Most read stories

The $275 Root Beer Float

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That was some root beer float. It cost us a grand total of $275. She pulls up in front of Fenton’s Ice Cream Parlor and leaves the motor running while I jump out and run into the parlor. It was early evening. We HAD to have a root beer float. You

Uncanny Valley, Goodbye

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When not enough is left to utterThe syllables it takes to say,Goodbye--Disassembled and developed,Laid upon the ground,Like the girded gridlockOn your smog befitted brow...Goodbye.And what if I said, hello?What if I said, good day?Would it change your sunken bodyAnd repair…

Flowing, Flown

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Flowing, Flown In the field stands a jealous man with fifteen eyes stored inside the cuffs of well-worn khaki pants. His pockets pull with clinking dimes…

the fine hair on your belly

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On the beaches in the summer the fine hair rose up from under the material of your bikini and swirled around your deep navel, almost invisible to the naked eye, but not to the mind, which imagines everything funneling down into the center of your being,

Casualties of War

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When Jimmy – and Frank and John and all the rest – joined up, it all seemed a big lark. Little Mary – she can’t have been more than about five years old – was dead proud her Dad was going off to fight the Germans. I doubt she really knew who the

Pathology

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PATHOLOGY How awful it is to dissect a marriage! It lays naked on the therapist's steely table. He makes his first incision into the bloated stomach of our malnourished union. He polishes his glasses and peers, cuts the thin taut skin of our…

Dina Goes to Belfast

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Dina was a woman obsessed. She had endured a three hour layover in Chicago and another four in Heathrow for this. (The flight she had enjoyed with a few glasses of red and an HGTV show about plumbing that she could watch again and again.) She had staked out this corner of…

What You Get

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In moving crowds I plan to break you.

scraps

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i’m trying to remember don’t all the best apples happen in September?

Goodbye

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In the end, he knew he wasn’t going home.

Sourballs

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Lights of human occupation burn/ in patterns like the growth/ of a bacillus, lethal and prodigious,

Video from Cairo

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The view from the tenth floor of Ramses Hilton hotel was depressing. A restless crowd undulated between the wrecks of tanks and armored cars. JOURNALIST: Hey! I’m dying here, and you admire the views?

Life After Les Miz

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There are many ways to cope effectively with your life after a Les Miserables run, and everyone is different, but here are some things that have helped others work through the process.

Cheese

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So, my wife got fired from her job for being three minutes late five times. But he had it in for her, the fatty boss. He was lazy and she was smart, in line for his job. And she had a workman's comp case against the hospital—she'd slipped in pudding in the cafeteria…

Wedding

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It was cold in the church. The Lutherans were freezing to death. The Catholics brought their winter coats.

My Stuff

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Crass, vulgar, boorish, impaired, angry, depressed, jealous, regretful.

Walking with the Moon

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I heard a voice. It was calling me as from a far-off cloud. I listened, holding my breath, and heard it again, though fading away, barely audible. If I hadn't known my name I wouldn't have decrypted it. Three hazy syllables clearly detached with a sigh between each of them.…

The Price of Empire

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I saw three kids the other day, two girls and a boy, crouched in conspiracy

aromatic

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this bleeding sun, clove studded & seedless

Fugue No. 2

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Moonless sky of stars, silently flickered by bats, with constellations defined and bold. The curve of the plough matching that of your shoulder, as if it were a decoration.

Blind Jack

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The blind can be a little bit Angry now and then Trying to be independent They don’t want or need your help Usually. They’re a little like bees You have to learn to leave them alone But I remember one day when I Guided the fingers of Bli

Project Undeath (Work in Progress)

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The moon bulges with meticulous sick amber fire while first night’s chest heaves and sputters free infantine monstrosity from plague-wormed hovels, din mold choked grottos, and stale metal-cast labyrinth catacombs.

A Cool Dry Place PART 1

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There are times when she is heavy and times when she is light.

Smooth and Crunchy

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No freebies. You want to read it, you have to read all of it.

sunburn

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I used to compare her to a sunburnthe first of the summerit is always the worst oneexposed skinalmost hot to the touchturning warm and pinkthen raw and redit is a transition that is effortlessbut still you can feel it happeninga lot like loveyou can feel it all around…

The Town, Part 1

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Waiting for the light to turn, his mind wandered, wondering how it was that bridges of this sort collected stories. Old thru truss bridges with grated deckings, or any older bridge for that matter. The stories seemed to have died out since the concrete

The shoes of 9/11

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thunder striking in a pancake cumulative, his building bouncing upon itself, life going Richtor Scale, a billion pounds of panic per square second

Mothers

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No, no mother’s tenderness: she shows no sign of that … Do you know that she has them make their own bed? No, not the girl: the boys too! Yes, the boys. She humiliates them.

Nothing But Neat at the NBA All-Star Game

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“I’m sure he meant no disrespect,” LeBron said, playing the peacemaker. “For example, I used to be ‘The Chosen One’ but I changed my nickname to ‘Chip’. Like it?”

Room # 23

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She stood for a moment to think about what happened inside. She had just killed her husband of twenty three years.