Most read stories

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…

Strange

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Words are looking ever so strange today like a hole in space a wind in a cloud a face superimposed over a mountain

Life Among the Epiphytes

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Have you ever seen anyone die? It will alter your life. Because you suddenly realize that anxiety was worth something after all, and was a coin of the human condition, imprinted with hectic symbols, some of which resemble cypress, others more like Frankenstein:…

Some Girl

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Oh, crap! Once you leave your body like that, why do you have to come back down to earth? That’s what I want to know. I remember you wearing English Leather aftershave. Anytime I catch a whiff of it now, it brings back some intense memories! And I r

The Hamsa.... an excerpt

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It is your hamsa that protects us,” the girl whispers to me. “Then I shall give it to you,” I reply. “No,” she says in the unselfish innocence of her youth. “It is yours and you must keep it.” I smile and kiss her dirty forehead. Eternity passes whil

Imagining the Reading as Effacement

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What the spaces say// can be heard in the short/ and longer silences

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 Cosmos as Gerunds

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There is no there or where but rather/ trajectories of probability

Brothers

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The young boy woke to the sound of laughter. He blinked himself out of deep sleep and allowed…

Purpose

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I gave you two daughters. I gave you four grandchildren. I'm done.

cuneus + forma

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the warnings we fear are the selfsame ones of ourselves of our vertical need to be first to the heights redoubling its intractable charm of production— our inheritance.

Cymophiliacs: you are one.

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Let me guess. You're reading this because it's dark or there's no surf or you're at work dreaming about surf or you're broken in some way that prevents you from surfing. If I'm right, you depraved little human, then you have come to the right place. Here we…

Serve & Protect

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If she was still breathing, Tom promised himself he would let her live, but right then his shoulder ached and his right hand was throbbing.

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.

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.

Inside Out

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Who hasn’t at some point of the day wanted to dredge up everything in your pocket just to see what it is.

OUT ON THE EDGE OF VICTORIAN CIVILIZATION

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Lottie was a slim, fine looking woman. But Dale thought her breast implants were the worst case of overkill he had ever seen.

Honey Bee Men

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"...she's been seeming like she's been dreaming while awake lately..."

Arion, the poet

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Nearly everyone knows of that celebrated poet’s story coming down to us from classical Greek mythology: the tragic tale of Orpheus and his descent into the underworld to rescue his beloved Eurydice. Well, there’s a much lesser known story of a legendary 7

Worn

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

i'll give you a large sum of money for finding my kite. thanks.

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sometimes we saw it in the sky. we'd stand on invisible stairs trying to reach it. running like frightened geese. we were going to catch up with it. grab onto its string. pull it down.

Scar

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I stared at these meteor impacts, feeling far away, a lone sentient cloud admiring the scoured yet wondrous earth-of-this-girl below me, the lean slope of her side, the soft dip of her neck, the sharp edge of her cheekbone, the monarch wing of her eyelash

The $64,000 Question

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One day over a hardscrabble dinner of gristly beef and lumpy mashed potatoes, his uncle looked up at him and said, “Kee-rist, boy, school’s gonna start any day now. And winter ain’t far behind. I can’t keep you here. We gotta figure out something for you.

Just Wondrin'

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Ever had the occasion to wake up look at your watch and see it's five-thirty in the morning — after sleeping on the couch all night? Ever then gone to take a leak, trudged down the hall, cracked your bedroom door to check on your wife and found a portly, balding man…

The Bludgeoning of a Burgeoning Young Artist

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There was an implicit understanding, made clear by Athena's gentle stroking of Freddy's silky blond hair, that he would share her canopy bed with its frilly fuchsia pillows. He didn't mind this, despite despising the color of the pillows.

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.

God's Personal Microphones

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This is my melody. I will not shut it down for you, it will do that all on its own. Everyone knows this. I don't need you to go on holiday. Can't really get away from yourself. This is my color guard. It goes with the everything I am. I'm not sorry I grew…

To See Who's There

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Able to search through centuries, I click, scribble, skim,resurrect wet stone walls, the smell of burning peat.Bob's your uncle; Peggy's your aunt.Name your family, child. My brother said helloto Uncle Shirley and Aunt Greg. I was more…

Building Houses Out of Words

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I remember sitting there on the first unfinished rooftop, watching you building houses out of words. You hammered in grammar and punctuation; you said these things needed to be hammered in by hand. You drove the long straight exclamation …

Sanctuary Beach

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We eat, sleep, play Scrabble on our iPads, and go down to breakers at sunrise and sunset. The sunset is spectacular.