Most read stories

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

The Brevity of Anthropology

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In time's embroidery, the human storyis a short stretch of a short strand within the thread of half a knot-and that stretch of strand's defective. What will mourn us when we're gone?Not the plants which live so lightly on the earth.Not the scorpions and not the ants.Perhaps…

The Girl Next Door to Andy

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Then there was this short little girl, Jo Ann, who had a daughter and was divorced, who lived next door to my buddy Andy. She told me right after we did it one night that she had always wanted to have sex with me when she was growing up, as a teenager, I

Secrets / Cigarettes

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We gave our cigarettes names.

Origin Story

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My father taught me how to solder and that's when I first started to write. Now, when you hold the soldering iron in your hand and depress the trigger, the tip of the gun heats up. Novices uncoil the solder and place it on the hot tip, but that just results in it…

Write me a Will

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Write me a Will you laughing boy,

Boundaries

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Hands and fingers feeling down Cross the boundaries I laid

The Parade

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I see them walking. They pass right by my house. If I’m outside, I sit down on our porch and watch the parade. Sometimes I watch them out of a front window.

The Roses Ask For You

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The roses ask for you when I smell them They seem to remember your touch more than others. They can’t bear it when you’re gone and wonder when you’ll be returning I am beginning to do the same I no longer go outdoors to be with them

My best

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I don't have time

Myra's Mind

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She once told me that cleanliness is next to godliness, but I think everything is next to godliness, if you care enough to pay attention.

One Thousand Incarnations and One Thousand Deaths - Part II

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The door flew open, hitting the wall, and the woman seated in the corner across from her pressed herself against the bench. Loretta saw that down through her petticoats came a trickle of yellow liquid, which pooled on the floor.

Philip Guston, Painting, Smoking, Eating

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As far as I can tell, all he eats is wedges of cake from the plate on top of his blanket as he lies there in bed, smoking cigarettes and staring up at the painting of a pile of shoes. Or else this is a real pile of shoes building up beside the

It's Tough

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got the space heater going in the desert got a lot of space out there somewhere

Tomorrow

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You hold me now, and pay attention. Everything is new.

Better Spent Time

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there is a tunnel / between your skin and the ground / for kisses to crawl

The Nude Pianist: A Novel: Chapter 12

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Frank was happy to leave the art show and take the train back to SoHo.

Me and Coleridge Take a Spin in the Phlegethon

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Like so many high school drugheads I warmed up to Coleridge because he was an dope fiend. If you want to get young men interested in poetry it helps if you lure them to the art through controlled substances.

Thirteen Ways of Looking at Blackbeard

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Across the placid sea/The only moving ship/ Was eyed by Blackbeard

The Executioner

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No one knows where the wind comes from, but sure as hell it comes. The executioner glances round the reception area. Nods to himself. Function versus form. Anodyne, instantly forgettable, like hotel rooms. Perfect.

The Nude Pianist: A Novel: Chapter 35

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I visited his loft last week. There were many exciting new pictures. Francesco was your main money earner before, now he will be again.

The Nurse

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I lay on a table in a cold room in one of those little blue gowns that open in back.

Beach Bird Bliss

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This day, oh, this day… shoved joy and gratitude in my face, then tossed in beauty and just a touch of grace. A Piping Plover set my sorrows by the side, nabbing morsels when it could, then racing from the tide. Junior Eagle perched…

Every Mirror with Two Sides

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She was gazing down at her two hands holding the peach seersucker top, but without blinking she saw four hands—ahh, idiot, the mirror! But in the next moment no, it was four hands . . .

Dragonfly

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Dragonfly She danced out of the burning rubble, wrapped in a shawl made of iridescent silk. It must have been her grandmother's. Her arms were wings, the silk translucent and fluttering. Fire fell from the sky. Thatched roofs, walls of mud-daubed sticks, the huts…

Cold

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Winter will be cold this year, you tell her. You read that. She says she is with child with her new husband. You tell her she's forty-five, it is selfish. The baby. It's fine. You demand to be at her tests. Evan may let you, she says. He's a doll. She would never use that…

Meat and Bones

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The man who put up the clothes line left his kids upstairs at night and came down to my bed.

Like 37 Hiroshima Bombs

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Once in a while I have the time of my life / in this god-forsaken Earth:

Edward Ogle the Ninth

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Vanilla bean trampoline

Intimate Dialogues - "Ledge"

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It was a mildly windy day of the working week in the financial district of the city—the bright morning sun was out—when a security guard was called to the fifteenth floor to deal with a disruption. “This way.” Someone pointed to a desk. At the desk