Most read stories

Provided

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A man bows his head and crosses his chest before crossing the street and the rain keeps falling on his bare blue shirt and on top of his head The taxis will not stop The light’s still red as the man waits for the sign of the hands

Before I Die

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...to know they are not alone

Rest Stop

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Wicklow sat in the handicapped stall, pants down and straining, fed up to here with a world in which he couldn’t even take a decent crap.

Aisle Seven

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

The Tourists

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He thought of his field trip from the previous year, of Prague’s museums, statues, squares, architecture, restaurants, and various modes of transport. The town offered none of these and surely no cinema, no crowds of people, not even an old church.

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.

Twelve Pens

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Their last story

The Rocket

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Mother told me that I would go to the moon. But she did not tell me that on Diwali night, the moon hid himself on the other side of the sky.

How Josh Met Emily

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“Well in opposite heaven every time you make scrambled eggs the shells break into a million pieces, then you spend eternity picking them out of the yolk.”

Trumping the Ground Zero Mosque

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My third Rule of Success—and I may not have these in exactly the right order–is always get a pre-nup!

fragments of their lives survive

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Only fragments of their lives survive, like broken Sapphos. I have known them, alleged killer of themselves for the love of a man., but we know this is an invention. The leader of a whole guild of girls, who wrote 7 books of poems. What happened to them

One Sick, Two Sick, Red Sick, Blue Sick

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I found a diseased fish / wedged between some boulders near the pier

Citadel

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Last night we slept with books in the bed.

it

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where will we be/ when it happens?

Apathy.

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

Open Wounds

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Where the skin had grazed, shredded by the coarse gravel to form scabs, fascinated Jack. It reminded him of his youth and his own grazes, scratches and stitches. As a boy he imagined scabs were rough foundations of igneous rock, blood like lava pouring th

Aftermath

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Oh sweet, sweet morning light

Die Zwischenwelt: The World as It Is and as It Is Not

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These philosophic notions floated in my head for years and eventually helped inspire my pursuit of basic information in contemporary physics, astrophysics, astronomy, and cosmology when I was not reading or writing fiction or verse.

Releasing Your Inner Bigfoot

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In the ’70′s, Bigfoot was romantically linked with Farrah Fawcett, spotted in an Arkansas 7-11 with Elvis, and tabbed the front-runner to be Secretary of the Interior had Gerald Ford defeated Jimmy Carter.

Transport

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Ruth carries always a small bottle of nitroglycerin; and tissues, wads of tissues; two Tums (for calcium, she tells me)...

Loveless Lover

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Love me like a crutch Love me when I'm strong

Meal

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When they tell you to choose your last meal, it probably hasn't dawned on you yet.

A Bad Year

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It's been a bad year, People dying. Some too close to home, Some too far away. I cry down to you, In your casket, and think you might sit up. You were not sick You went in just a moment, Looking stunning and alive. Not…

The Song of Jerome

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"My love is with eggs!"

Mowin' Round the Dead [W-I-P]

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By the time I was born, my parents were already sickened, blackened, blighted people.

As the Bat Cave Turns

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A study found that in bat species noted for female monogamy male bats have small testes and big brains, while in species noted for female promiscuity males have testicles five times as big, but smaller brains.

Riverside

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Talking to Shakespeare by the riverside, I am saddened by my lust for women, how my eyes fixate on the spit that passes from top to bottom lip as they talk to me.

You Don't Need To

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You need only one who notices.

February 2012 Denver, COLORADO

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"You don't need the gun," Dean said. "Bring me a bottle of peroxide and some duct tape."

Aftermath

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They waited not a moment longer than was necessary But moved right in and Began their loathsome ch