Most read stories

Begonia {part two}

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perhaps because they were holding hands and sharing tears; perhaps because the moon shone so brightly; perhaps for no reason at all; but both the Coriander and Isabella felt a surge of hope so strongly that both smiled a genuine smile.

Henry's Moment

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“You need to keep a close vigil on your X-Ray binaries from the Sun. The star and its blazing temperature could spill over at its outer-most edges. The material would be such a high temperature; it would destroy all life on your planet, and…

The Silver T to the West Side Highway

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They watched the seven o'clock news.

Hollywood Stars

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Your Uncle Howard and I listened to Dutch Reagan re broadcast big league baseball on WHO Radio when we were little. He'd call the play action off the wire complete with sound effects. The son of a bitch turned out to be a Republican...

A Change in Plan

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Times were tough back then. Just a few jobs. This was in the late thirties. It's the story of how Albert hooked up with Iris. Their unlikely meeting took place when they met out on the Highway 61 right-of-way just outside of Natchez, Mississippi, each trying to hitch…

The Watch

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I packed food for a lifetime, clothes and boots, all the guns, and the audio of our poetry...

Sickness

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She wasn't even trying to live.

The Queen of the Underground

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Study decay, says the Queen of the Underground.

My Dad was a ditch digger

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men sitting on stoops women earning the rent by working as servants in the rich folks yard

The Upstart Apprentice of Golden Mean

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...I am taut...my ankles ache...

Faceless

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The sting of a slap will be remembered, as will sex, or at least a fragment of it, such as the face of a man in your room who tied your hands with the belt of your plush terry bathrobe.

His Nightmares

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Motionless seconds turned

She Called My Poem Nice

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“There is no future in art, you will not change lives with flowery words. Please don’t rock the boat”

A Special Assignment

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In the graph of life or death, two axes will inevitably meet. Will it be as jarring as two sharp and well-hewn axes colliding?

Word Balloon

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Most times a vertical word balloon floats before him.

A Story

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The next moment is a convergence made from a single repeating sequence that disappears behind the voice that tells of it.

Prayer to Ray Bradbury

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Dear Ray Bradbury, yesterday was my thirteenth birthday, and I could not stop thinking of the Mennonite girl in the milkwhite bonnet, the squint of her eye, the twitch of her anxious finger on the trigger, sudden holes bloomi

A Matter of the Heart

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Charlie's recurring fantasy emerged from its hiding spot as he finished his fourth Old Fashioned. He'd be on his back; she'd be astride him. A strong, assertive young woman with her hands planted on his chest and her hair falling forward over her face.

Working Girls

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In the summer when it's light out later it's my nature to linger a couple of hours in the park after work, just standing around watching the Downtown Divas working the corner, offering themselves to each male driver who stops for the light and I always joke with them about…

Souvenir Des Choses du Passé

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Let's say maybe you're in a place your mind has never left, and let's say maybe it's Mississippi, and let's say maybe it's summer with kudzu throbbing green all around you, and let's say maybe she's a Sagittarius girl, standing in that driveway with her young breasts…

just not working

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some days you wake up/ to feel horror/ wrapped beneath your blanket./

Beverly Abbey

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

Venison

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It is hunting season in Jersey today. They say “There are too many deer in Jersey today.”

Tale from a Möbius Strip

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Francesca is a sweet girl and everything, but her incessant doting on Paolo is best left private . . .

My Date with Edgar Allen Poe

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Now, if someone is tellin' you that she had a date with Edgar Allen Poe, you might be tempted to say, "Hey, sister, what kind of drugs you be doin' for the last two days?" But I swear on my Aunt Boo's chastity belt that's what went down and with my…

Standing in Line for Pac Man

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Sitting on the couch when we got cable television, on that first day. Pressing buttons that sounded like the slap that your attention span would take as you made your way through the twenty, thirty, forty channels. As you grew older, the amount of channel

Cooking

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  His grandmother's recipe called for the pasta dough to be beaten with a bone--and not just any bone either. It had to be a human femur. This was his first hurdle. Where would he get such a thing at this hour in this part of town? Or, for that matter, at any…

As Poetry Month Ends, Prosaic Types Get Their Turn

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“I’m going,” O’Bannon-Krim says with exasperation as she throws trinkets such as Dylan Thomas beer coozies and Edna St. Vincent Millay hair scrunchies into a cardboard box.

The Cenataur (Part 1)

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Love needs loathing like cold weather needs warm clothing. And all truths, untruths and part truths need a place to live when a mind gets too sardine-packed with information and cynicism... Some say there was a time when the light was brighter, the ear

A Not-For-Kids Dream That All Boys Have

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The room turns red and I start screaming and ejaculating. The whole class is watching as Mr.Smith slams down my copy of the test with his right hand and swiftly tears off my penis with his left.