Most read stories

Robots Among Us

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Father hands Billy a length of rope. Billy builds his resolve, fights back his tears, heads into the kitchen. It's time to become a man.

Happy Birthday Mr. Watterson, Wherever You Are!

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Bill Watterson isn't just the creator of the world's best comic strip. According to the book “Looking for Calvin and Hobbes,” a biography of the elusive and reclusive cartoonist, Watterson is also a world-class introvert. Watterson refuses to make…

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.

Kimberlina

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...She smells like Mentholadium all the time which is one of them old lady smells. When I get up there, she says, “I’ll scrub the bee jesus out of you little girl,” and by God, I have a purty good bath that day.

Heirloom Pendant of an Ash-Tracked Snow

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If I do not hear you leaving by the door... The nearness here of this yet questions when I know you will not come so back again, Nowise the same as you were there before. My own reflection, centred at its core On knowing each …

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…

Present Tense

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What fascinates me now is now, this instant, this moment. This fugitive, this delinquent, this indiscreet, this forever elusive now. Now now. Now is now and now it is not now. Now is the adversary of time.…

Quintet in a Minor Key Near the End of Time

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The one thing I believe in is collapse./ Abandoned buildings collapse. Civilizations// collapse. Financial bubbles collapse./ Stars and galaxies collapse. Falling// is something that comes quite naturally/ to puffed up things.

Kate

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It’s that laugh of hers that gets me...

The Naming of Girls

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I sneak glances of her unhooking the clasp, taking it off, so that her back is bare, and I can see the muscles, the bones underneath move as she puts the new one on...

Owl Watching

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I attended the burial of our affair when I found her notebook— maybe it should be called her diary—that she had foolishly left on the deck of my beach house where she stayed while I was on that short trip to Chicago. Numb at first, unsure how to proceed, I went…

Of Tongue and Cheek

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Our beautiful currencies and stamps/ disappear into the digital vortex/ of accelerated appetites.

even from the moon

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

Saga For The Eyes

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Stars fat as the stars that Van Gogh painted on his easel in Arles, a ring of candles burning on the brim of his hat. Stars that fill the night with delirium.

Kingfish

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Time stole you from underneath the goldendock. Writhing there, slick as a flapping tongue;lips gored, red, whose gaping could embolden weak hands behind the blazing buck blade, long ago pierced in your summer quietus, beneath the soft shade of a tackle box, as the…

February 16, 2006

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When we arriveand are met by strange friendsstrange like the fog on the redreed mudflatsthat span the low tide around Incheon -When we arrivecarrying so much we will not needlike the bus they hire to take us through the darksix people to fill so much more space - When…

Beverly Abbey

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Downton Abbey and The Beverly Hillbillies. They're practically the same show.

The Window

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Just beyond the tree, beyond the fence, close to the grey clouds that hung almost to the earth, a boy sat on another tree's stump. Beneath his crossed legs that he moved up and down rhythmically, under his bright red, Superman shorts, inscribed in the stump, a symbol which…

To Really Hear

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He's driving in the Sierra Nevada with his wife and their small daughters and the girls are fighting and he can't take much more of it.

Bait Shop

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They wanted to go fresh water fishing, so I had to buy worms. None there in the saltwater town. Drove about 10 miles over the long bridge to cross the bay. I'd been there before. Walked in and a crusty, little skinny man got up from his chair. He: Watcha need? Me: Fresh…

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…

A Day in Dusk.

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And a delicacy in the right regrets.

December 1, 2016

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Polite society will cheer/ as another body is discovered// and disposed of. The cheers/ will drown out the gasps

The Book Bindery

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In a mad tipsy leap you came up short and hard on the chipped stone counter Bruised and blue below the seams against the inside of your thigh. Your grand jeté a little too low, left you on the black floorboards Wincing in…

I've Bought You A Present

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Look out your window and know that the universe conspired to craft the sunrise for your morning tea, the mug clasped in hand, the light bouncing from the balcony railing. The empty seat next to you will always be filled and I will never properly thank y

Boats for Rent (Thinking About You)

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We're killing off the elephants. We're killing off the tigers. We're killing off monarch butterflies. We're wrecking the coral reefs. Big sad gorillas don't feel at home in their own homes. And all instead of learning to live in some…

Who’s Calling?

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“I’m a sucker for a good first sentence but I won’t dismiss the whole work based on a bad one. Besides, anybody with an MFA can write a decent first sentence. You can’t judge the whole work based on that.”

Arcana Magi Zero + Pure - c.4

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Everyone kept up with Nemo until the scent led them to the edge of the city. The elders sniffed the ground and found Satoshi’s scent into the stoned woods.

I Don’t Think Her Last Name Was Tucker

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I ran into Tanya at “Pearl's” — maybe it was still called “Big Balls” — over in the Stockyards (Ft. Worth) in '72 and right up front we both admitted to loving honky-tonks and “done me wrong” songs which is why we were there…

Wall talks to wall

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Wall talks to wall. One has a clock, the other a window, the third a cupboard with bandages etcetera. The fourth a door that opens and closes a thousand times a day.Chair is across from chair. Occasionally the one looking for care picks the wrong one to sit in, and there is…