Most read stories

Prologue (excerpt from a novel)

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The clip-clopping of footsteps now echoes from the opposite end of the alleyway, and as you turn to face the figure who appears behind you, the figure wearing a fierce Noh-drama mask, you determine that this time you will enlist its aid in decoding this r

Forbidden Music

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There are songs I know to not listen to when I am alone.

Ways and Means

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the bodies of the poor become/ a simple logistical problem,/ disposable as any gnawed bones

Esmeralda

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Being an uncredited bonus composition, written in the sublimest access of divine afflatus this poet believes his lyric verse has ever known. “In olden times, dark was not counted fair”: Those were the words, I think, of some old poet. …

Saturday Birthdays (from FATHER MUST)

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When his mother was all dressed up on New Year’s Eve, and his father, even thought they had tickets for the dance, announced to her he wasn’t going to go, Johnny had gone into his room, put on a white shirt, a dark suit, his dress shoes, and a clip-o

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.

Please Help Support My Attempts at Being Funny

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You can tell your doctor the truth Even if no one else will stop and listen He or she may have a balm for it To help make it go away Or at least go into remission Remission is the staging area for Lies Corporate and otherwise We don’t have

Where is Now and When is There?

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The floor dissolves beneath us, pierced by lasered/ glare of countless eye-beams.

Magic Togs

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New Underwear

The Ice Scraper Symphony

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Stay tuned for my next short - Candle Smoke Wishes - COMING SOON ON A MONITOR NEAR YOU!!

A Quiet Noise

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the sun is quiet like the mountains, the birds except for their wings

Version - 2.0

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Pale like a tracing of a memory

Word Burglar

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Oh my god - A plagiarizing pony - I know someone must have said that before

Fulton Flapper

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The Italian was late. She was supposed to come into the store, meet him in the back, and arrange to take the last of his liquor.

The Dog's Familiar

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The county sent two crews, one to get Mr. Meyers, the old shut-in, tall and affable, but quiet and bent, like a crooked coat rack with a porkpie atop, the other for his dog, an english setter whom he shadowed like a familiar. I say he was the familiar and

Ineluctable

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I attended the burial of our affair when I found the notebook-maybe it should be called her diary-she had foolishly forgotten, leaving it on the deck of my beach house where she stayed while I was on that short trip to Chicago and I was numbed at first, unsure how to…

Summerset Bangs from Oldtown

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blackberry pie and huckleberry wine and litte Maria with her summerset bangs

The Exhaustion of Dreams

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I like it best when I wake up And the wild rain of dreaming ends.

More Of My Dark Job History

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In my 14 to 15 year old life in the late 50s I worked as a clean-up boy in the neighborhood butcher shop up on 5th. Ave.,

Houses Are Havens and the Outside Plans Your Destruction

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The first of the fires that started by the river in the abandoned mills were so hot they burned white and pale blue

The Bachelor's Hymnal

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OhYou like quiet nights in?I do tooBut we might not get alongbecauseOnly part of youwants silence

Messages from Upstate

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My eyes are wide open. I look like a graphic novel. My world is black and white. I’m poorly drawn. All sounds have an exclamation point.

Jane

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Jane knew what to do when she heard murmurs in the ceiling, knew what to do when she struck out on the moor.

In Knucklebones, This Is What We Keep

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Outreach the ostrich

Eve in the House of Mirrors: 13 fragments

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1. On the morning of her eighteenth birthday, Eve woke to find herself transformed into a gigantic chess piece made of zeros and ones.2. Eve gazed so long at her smartphone that she found herself falling into it.3. She fell for a time that may have been short or long or…

Things of Beauty

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The cover features Lincoln as a woman. Lincoln as a woman is not a thing of beauty.

Dumb Luck and the Fall of Empires

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At some point we all reach the end point/ of something. Something important/ if only to our fragile self esteem.

Cut-offs

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The sauce is you

You May Be

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beautiful, but you don't own beauty. You may be sexy, but you don't own desire. You may be smart, but you don't own wisdom. You may be good and kind, but you don't own love. You may like trees, but you don't own the forest. You may like to…

One Kiss

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"It was one kiss. No tongue. What does that even mean?" Lindley tried to see Leah as any other patient, "What do you want it to mean?" "I don't know," Leah whined, tears welling, "something, maybe. You know I hate surprises." Her sister was not another…