Most read stories

The Night Shore

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Somniloquies rise like the drowned . . .

Far As You Want

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At a rest stop in Montpelier, they stopped to buy Cokes and gum from the vending machines. He was showing off, trying to jimmy one of the locks with a safety pin but it stayed locked and she laughed at him and he said goddamn, look at all a them Milkyways

The Nude Pianist: A Novel: Chapter 31

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I was always bi-polar. I didn’t realize it was a mental illness until my divorce lawyer had the court order a psychiatric analysis.

What People Do With Their Hands

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I said, “If this rose doesn't grow another petal in twenty minutes, I'm burning down the neighborhood.” “Just let it go,” said Paul. “No,” I said. “That's what's happening right here.” “You'll try again next…

TRAUMA

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Everybody breaks. Everything splinters.

Cheap and Convenient

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Later, when she said she'd had miscarriages, I should have put it all together.

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 …

The Ice Cream Mantra

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Chant the ice cream mantra. Prance the do dah day ballet. Trot the t-bone tango two-step. Dance the livelong day away.

Max & Julia

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I heard the basketball hitting the pavement in the park across the street, right outside our window... I heard it every day in an evenly spaced rhythm, as if it was keeping time, like a metronome on my life...

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,…

Morning People

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she thinks she looks good in her short red dress, black makeup around her eyes, last night's lipstick a slap of crimson on her cheek. "like this," she says, holding the hammer above her head.

everything moved in circles

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everything moved in circles like the music, the booze and the drugs

Full Frame

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A month before the real flowers came, amputated trees for 31 miles were festooned with pink blossoms. The petals were tufts of Fiberglass insulation shorn from houses incapable of withstanding 260-mph winds -- more than twice the punch Katrina delivered t

A Change in Status on the Facebook of Cement

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First he wrote it in wet cement at the intersection: “Tad Loves Kimberley,” with a big heart around it. He was real proud, you could see. But then later on that year, the graffiti began appearing everywhere, on all the store walls: “Kimberle

disparate haiku (mostly)

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faith in gravity/permitted them to extol/the guillotine's blade.

Prophetstown

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The elders of the town will tell you that as soon the prophet mill arrived everything went to Hell. Before the process was streamlined, prophets used to be grown organically in the community. They popped up only where the ground was tilled and a prayer was planted. They…

My Back (Facebook) Pages*

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It's all over now, Baby Blue...

Four Sieges

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Nicole knows that Deirdre is winding up for the weekly pitch, practicing the line in her mind.

Snowed-in March Against the Beautiful Pain Memory of Love, A Ghazal

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Infinite patience, tempered glass hearts—is this what it takes? / Shatterproof backtrack, slow march through reversals—too, what it takes.

Band Names For Sale. Inquire Within

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Mythical Itch and the Unicorns Working Late Jacuzzi Floozy One Erection Diego Rivera’s Poncho Frieda’s Moustache Avalanche Babushka Dolls Photographic Mammary Drool Sir Gruntsalot Uber Rubber Iota Pie Elder Geese Ladylike Rud

A Scalar Boson a Day

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. . . the empiricism of the mechanical had wound tight into her, lessons her few calendars could never impart without aid from sundials, hourglasses, clocks.

Conversations

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That won’t kill me, will it? I asked. Maybe, the doctor said.

The Mix Tape

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I made her a mix tape. It was revolutionary. Twenty-two songs she had to hear at least once in her life. I even drew some trippy drug-like designs on the label of the CD to make it seem more real. It was the ocean and the sun and every body of land balled up…

boring

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You don't want to knowthe details of my lifethe gossipthe boring moments strung togetheracross the lap ofmy sense of responsibilityit drives methrough the daysdoing this and thatchore, check on the listi am tired and need to stop for a drinkand then, i am filled up for a…

Freelance Your Way to Poverty

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Buyers of freelance writing have a well-deserved reputation for responding slowly, thereby increasing your pleasure in much the same way that the Pointer Sisters longed for a slow hand.

Arcana Magi Zero + Pure - c.8

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Megumi paused for a moment, understanding Mrs. Akamatsu’s concern, but looking back at the Society, she shook her head in rejection.

Sisters

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What Did We Fight Over?

Reconstruction

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My favorite lie is that he'd escaped the South Tower before it collapsed. Smoke inhalation erased his way home. Mine's better than mother's version: a stranger hurled herself onto him. The truth is when they stopped search and rescue, mother told father, Go. Even dead, his…

Flamboozled in the Beak

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I was looking for an inn to get a cup of calf soup before jacking ribs at the mutton joint. Feng calls, running numbers on an engine zone out in the valley.

My 27th Great-Grandparents

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Early Spring, 1075, Northumbria: Judith, too ashamed to speak, too angry to cry, waves her handmaiden away. She wants no food. Wind drives icy rain across the thickness of…