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

Snapshots

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On a street-lit night in Jeddah.

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.

The Bird Nests of Lascaux

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With their brightly-colored bits of found string woven into the walls of their nests to teach their baby birds what the worms of the future will look like. Somewhat like the cave paintings of Lascaux for early man in France, when hunti

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

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Ready, here we go.

Let's Walk This Dog

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if you don't quiver with anticipation you'll barely manage to explode

Deception

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Distance.

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

Span

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

Falling Towards Oblivion Avenue

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At some point, you care/ just enough to wake each morning,

K2

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Now it's late. I am hanging upside down from a rope coiled around my crushed left ankle, the pain too sharp to be really felt, as the excess blood to my head makes my thoughts fuzzy. I am almost two meters from the rock face, thirty-five hundred meters above sea-level, the…

Blue Moon

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I suppose it was inevitable, This crashing of souls, This recognition of possibility to create. If we were younger, We would make a baby, The ultimate act of faith. Now it has to be something else, Nothing to force a track with night feedings, …

The Finding Smile

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My mother gave her all to convince him to be a politician. My sister begged on bleeding knees for him to give her head. I just needed somebody to help me find things.

Oh Portland.

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The purple sweater brought out the blue in her eyes. Fantastic eyes made of ice, she was a stunner, and she knew it. I met her at Slabtown

Boil

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Boil (n.)––1. Pus-filled pustule inflammation of the skin, usually painful. 2. Slang boiled pus, bucket of (n. phrase)“Your asshole brain is a bucket of boiled pus.” (see also pus, SCOTTISH derogatory term for face.

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.

The Cactus

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Each evening the man allowed himself an hour of fresh air. He and Prickles would situate themselves on the tiny balcony overlooking the same street, a blanket bundled around them both for warmth. These were the times he liked to talk to Prickles the most

The Nude Pianist: A Novel: Chapter 9

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Michiko stood in front of Steinway Hall on West 57th Street.

The Application of Birds

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I know someone in need of healing.

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...

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.

Storms

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Sirens wake me, screaming warnings in the dark.

Ink Play

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

For my lost child

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and where have the years sped how distant was your youth

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 …

A Break in the Cloud

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Each had jostled and laboured for his or her place upon the blunt outcrop, in the cold persistent darkness, where the outcrop was merely something that had fallen and not quite been washed away.

Carrying you

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I woke up to the humming of an empty space in the shape of a sweatshirt,

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…