is a hot August night — the same kind you remember from that summer after high school graduation. A cool breeze blows in off the ocean, sweeping across the boardwalk just hard enough to dry the …

Road to Nowhere

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I could smell a bold combination of cheap perfume, stale smoke, and sex excreting from her weathered pores. The bus engine hummed as we climbed a winding road. She scratched her neck and tried to finger comb through her knotted hair. I caught a glimpse of

Fear in a Handful of Dust

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I fear my personal information travels the World Wide Web/ and mad Ukrainians will steal my name and wealth./ I fear the fiscal cliff and raising the ceiling on national debt./ I fear a death by taxes.

Sand Dollars

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“Life is on life’s terms,” she told me once. Her arm, wrapped in clear cellophane, was freshly adorned with a green-pigmented sand-dollar: a living shell.

Some Assembly but No Singularity Required

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The phone rings. The oven beeps./ The locomotive whistles and howls.

PERSUASION

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A story about convincing people to do things they don't want to do, written entirely in dialogue; originally published by CHEAP POP.

When again?

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will we begin again?We are a wheelFirst touchfirst kissfirst heatThey fade, disappear, come back again.Spokes in our wheel.When again shall we begin again?I hold you and feel myself spincaught in the whirlwind of thrill -the world, saturated with your scent.We hold each…

The Unlucky Thirteen

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They were working on the factory floor when they died, the auspices of mayhem filtering out to a host of ravens gleaning the neighboring fields. Clouds of them fled the scene around the time of the incident turning the day into twilight…

The Ogontz Branch

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There are stories I will not tell, stories I shudder / to remember. You'll forgive me for withholding them from you. / You may, of course, not tell me everything about yourself either

Leather and Something Like Infidelity

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Part of me feels like a wounded animal surrounded by hungry cougars. Another part of me feels like being mauled by a cougar might not be that bad. A third part of me wishes he could punch the second part of me in the face.

6.0 in Eureka

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

The Suicidal Juggler

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The man wore a bowler hat and stood on an open patch of grass, with a pyramid-shaped stack of baseballs at his feet.

The Taste in My Mouth

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whose spit is this?

Gaza Suite

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Tender bodies sizzle on the grill.