Most read stories

Suspicion

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A woman confronts her suspicions about her husband's fidelity.

Pavane

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The shadows hang fast on the downs this day: And I hang like the darkness, over heath and down; Since the air there is clearer than the clouds, men say, And I'm lost in the country, I shall turn to town. If the heather is restless, then the fete is …

Museum Story Listening

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A sort of invocation of the open sky, in contradistinction to the dark of the Earth whence came the specimens, a figurative marriage of the literal darkness of exploration and the figurative light of knowledge.

Toothed and Thorny

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Cliffs are not all I've known, but I've seen them every day since I came to light. When I first broke out of the shell that protected me from feet and poisons, I pushed my way into darkness. It was soil. I could not have survived if it was light, and when I surfaced there…

Frankenstein (In Three Sentences)

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I made a man of men. He made a man of me, the way all men are finished, in tragedy and sorrow. Together, we make a story, for other men, brothers and sisters.

My Alice

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My story begins where so many have ended, strapped fast to a cold table, just moments from a lobotomy needle and anything resembling the man that I am.

Eulogy

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In one hand she cradles a cigarette, in the other a glass of red wine. Typically neither of these things would be allowed in here, and on this occasion it was thought that it would be better to let her do what she wanted.

In the Air Tonight

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But that last night in Europe, getting ready to fly out of Amsterdam back to the States, I heard this Phil Collins song, “In the Air Tonight,” which expressed some of the turmoil and confusion and whole-life hysteria I was feeling inside. Waves of fru

Fire In The Heart

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The woman leapt from the top of the burning building. The flames reddened the faces of the watching crowd. The heat pushed them back. The woman hit the ground. The crowd oooooed. If only I'd been a firewoman, I thought, with a ladder as tall as a building and a…

At the Jr. Algonquin Roundtable

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“He didn’t finish ‘The Witchcraft of Salem Village,’” Scooter says, tattling on his little brother. I’m projecting him to be a first-round draft pick by the National Security Agency in about ten years.

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.

Rule of exchange

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She seizes my hand. I resist just enough to sense her strength.

Old Joke

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How many exceptional people/ does it take to change a light bulb?

Tinkler Man

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As the light changed and exhaustion set in, Suzy and Molly batted back and forth one more knock knock joke to avoid going home.

Assiduity Twenty Three

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The outside world will intrude . . .

Upper East

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As the 5 train gained momentum away from Fulton Street, Helen took her seat with the alertness and suspicion of someone who had spent the day negotiating prices with dirty fishmongers.

Cheney Had Plans To Light Off the Reichstag

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The whole human race was in trouble. As I said in another story a couple of weeks back, Zork the Galactic Destroyer had plans to make Planet Earth a nice, toasty snack for him and his boys. He'd sent his most illustrious spy, the Good Captain Zeep,…

The Witch in the Canyon

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There's a witch in Laurel Canyon.She made Wes a promise.Her bungalow smelled like Parliaments. Parliaments, garlic frying in olive oil. Parliaments, garlic frying in olive, and a freshly opened pack of Red Vines. Wes could have curled up into a ball and fallen asleep on her…

The Magic Trumpet

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I gave my trumpet case to a girl named Sophie; she liked the velvet inside.She still played with dolls;they would live there,in the dark away from the world.Safe. I was a terrible trumpeter;i missed the high notes in band, squawked like a chicken.I strapped the trumpeton my…

said the fury to the shade

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let competitions in crime ensue let every madness bring let every sword be drawn let every furious rage flow free let anger know no shame let all blind rage inflame . . .

Remember?

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We'd been talking about the baby, about what we would do, when the women began fighting after the wedding held in the church next to our apartment. Their fierce and piercing arguments crawled up the walls to the second story window we sat next to. We'd looked outside…

End Time

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and you fall down.

There Is No Glass

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I'm a heathen in the church of the absolute.

Scene of Mostly Unwilling Players

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Chewing on peppered peanuts, thin flakes scattered carelessly around his squat, Father unfurls his turban and mops his clammy pate with an open palm.

EXAMINATION

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I had the idea while I was in the county jail. I would get jail glasses; I wouldn’t be me; I’d be some other person. I could pretend that it was someone else rotting away in that 8x12 cell.

Poet Found Living Near Berkeley!

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Reports have been spreading fast that an actual living poet has been found right outside the borders of Berkeley Rumors grew into a wildfire of speculation Saturday night when one of them a tall graying older specimen more or less in the

Autobiography 22: It’s Not Just the Income

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Unless they leave you comatose,/ it’s the disasters you remember.

Night and Day

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The muezzin calls the faithful, his voice soaring over the rooftops, over the trees and the brooks,

Friday Out

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Seeing her in black / with his arm around her / from the other side / of a glass door. / He gave her a beer. / She might’ve been thirsty, / uncomfortable.

washing in the dawn

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Here and there a few bits of beauty, with the highest respect, reverence, erect with pride. Almost twice a thousand dawns, ten thousand in intimacy, the breasts, the nipples, means of the world to nourish itself, by the intimate bay. It's almost pun