Most read stories

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.

The Ache of Logic

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There is a the reason for the theft of people and the melting of gold

Capital Offense

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They can’t exterminate the poor just yet

Digging

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I came to a field where, scattered around, were quite a few men digging holes

Is This Seat Taken?

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A single woman should regard every train ride as an opportunity, I once read in one of those “How to Find A Boyfriend” books. “When boarding the train, don't take the first available seat,“ the author advised. “Walk through all the cars…

Worn

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The shirts hanging by the back veranda serve as our memorial to them.

Figures in Disquieting Landscapes

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Tentacles hold fast to the small/ thrashing thing they believe is true// which, devoured, once crushed/ completely still, turns into shit,

The Family Tradition

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Your father, his father, and his before that, your mother, her mother, and all the way back have kept a tradition by chance or by will to each have a baby (or several) until…

Ouroboros

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It matters little who thought of it first, what mattered was the schism. Or, to be more accurate, those on the opposite sides of the schism. And, of course, you are a part of this, dear reader. You are of one side or the other.

Blackouts

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The Bird King is trapped behind the mirrors. Sometimes you'll see a hand, a wing, fluttering in a dark space. You may even see his breath, a pulse of mist in a corner of the glass. But don't ever smash his silvered prison. Don't ever let him out and into the world.*****O…

Isn't It Funny How Some People Don't Think They're Contemptibly Stupid?

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[VIEWER DISCRETION IS ADVISED.]

The Face of the Moon, And Another Story

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For example, I never noticed that the moon had eyelashes, not until tonight. You said you couldn’t really see that, not at all. You preferred the fact that the word “lunatic” sounded like an attic on the moon...

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.

The Next Best Thing to Dying

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Later, my daughter told me that she hadn't been scared because as I lay on the ground unconscious I continued to laugh, gradually relaxing into a big smile as I came around a minute later.

cross-quarter days

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sentinels in a frost-blackened field

Where's Waldo?

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Over his usual ham sandwich and skim milk for lunch Uncle Waldo used to always say, “Going out in the dead of night without a flashlight is dangerous.” But I knew what I was doing. After dark, I'd slip out and sneaker on down the path to take a dip in a…

The Sentence

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Two women are escorted to the desert, where they are shackled to the ground. Who are they, what have the done, and will they survive?

The Cherry

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He then spent his walk home to his single apartment spitting up various textures of red, combinations of cherry and blood mostly.

Things Like This

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I'm an older guy. She is still quite young. I tell her I may be too old but she giggles and tells me that she did the research and it said because there is snow on the roof doesn't mean no fire's in the stove. She proved it. Things like this. We excite ourselves,…

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

A Record of Wrongs

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A dead deer on the side of the road and the older boys not listening to her as they stab its eye with a stick.

Exquisite Now

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In the exquisite now, I feel everything around me, in me, before and after, I think, I should call you, say goodnight, but I do not, choose instead to write this poem, as though I can capture the magic of what is happening between us in words, A…

Jack

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We’ve already agreed on a date when Jack posts some new pictures of himself. I have to swallow. Hard. In four days Jack’s become twenty years older! On Thursday, a boyish thirty-something was smiling at me from my PC. This Monday I find myself stari

The Judge's Wife Part 6

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—Strip down to your shorts. Put on this gown, open to the rear.

15 Restatements

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I arrange 15 restatements of how lovely you are forward then backward, horizontally then vertically then along the diagonals.

Strange Humidity

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The kitchen is full of old girlfriends. I avoid them. They are munching on cheddar and sharing stories I'm sure I don't want to hear.

Beside the Pool at Noon

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he flies away past the green explosion, into the azure sky

Falling

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Sometimes when I fall I see a ...

Everything that's Gone Wrong, has Gone Wrong Because of Football

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I’m not ready for football. I’m not ready for it, but I live in a southern town that worships at its altar more devoutly than those suicidal beauties in James Wright’s great poem.

Visitation

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We sat up in bed. It's ‪two o'clock‬ in the morning. Blinding circular flashlight beams probe through the half pulled shades. Magnified black silhouettes of men's torsos lumber back and forth in the yard. We are in a fishbowl and being invaded.