Most read stories

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

thank you, for everything

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I was in life, in my dream. I was feeling around underneath your clothing. My fingers were shining in the underwater afterlife of memory, searching for those lovely nipple-sized mollusks. I lived in a land somewhere between the past and the future. Now

The Young Woman Swimming

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She stepped inlike ice alonecould save hershe dived,slicing the wavewith her body her fresh pony tailsubmergedlike a silk scarfthen swam moving thewater awaylike whirlpoolscould hold her buoyantly save her from the headachewhispering wordsThey had been there all…

crave

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The look that warms.

Deadly duel: Blow v. Teach

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At last, we learn if Blow has the cojones to fight.

Things Get Fuzzy

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We can’t just bomb Berlin or Dresden,/ Nagasaki or Hanoi, to make things safe

Family Friend

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My student assistant was a comely young woman. A freckle faced blonde. She was from Ohio.

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…

In Real Time

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We are the same shits/ we were in the Bronze Age

Nothing

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I dream about the boy in The Neverending Story, the gate of mirrors, and the Nothing, a dark cloud that floats in the sky, takes away everything.

Things of Beauty

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

The Boot

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my crotch-heavy press of 'Yes.'

The Sorry March to the Even Sorrier Sea

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goes on and on. Like it's a sad mad season on Mars, well it isn't, is it? Sometimes I have towonder whatever happenedto us, to make us forget how well we already know how tosing as good as any larks do? I have never wantedto drown, but I've…

Storm Chasers

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“Okay,” I say, “but my point is the only way you’d ever know if someone really loved you is if they put their life on the line when it counts. Otherwise you gotta take their word for it.”

Spaghettiad

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In the mode of Swinburne's ‘Dolores':For the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster- A study of the notion of “Intelligent Design” Since the universe came into dawning, If e'er this bright universe did, Men ought to know better in…

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…

How Things Fall Apart

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The leaves/ seek reunion with the ground// and leave the oak tree naked/ in December’s cold.

My Glass is Waiting

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The trouble with alarm clocks is naturally that they are miserable. And their curse is that their misery is useful: we employ them because we want to get away from them. But we would never have one as a friend.

Magic Togs

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New Underwear

Aisle Seven

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A young boy, breathing heavily from running, stopped at her feet, barely able to speak,

Mercury Unbound - 5

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As the music concludes, I'm finally in control of my emotions . . .

Forbidden Music

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

What my daughter knows I know or some likely version

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He doesn't call, not even on her birthday. She doesn't mention it or complain. She knows she doesn't have it as bad as some, even in this privileged Triangle of North Carolina. She is white and pretty and belongs to what's left of the middle…

Burned

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They called him “Albert, the Human Armadillo,” and he was. Rows of hard scales ran down the course of his chest, and he was studied and biopsied by doctor after doctor. “Psoriasis,” they said. “Or, eczema.” They prescribed ointments and oils that left him

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.

Apathy.

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I'm not sure whetherI drink to numbthe pain or toactually feelsomething.

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

The Judger

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

Sold 2 Books Though

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Reading at Menlo Park Senior Center, old people falling asleep leaning to the left in their chairs, all in the same direction.