Most read stories

from Abel, to a reproachful correspondent

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when you betrayed the vain ambition of my death,/I did not complain.

The Wedding

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Anneliese inserted one of her crystal drops in Hymen's left ear and kept her left earring in. For a quarter, she bought a handful of cashews and plopped them on a red napkin.

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.

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.

Old Joke

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

It's Tough

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

Assiduity Twenty Three

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The outside world will intrude . . .

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.

Senior Center

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Some of the elderly men and women are coming forward....

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

The Number Nine and The One After That

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Johnny K. didn't much like taking his exotic drugs any more. He now thought that the common reality was already an intense enough trip without wrapping it all up in enough gauze to cause permanent daydreams to the head. He liked his cheap hamburgers…

End Time

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and you fall down.

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…

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.

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.

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.

Rule of exchange

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

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

Like 37 Hiroshima Bombs

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

Face to Face

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The face had become a chilling death mask.

BLT

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I had a sister-in-law who was a licensed nutritionist. Not sure what “licensed” means, but she had some certificate and worked in a hospital. Hospitals! Places not known for their cuisine, much less their nutrition. —So, what do you…

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,…

Basement Concert

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You don't just hear the sound, you are the sound, you and everyone else in the room.

Five Million Yen: Chapter 54

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Ben was cheered to see Monique in good spirits again.

egg

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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…