Most read stories

Incivility for Breakfast

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I gently honked my horn and gave her the kind of friendly neighbor wave that only friendly neighbors can give. She didn’t wave back. What the hell is her problem?

Du Fu's spring scene

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state a shambles, mountains and rivers endure./meanwhile, the city hides amidst spring's thick growth . . .

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

Erasing the Modern World

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An electromagnetic pulse/ scrubbed the servers./ The clouds wisped and blew away, empty./ Markets lost what little mind they had.

Him

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He is poised erect before me. I take pleasure in soft skin that does not betray the strength of his cock, firm and yet vulnerable beneath my fingertips. With my hands, I coax him to his full length, girth. Tonight I ignore the heat of my Delta and bow my head in worship…

3 Poems and a Seething Pen

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it’s more about how all those words look around each other. he’s more interested in the shape of things, than the reality....

Endless

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Endless. I find this story.Beginning. To walk.Repeating. Repeating.The Memory. Of snow.Amsterdam. Rivers narrow.Hearts. Divide.Hands. Emboldened.Patronizing. Unpatriotic.Semblance. House held open.Forging. The ties…

Waves

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“still watersrun deep” is not my portionborn to make waves Formed from the ocean

The Swindler

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John Davies paces nervously around an empty parking lot...

ExsanguiNations

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leaches fatten-up

The Conversion

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She became suited to herself only. She no longer tried in any way to fit, she fought the molds they created and kept moving in her own direction. Often forward, sometimes a bit backward, and she rightly scaled her own Mt. Olympus and there she sat with he

Freakuccino

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The bus was almost empty, just me and an Asian girl who'd cleaned up some since I'd seen her. She was wearing a too-big T-shirt that said Freakuccino and writing in a notebook. If she remembered me she didn't say so I didn't either. Everybody sheds some…

The New Girl

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She’s new, with the enthusiasm of a new person. And everyone wants the new girl.

Shoot

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Dear Brandon Lee: I know that you're dead and can't respond to letters, but I've always felt a connection to you.

Joe and the Spiderman

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Once upon a time I sat in summer chairs beside cool vine walls. This was in a borough east of the major city, where families gathered in seasonal joy, by blooms fragrant, to worship the summer and its might. There is nothing diminutive about the world when one is…

The Glassblower

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His beloved are paper-thin when he blows into the free end. Green tint from copper.

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…

Whip Poor Will

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Save your delirium...

In the Chambers of the End

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Tiny skiers look like beetles/on a white bedspread. /We watch them fall to earth from/the high peaks and tell ourselves this is the week that sealed it

Pain

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Everything I understand / is in danger.

Bats at Twilight

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“If we had more bats we’d have fewer bugs,” I said. She shrank back into her sweater, and gave me a look, then a shrug.

Musica

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A sizzling as skin and sinew melt, fall away. "Scream if you need to scream, child." And I scream, and her song gains strength. The warmth of her around me. It is time.

Reburial at sea

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“Sloshes to sloshes. Drip to drip,” I said, then ceremoniously flushed the toilet bowl, our heads bowed in reverence as Molly and I gave Swimmy its last rites. Swimmy, named by Molly whose overstatement of the obvious is endearing in a three-year-old, was…

Stellar

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After our first kiss, a team of scientists scrubbed away the cancer of your lipstick.

Give Back the Moon

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to us! Without it we are less than human and cannot guarantee your safe passage through our woods any more. Give us back the moon. It is the primary element in the makeup of our deepest breaths taken to invoke all cycles to continue. It contains…

Not Writing

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I don't look like other poets. / People hardly believe it when I say / "I write poetry, sometimes. / During lonely evenings."

Atrocities

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My table offers up the gutted calf/ with carrots and potatoes yanked / alive and whole

Various War Stories

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War Stories #1The Germans didn't like that theJews had such beautiful women.War Stories#2There must have been a war between the good witches and the bad witches. It's the only thing that would account for such troubling times.Woman With Yellow HatWhy did…

Dramatic Effect

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You wanted transcendence, wanted height, danger, the tracks blurred into murky distances behind and in front of you. You slipped, reached for it, starlight shining in your eyes, something you didn't have when I held your hand. We didn't fold the…