Most read stories

The Nude Pianist: A Novel: Chapter 28

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On Monday, Michiko returned from Cleveland in a foul mood. She called Frank’s studio at three in the afternoon.

My Yogurt Jones

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And so began my love affair with a thick, semisold substance. Sort of like Mary Van de Velde, the chubby girl who was my partner in my 6th grade polka troupe.

Woman at the Bar

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I saw a woman / at the bar tonight

On Learning a Lover Died a Suicide

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I got the news that you had died as I was eating American chop suey, watching the Celtics.

Odysseus Remembered

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Years later Polyphemus still remembers the wine-soaked taste of Odysseus’s men. The barley and garlic-flavored Greeks. Their flesh a fibrous, blood-hued hummus. Their crunched bones releasing sweet marrow.

What Day is it?

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My mind is on idle as it knows no other way to go. I look for good news, but if there is any, will I be able to process it?

A Harsh Pep Talk

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You are nothing but a generic white man with average looks and intelligence, trapped in an indie romantic comedy. You sit in your overstuffed coffeeshop chair, drinking an impossibly befoamed cappuccino, the sleeves of your flannel rolled up to your elbows, mellow synth…

Shovels and Honeysuckles

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When she would leave my pillows still smelled like her. I would just inhale her for hours afterwards, sex and honeysuckles.

The Sun's Curtains

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It must be nice not to have to worry About certain things because those things are not yet In your circle, or in your circus, of life. I don't begrudge you for being almost grown in A much different, sweeter place and time. I'm thrilled By…

20. Smitten

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Your tunamelt cadence / Sank me to ocean floors

Gator v. Funky Worm: Which Office Party Dance to Choose?

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It’s that time of year. The combustible mixture of booze, poinsettia corsages and the soulful sounds of Eddie Venturi and the Fastidians will cause people to get up and dance at holiday office parties who have no business doing so.

Myra's Cigarettes

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I know from the experience of too many odd sideways glances that folks are seldom interested in my brand of observation. No one else seems to wonder how many commas there are in the library or how many other people own that exact shirt.

JOSEPH YOUNG

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JOSEPH YOUNG Joseph Young You might start with the top of the head, where the heat goes. This is first, first from the womb, the first word. Joseph Young There might have been a faith that placed it in the mouth, not the…

Small Boat Row Told Through a Roughed Out Dungeon Window

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The princess knew exactly where to find the annoying gurgling frog of her childhood, but she wasn't wearing the right shoes to step onto lily pads with, so she decided there and then to take a stolen boat out onto that soft mission, all by herself instead. It was a…

Losses in Translation

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One/ can’t always trust the eye and ear// in such matters but what can one do?/ Mistakes will be made.

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."

What He Delivered

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Blue Crabs

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The perfect murder, and it’s not even murder.

The Prince of Beers

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“All I want,” he was heard to say, “is a date with a really good-looking woman before I go away.”

Grandma Rose Watched the Fights

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I think she later thought about that. Just as she loved her son, I loved my mother. Just as my dad loved her, so the same kind of protective honoring love existed. Right or wrong, it was there, the elephant in the room.

Perfect Lady

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I want to write a story about a woman who lies to men about her height.

Getaway

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She’d picked him up at a party freshman year, calling him Danny. Until then he had always been Daniel. He’d said nothing and his name was changed.

Third Shift

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Some great, doubtless precious; some hollow, likely empty; some only shards, but you never know...

Good boy.

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It’s quite simple - don’t move. No fake or feint - just stand your ground. The fixed gaze, the thousand yard stare, hold your place.

It's Like That

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Like the term rogue cop

Bare Ruined Palace

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Every encounter is a dance, every secret has its key

Gummi Worms, Love, etc.

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It was R who embodied love for me. We’d eaten gummi worms in the park, held them up to the sun, yellow and green and translucent. When we returned to her flat, they were everywhere. I’d never seen such a thing. They hung in the air, these gummi worms.

Halfsies

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You and she might make love here, next week, and I'll buy my own razor, switch from baths to showers. I shave my legs in my imagination. They, like life, are smooth.

Widow Walk

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She heads toward the end of the island and doesn't look back.

Golden Dawn

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Rose would have preferred to survey the wreckage alone, between sips of her earl grey, but the morning light drew her attention to blonde and jet black curls weaving into folds of fabric.