Most read stories

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,…

Greener Than Thou: Saving the Earth, One Smackdown At A Time

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Are you a hostile person who gets into trouble when you express your anger? Would you like to annoy the hell out of people and get away with it?

On Global Warming

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You think I don't know, that's your whole stupid problem. You don't believe in anyone. You must enjoy living in a dark lonely universe. I don't know if you know or not about the lights that live in your own head, but I believe …

When Spectacle Replaces Ritual,

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The aisle, nave and/ transept twist themselves/ into an auditorium.

Painting with Big Mama

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I still see Big Mama leaning over her garden to pick a zinnia to put in her still life. Her old pink slip, hanging diagonally a foot under her hiked up, ragged, stained dress, half covered by her paint smock, which matched her white, faux fur, bedroom sli

John Doe's Jeans

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In the panic following news of my motorcycle crash, my honey fled the house without coat or wallet, and now, nearly midnight, we don’t even have cab fare home.

The Nude Pianist: A Novel: Chapter 40

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—Mazel tov, schmazel tov!

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.

Deadheading

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No matter how much he composes and prepares, he cannot override the electrical trigger in his brain. Something to do with the resonance of physical memory. It remembers amplitudes of current.

Off Island

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There were only six passengers aboard the small ferry...

Speaking to the Dead

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I didn't hear your last words or see your lasteyes. I didn't reach you in time, so I sat by your corpse,silently saying goodbye. I am in that process,not sour, not sweet, that yoked speaking which can't(because the heart won't let it) utter its whisperedlast word, but…

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…

Morphine

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Until the ivy hides me in

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…

A Few Good Band Names

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Auto and the Grease-Pits Sugar Cube Full Frontal The Holy Grill Crazy Al and the Squirrels Talk Is Cheap Grilled Cheese Sandwich Cold Zippers Destiny Howl Epiphany Critter Cold Kneecaps Crepes Pulled Pork Baby Seals and the Club

Poem for Ivor

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How to capture in word, in song, the fleeting moments of our loveYou were hereAnd now you're goneEven as I used to lie next to you,bathed in the care and concern that emanated from your warm black brown eyes,I knew there would be that day, that you were no moreDestined for…

Lotus-eaters

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empty wine bottles, and a single abandoned boot

The Show Must Go On

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

Artist's Statement: Oracle

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Mark Reep is a faded Polaroid oracle taped to the only unbroken window of an abandoned house in Ithaca NY.

Facing the Music

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The spirit bottles line the top of the bar

everything moved in circles

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

The Nude Pianist: A Novel: Chapter 21

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Francesco needed a magnifying glass to read her little missives.

to a gregarious stranger

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Three lines.

Cornelius van Linjpleel's Contributions to the Study of Etruscan Tombs

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Cornelius van Linjpleel discovered and excavated for himself a lone Etruscan tomb not far from Populonia in 1898.

Northeast of Eden (Memoir; Editor: Charlotte Curtis)

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Snakes have no eyelids, no hips, no lobby in Washington (some creatures do!) and little support at home.

Mr. Wazzeldot

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Mr. Wazzeldot has seven legs. He lives very comfortably. He likes to sit by the fire. There's a large cushion for a chair, and in the evenings, he sips his Bloody Marys. I know because I visit him…

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

Tension And The Devil

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He reacted as if I had sprinkled holy water upon his furnaces.

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.

How Veetzers Set Us Up For the Zorks

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We're doomed as a species. The Zorks are coming to eat us. It all started when Joey Cacciatore, the dumbest crook in the history of the world, got Veetzers swarming like blowflies in 1972, and thereby ensured the upcoming…