Most read stories

continuously uncomfortable

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I could feel myself slipping back into my old ways again and it always hurt like hell.

Double or Nothing

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Wednesdays were humiliating. Third graders had to bring in twenty-five cents for class dues. If you forgot, the teacher would write your name on the board and it would stay there until you settled your debt. My family could afford the weekly quarter; the problem was…

Until Again

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Methuselah. That’s what they call him, the regulars that ride my train. Other things too, but Methuselah is the one that sticks in my mind. It seems to fit. It’s not as cruel.

Uncle Ned

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There was this old guy named Ned. He swept floors. No one knew much about him. He'd been around for years sweeping the concrete floors of the hangar-sized buildings that housed the major mechanical service departments at an old amusement park.

Wait

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I'm not dying. What is it called if you think you might have Hypochondria but you really don't? I'm worried that's what I have. Is it cold in here? Or is it me, dying?

Speck in the Thrall of Cosmic Forces

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Fear the air and fear the fire./ Fear the land and fear the water./ Creation is out to get you, speck,

The Time Traveler

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My work is not that sexy and glamorous kind of time travel that you see in the movies with Deloreans and phone booths.

The Woodsman

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In winter The Woods sleeps and the Woodsman comes. He collects the dead wood and makes coal. He nurses the injured animals and prepares the dying. He distributes the snow and regulates the temperature. In his fur hat…

Keeping watch

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The machines are alive but she is not. The pads keep her face from being irritated but my mind isn't so lucky."Let me GO!" she cries....at least that's what I hear. They are waiting for permission for her to go. Eager hesitation best describes the tense…

The Street Singer

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The Street singer gathers up his coins and counts to a hundred before The last string stops vibrating

Some Pianos

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We bought a grand piano at Steinway Hall after 9/11, chased uptown by the dust of death and awakening from dreams of miniature jumpers stuck in the icing of white wedding cakes

Wavering Faith

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Grady Quail wondered why God didn't just have another son

The Works

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The woman in green doesn’t want to encounter the meter maid who is actually a man and so waits to one side at the newspaper racks as if purchasing a paper while that person writes the parking ticket (this city needs that money) and drives away in his li

The Dances

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". . those incandescent secrets she would pepper in. The sister who ran away."

Everything the Traffic Will Allow

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there’s more to life than poontang but not when you’re sixteen and your hands are full of heavy breasts

Haiku for Jogging

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Haiku for Jogging

Iowa

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"It was John-Darren who once told me that he felt sorry for women."

Beer Pong With the Nobel Prize Winners

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Alcohol and American writers have always had a connection–about 70 percent of American winners of the Nobel Prize for Literature could be considered heavy drinkers if not more.

benedictus

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he wanders the house/ crying for the hairless tomcat/ (gone for the night/ on an overnight job).

Eating Dim Sum with Di

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Lindsey and I are both talking loudly about things we would never talk about in real life, under the impression that this is all somehow instructional for Di. But I think it's really more about us. Di gives us an excuse to talk like two people unjustifiab

Lavender, a Liberal

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Lavender, a Liberal Betty, batty from hormones, in a fanciful fit, named her daughter Lavender. Husband Don winced. Brothers Donald, John, Billy, and Tom were puzzled and pleased by this sister, this girl, who was a little bit like them, yet not like them at…

Chasing the “Z” words

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It ain't the steak, it's the sizzle.

Late Night / Early Morning

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It's 2am. The wind is moving at speed, whipping gently the tree branches, and their leaves rustle simultaneously to create a audible sound, like hands flipping through sheets of paper, or that feeling you get on your fingertips when going across a textured surface. I'm…

Awaiting the End of Time

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The alphabets will disappear.

An Open Letter For Zombie Rights

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We are what we are, and that is zombies.

I See Your Face Before Me

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The summer was announcing itself in thick waves of heat that rolled like a slow motion hurricane inside Mark Keeler's 1971 Mercury Montego. The car baked in a…

The Old Man and The Lawyer

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As the jughead turned with a humph the old man muttered, "what a jerk." The jughead spun around and glared at the young black man and said, "Did you say that?" The old man laughed, raised his hand, looked up at the jughead and said, "I did." The jughead t

Spittoon (w.c.55)

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“I’m pregnant,” he says...

Frail Flowers, Sitting Monks

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The world is slick as alabaster, taking the guesswork out of the rain. Junction Road moves like thick grease under the tires of my '89 Skyhawk. The old car's making a clicking noise somewhere underneath the high-beam switch and the damn…

Sisyphus of Anacostia

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Big Girl always stops on Talbert Hill.