Most read stories

Those Things

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For me, it was that kind of moment. I got to come back. I had been here before and now, well now, I could come back. I had a chance to do it all again, bigger, better and well, just better. I hoped I could remember all that I learned the first time.

16 Rules to help you become a Writer

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Get comfortable with criticism

The Washing of the Quilts

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Sweaty feet, drool from the weighty sleep of mid-afternoon naps, the inescapable perspiration of the South: all combine to create the entwined scent of socks and stale toothbrushes...

Bad Ideas I've Had

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Not all ideas are bad, just mine.

Flutter in Night

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Have you heard this yet? The daughter flew home to care for the mother, whose pump is still tick ticking—though now with aid—which means she leaves the kitchen when the microwave clicks on.

Archaeology

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I would like to go back (with spade, pick, soft bristles), and sift through time and layers, brush away the intervening years, and find: the tooth, knocked out by my then best friend, when we were seven, careening downhill in my father's wheelbarrow on Boscobel…

Storms

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Sirens wake me, screaming warnings in the dark.

In an authentic Irish pub in Las Vegas

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In an authentic Irish pub in Las Vegas where over much crowd noise the three of us are discussing Yeats, Joyce and Lady Gregory. We’re in an Irish pub after all, plus the fact we’re literature profs attending a Vegas academic conference.

Peanut Time

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A peanut, who knoweth

Ink Play

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Lying on a high seat in the south study, this is what I see:

The Winter's Too Warm for Bears to Sleep

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The winter’s too warm for the bears to sleep, and they get up in the middle of the night with insomnia and wander about the streets in their pajamas, knocking over garbage cans, looking for a midnight snack of some kind. They’re getting kind o

Saturday TV with Dad

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By the sixth - Dizz, Falstaff buzzed - Croons - The Wabash Cannonball

All the Young Angel Heads

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I don't think you understand. A sad boy doesn't just die inside, slowly, he becomes withdrawn from certain types of lovely youthful reasoning out loud, accustomed to feeling what is expected, graded, just to be allowed to survive another…

100 Words

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She thinks this is the place she dreamed

The Judger

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Better not hand me that iPhone. I'll look up every damned thing in it.

Love Story

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I fall in love with a second cousin at the picnic. I make sure I sit next to her.

trenton

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his word

The Forsaken

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Every town has one. Or one at the very least...

cross-quarter days

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sentinels in a frost-blackened field

Recipe for the Broken

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This poem first appeared in “Walt’s Corner” of The Long Islander, founded by Walt Whitman in 1838.

Bio Bit

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It was your present world that seemed more than mad to me. Your polished stiff brown shoes that always squeaked like mice, while the latest rude Bombers bubbled up in their comfortable Dart-board garages like apple pies…

Elevator to the Angels

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I opened the closet door and there stood Eugène Ionesco lost among our clothes.

The Nude Pianist: A Novel: Chapter 23

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After the Tokyo experience, Frank and Michiko decided that when she went on extended tours, Frank would accompany her.

Man Writing Story With Ears Plugged About Painter Who Only Hears in Color; Black Ink, 2002

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Ready, here we go.

It is Midnight

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It is midnight in Utah, but I can’t tell. It always looks like midnight in a cave.

Deception

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Distance.

Firefly

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Smiling at stones and chunks of earth pounding in...

Span

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That’s a long time/ to live with the certainty/ of your death

Friends

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I reach out and grab a can of soup with each hand and spin them around to dive into this much-heralded sodium situation. It's a landslide. I almost smile as I put low sodium back and continue to hold tightly onto regular.

Soft Coral Siren

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I didn't feel when you cut out my spine I'd been throwing up all night couldn't even smell the rust …