Most read stories

Kicker

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My grandma kicks field goals between her bedposts, again and again. My finger is sore from holding. She says that's all I'm good for. My finger is smudged with ink from writing my poems on her paper: half-moon rowboats, clouds like whales. She twisted my finger for …

Rain Typing

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"I'm just going to take a power nap!"

Artist's Statement: Stepbrother

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Mark Reep is that stepbrother you had a thing for, the one who turned you onto Steve Vai, Stoli.

Betrayal

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My brother Herb married his high school sweetheart right after completing college. This was a girl named Beryl, whom he'd met originally in Mr. Reinert's marching band at York High School in Elmhurst. I remember one day in particular in the middle of the

And Father Makes Three

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His father whistles The Torreador's Song in the kitchen; Mirko smells bacon.

Little Oddities

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The energies align to compel you,/ wave by field, charge by pulse, into/ an ever increasing circle of speed

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 Instrument

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She wore no bra. As she jammed the truck into park and pushed against the heavy door, he saw the points of her nipples against her dress. Ice filled his belly, the most beautiful pink-colored ice.

Zapruder Film

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But there it was, amid the “junk” set to be thrown out with the rest of his childhood, opened accidentally to the page of his Indiana Jones Action Journal about his winter formal when he was sixteen.

2011 - What I Wanted

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I might have gotten laid

If You See Something, Say Something

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You think there’s a chance the bag could be holding a severed head, or live or dead kittens.

Fairy Tale

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Ey’, it’s where I followed him down

Warning! Please Read this Before Adopting a Pet

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One evening I came home late from work to find my wife drinking white Zinfandel by the fireplace in the living room and reading Wallace Stevens poems out loud to the dog, curled at her feet.

Mercury Unbound - 5

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

Supernova

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Ben had us over, me and him and his boy, Benji, to look at the supernova. Ben was always coming up with these things with the telescope. Jupiter's moons, Saturn's rings. On his wedding night he made everybody stop dancing and run out to the golf course so he could show us…

Journey

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Do you know this song, Julia? I happened upon it one evening and only just before meeting you, a month before meeting, a month before arriving?

castaway

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the epiphany at the mast at midnight is not the same at dawn

Kissing In a Warm Car

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Then I did the same to you, inhaling your scent which was one thing at your hairline and another at your collarbone.

Soft Voices

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soft voices singing somewhere in the black back of rising tensions crashing with the waves...

Parajanov Contra Zizek (oder selbst proclaimed Brechtian Beast Z vs aSublime moving picture for magnitude of efficacy.)

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People act, today, as if there were no such thing as Death - i.e. they "psychotically" reify the notion that we "live on" in our work or more pointedly/poignantly in our offspring and in society qua Creation. This tendency was half present in the old Greeks - the …

The Nude Pianist: A Novel: Chapter 16

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Depression had Frank in its craw.

Knott Travel

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The next post card was of gondolas in Venice. “Have never not enjoyed ourselves less,” wrote Sylvia. “Sylvia can be hard to please,” said Angelynn. “Those boats could use a coat of paint,” I said.

Bones

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Got something inside me hard as nails keeps me walking upright ain't never failed

Too Much Information

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He couldn’t dredge up a single memory about the sex.

Lovers

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The lawyer is having a party the next weekend.... He's celebrating because he won a court case to have his alimony reduced.

Morning and Coffee

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A dirtied light falls through/ the grimed windowpanes.

In A Lightning Storm, Sheep Run Through Barbed Wire

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I used to fear things. The lonesome wind come through the clapboards. Dry hillsides rustling. My own skin in the summer heat. Rattlers. Lurking. Abandoned coal pits. Pa said I was afraid of desolation. I didn't know what he meant by that. How can you be…

Water, Not Fire

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I'll still want the blinds open and the lights on, to see the papier-mache of our flesh fighting death away to the century mark, even if you only want to live until a ripe eighty-two.

Tissue

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A tissue, she was saying - hand me a tissue. Her seat belt was locked and she was rocking back and forth in it cinching wrinkles into her favorite blue silk blouse. I can't remember her wearing anything else. Her hands were gesturing - on and on- an endless loop…

Resolution

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You say you want a resolution Well, I got one Let's start with nothing at all No logic, no war, no whiskey or bombs