Most read stories

Amanda Palmer

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Amanda Palmer's explaining the eyebrow thing. An altercation with someone at Roadrunner, or maybe old boyfriend shit to burn— She's animated but he's losing signal, filling in the blanks himself. Whatever, it won't light at first, and then WHUMP and she…

Her last good year

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“We are NOT starving!” I stated emphatically. “What ever gave you the idea that you are starving? Honestly, Annie, you are so melodramatic. You have food in front of you right now, don’t you?’ I said pointing to her plate of potatoes and so

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.

in defense of assholes

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No excerpt for you.

Coming From Alabama

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In the state that the stars fell on, Love and I stumbled upon bits of God where he forgot sky and moon, too.

Death Along the Jersey Rails

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like old discarded snake skin, dry and coarse after the bite... immortally tortured by broken glass bottles.

The Lycanthrope Fun-Time Activity Book

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an elongating boy with butter-yellow flecks in his eyes, and skin patched like a tabby.

Barrier Island

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At the beach house

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

Washing the dishes...

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There are certain items in the sink that are giving me an anxious feeling in my stomach.

Absinthe Drinking in a Bar in Paris

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Half past six; already, through the gloom Saltwater flourish sifts from wharfs that ply Their play like girls that haunt the midnight's womb, As far it seems as walks of Barbary. Within the bar, French waitresses and sots Play dice with time awhile and rub…

Then You May Have Complicated Grief...

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......Based on an ad I heard on the radio from Mass. General Hospital in BostonHave you ever experienced death?Have you been in grief,past the cut off periodof six months?Has it affected your life?Has it strained relations with your wife?It is our beliefthat you…

I Am Quantum

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He had a lean build, except, remarkably, his midsection was perfectly barrel-like. As if he kept an alien lifeform in his belly, cultivated by years of Pabst and Yuengling transfusions.

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

Inmate Words

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in White Heat there’s a character who reads lips using a mirror to see the mouths of prisoners in other cells that’s how I feel when I talk with you

Downland Ballad I :Photo-disintegration

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Like a distant memory of past expectations I wander through past journeys, delineations chew on the fresh air like a discontented Wordsworth now free, free to roam where I will..

sabotage

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people keep trying to get me/ "out of the house"./ they see fun in me, and cool in me,/ and want to spend time with me,/ and i am flattered most sincerely./

Cleaverly Done!

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‘what’s the hassle kiddo, chopping meat is fun, come here and listen to the music of the chop, the sound of steel ripping through air, slicing through flesh and hitting wood, poetry I say’.

Rough Cut

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He bites and imagines, numbed by want.

Father's Day

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“What do you want for Father's Day?” she asks. “Sex,” he says, his mouth curling at the corners, “and a bottle of Shiraz.” …

The Eyes of the Inmate

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The courts had scheduled the date long ago but the time, an hour always left to the warden, had yet to be decided.

The Bowery Scene (Memoir, 1981; edited by Charlotte Curtis)

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It is easy to look out on the Bowery and say, "There are the bums." Encountering one, however, even one who asks to "bum a quarter" or tells you he's "on the bum" the word "bum" slips away in one's mind...

Troy

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It’s layer VII we adore/ and mourn

Caterpillar on a Chalkboard

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What do you want me to tell you about this next full moon cycle that you don't already intuitively seem to have touched upon in your latest bout of almost there dreams? It too will pass? That it is a totally different unfair animal from the repellent one already…

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.”

Wonderland

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The bartender kept looking at himself in the mirror behind the bar. “Everyone in Hollywood is an actor,” Doc said.

R.I.P. Ann Bogle

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It is with great sadness I announce the passing of Ann Bogle on February 28, 2023 after a brief illness. Ann was longtime contributor and editor of these pages and a champion of small press and emerging writers.I knew Ann since the late 1970's when she was an undergraduate…

Going Back in Time: Song

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If we go back in time We are living in tents If we go back in time We are living in caves We are fighting over rivers We are fighting over fields Near the soft edges of slime If we go back in time Nothing would have us And we had t

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."

Dancing With the Monster

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It comes to me at night, the monster. I don't even realize it's in the room until I hear it breathing behind me. It reaches out its hands and places them on my shoulders. Its fingers are furry and soft, but strong. They grasp the muscles on either side of my neck, and I…