Most read stories

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…

even from the moon

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even from the moon our planet’s truth has not been seen.

Walking Coma / Resurrection Happens

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It’s possible to forgive the past its trespasses / stop seeing the future as a threat, reimagine / the present as a goal.

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…

Winter in Waveland

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They build them high they do in Waveland, Mississippi.The tall houses with their skinny thighs spread wide flirting with the dusky coast, like antebellum ladies petticoats lifted, stockings wetted, ankles bared, savingtheir hems from the unpredictable tide,…

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.

1888: Mrs. Sherwood

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Margaret will take her seven away from his raging Irish hammers slurry Saturday night honks smashing red eyes. They'll board a secret train countryside bound where they sing the songs of her own dead Mam who lived poor in the world but…

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.

re·frac·tion

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bassackward/in the surreal/bathroom mirror

Kilz

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He flipped through a book of poems Ani’d given me. Nothing fell out so he tore it in two. I said his mama must notta read to this one and one of the older cops laughed and he hit me.

Same Old Song and Dance

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You want to get laid talking socks

Seascape

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1. Walking here with you on these narrow strands of clean air & imagination

needs

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addict for validation and cat tongues

Mr. Kunitz, Mr. Lowell, Mrs. Craig

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Although I think we can easily work it out because we are not here in the Yale graduate school, and diction is the theme of the story. Diction is a choice in language.

Mob

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He is leaning back against a pillar watching the dancing; a spectator to joy – both planned and spontaneous – that’s unfolding in bodies fourteen and fifteen years old in front of him.

At the Juvenile Bubonic Plague Telethon

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We’re not like a lot of your fly-by-night disease-based charities. Every pence we raise goes directly to St. Bartholomew’s, where 90% of it ends up in the pockets of doctors so they can buy expensive horses.

Unconscious Primate Pandemic Panic

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I wrap my left foot

Confession

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Tomorrow, they'd bury their daughter . . . and still, so many questions. Why would a beautiful fourteen-year-old choose for herself such a horrible, painful death? In life, she appeared the antithesis of suicidal ideation: excellent grades, well-liked in school and…

Me and Lord Byron at Last Call

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Byron's achievement, certainly quite remarkable, is to have raised the drunken monologue to a literary form. Edmund Wilson

HEADLINES

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Warranties are what made America great, although hers has expired and the mailbox will remain empty for another fifteen days.

Chicken Noodle

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Damn this airplane

Letter to a Lost Friend

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I keep attempting to start a correspondence with people / but they end up not being interested in me, / either that or I scare them away / because I usually begin with: / “Well, my favorite philosopher is Hegel..."

Arcana Magi Memorial Vol.3 - c.5

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The old man moved on an automatic wheelchair. He stopped just short of Sora. He waited for her to move, but all she did was shed one tear.

A Quiz Show Audition

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However could anyone get Joyce scholarship mixed up with physical anthropology?

The Sound of Human Lives

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The room smelled of an old rank basement. Boys and girls of all ages crowded the stage. The room was dark with only a few lights that hung from above keeping the crowd dark and silhouetting Chris on drums.

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.

Enough, Trump

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Enough, Trump. We've had it my dear, with your pink ties, your hairs, your swagger, your towers, your money, tempers, walls, bombs, smarts, snarls, pouts and doubts, bigotty bile, and once again, style. We just…

A Hiaku for Her

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the lonely, only

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

The Taste in My Mouth

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whose spit is this?