Most read stories

Wintering

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Winter makes me reconsider.

TRAUMA

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Everybody breaks. Everything splinters.

The Favor

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“You did what?” “Well, the bike is a classic. Getting the proper parts for it just isn’t easy.” “You’ll end up like smeared all over the road doing things like that, and I’ll have to pick you up again. Geez. Watch out for this branch-” Bruce held

On the Roof

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Marie was on the roof. The deck, with its cool concrete pavers and faded cedar Adirondack chairs, was one of the reasons she and Harold had bought their condo in this building. The only ugly part of the roof was the chain-link fence along its edge; soon after they moved…

Ladybird

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On the other pillow is a ladybird which escaped from a dream. It reminds me of when I was a tiny red polka dot. And then bigger, and other colours. And then… I stare at the ceiling, searching its soul for little things. The ladybird touches my arm, whispers…

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.

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?”

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…

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…

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?

The Show Must Go On

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

Hands Like White Porcelain

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Jesus is for sale. But he’s heavy.

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.

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

ghosts

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conflicts in time

Four Sieges

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

A Turkey, A Flea, A Milkshake Fiend

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Outside it’s still raining. We’ve gone through three cans of Guinness each. I’m waiting for drunkenness to germinate so that I can take him home and fondle what I imagine will be a very slim dick. A Slim Jim. When I chuckle to myself, he thinks I’m still

Space Program

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Mercury and Gemini disappointed.

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 Rest of the Story of Mom

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Easing her hand with her other hand.

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…

T.S. Eliot On His Deathbed

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I guess at the end you’re only looking forward. Or upward actually, since you can only lie there on your back looking upward, straight ahead toward infinity, your mouth in a grimace, with the ghostly pink lips peeled back from the teeth.

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.

O Where Did Our Funny Go?

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What a nation! First we lost our money Now we’ve lost our funny

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…

Epiphenomenal Glider

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Hissing through the opening, the spirits have no place.

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.

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.