Most read stories

The Nude Pianist: A Novel: Chapter 40

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—Mazel tov, schmazel tov!

The Street Singer

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The Street singer gathers up his coins and counts to a hundred before The last string stops vibrating

The Code of Hammurabi

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We pull up chairs. I breathe in her Bath and Body Works vanilla, read her paper slowly and aloud because the ears catch what the eyes miss. Her sentences are awkward, stilted.

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…

The Infinte Wheel

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Scientists have discovered what I already did once on dope way back in the Sixties. There are so many other earths out there that they are almost infinite. Now in our other lives we have to shuttle from planet to planet reading our poems. And

The Trapper Boy at Work, One Mile Underground

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The coal carts come and go like the seasons, never stopping.

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

Dog Years

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Already my back aches

Rent a DNA

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“Yo, Paciorek. Lend me your DNA, cuz I left mine on the farm, and I have a test tomorrow,” Feller ordered in a commanding voice, because he had gumption.

On a Count of the Stars

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The number is very large/ and perpetually changes// as old stars fade, explode,/ or collapse into something not stars

Thumb

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I’m trying to get this said, this piece of fact. If I am a person who can own something, then that something that I own is not me, not me as a person. I do not own my foot, my foot is my own. It’s like a whatsit, a semantic distinction I’m trying to

Anonymous Hackers

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A university student who triggers a flash mob in the heart of Silicon Valley to prove her hacking creds finds herself in deep trouble when the colorful members of Anonymous Hackers prove their hacking creds to her.

The Road

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My mother moved her things out of my parents’ bedroom into the attic guest room. When I asked where guests would sleep, my father said, “Matthew, don’t be an asshole.”

THE BOX

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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.

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.

Genocide City Zone

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Welcome to the genocide city zone I'm sure you'll enjoy your stay We've been killing folks here All the live-long day If you want to join us You'll have to pay the price Your soul's the cost, so ante up C'mon and shoot the dice Welcome to the genocide city zone …

The Underlying Order

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“Choices overwhelmed us,” Thomas continued, years later, “like waves crashing.”

The City of Lights

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Paris is a great place to visit, but I wouldn't want to live there.

The World Explained

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This is why the earth revolves around the sun: refrigerator magnets.

Catch & Release: Dog Person Depression

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Instead, I get things like, “Why can’t you find a nice man with cancer or a bum leg?”

Rising

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The coin, so little, the watch chain, the youth, the fading softening speech, each hand and finger, the panic modeled on your own eyes, the ashtray, certain stumps along the way, the long distance, the odd feather, the jazz rope gone,…

Brothers of the Sacred Circle: A Prayer to Ares

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When our body falters, deny us rest. When our minds crack under the strain, forbid us sanity. When we are too tired to fight give us war.

Euphony and Fugue

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Each memory of Fall reminds me of the harvest; Surely this is not a thought to turn the thought of dying. Black the turning point, there is a glint at the tip of the wing: Perhaps it rises from its cinders as I wish when I was waning, …

The Show Must Go On

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I had the idea for a pageant for my obedience school at spring graduation

The Old Dog (in response to Brian Warfield)

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Blend the dog a drink and sit down beside him and draw straws for regrets.

Streets of Gold

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I was beyond broke.

Darcy Eastland

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To him the younger women, contemporaries of the bride, all sounded as if they were breathing helium.

Thing To Do In Deptford When You're Dead.

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Velvet answered the door in a red leather dress that was made with just about enough material to make a wallet, and looking like a long limbed drink of water calling out to a thirsty man.

How to Be the Most Hated Person on BART (London Tube, Tokyo Bullet, or Any Public Transit)

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The daily slog on public transit is a battlefield. Tensions are often higher than a presidential debate, but throw a wrench into the gears (or a tree branch onto the tracks) with any “severe delay,” and add in one or more of the below faux pas, and we’re