Most read stories

Exhumation

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the poems/ we never got to will remain,

John Brigham's Dog

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Every day from my window I saw John Brigham's dog making its way across my field. The dog picked carefully through the shorn corn stubble taking the same route, I'm guessing, it took when the stalks made a shaded rustling forest. There is a narrow path…

Buck, naked

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Buck, naked, has no words. The best he can manage is a dopey strangulated cough. His wife, who is clothed, stands before him, next to the waterbed that took Buck half a day to force into the trailer.

Arcana Magi Memorial Vol.7 - c.4

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Azure lowered her head, nearly burying it in the window, watching the helicopter land.

You Require Sharpness of Image and Therefore of Words

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I wrote a poem and asked a professor to read it. / He said: IMAGE IMAGE IMAGE IMAGE / like a mad man on meth, foam running down / his mouth crowded with sharp, shimmering teeth.

When I Met the Mountain Man

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I am young. This is years before I start to hide my accent.

Coffee Alone

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And pity us, this generation of sighing:

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…

Next Time, Academics

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I suggested when we passed the flesh shack that we turn around and that I go in and say to the sex workers that the Russians are fetching $3.5K per hour in Manhattan and it's private, unlike there at that road-side shack.

Honey Nut Cheerios and Chocolate Milk

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Charley calls to say he hasn't heard from me. The blinds are gone, so I take a lipstick off the living room table and draw a circle around his head. I make a half-circle for his gut, a squiggle for the telephone cord. He can come over, he says, just to …

Are You A Handywoman? Take This (Not Entirely Serious) Test and Find Out!

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As I was reading “Not Your Mother's Book on Home Improvement,” a new collection of light-hearted essays by (primarily) middle-aged female do-it-yourselfers, it became abundantly clear to me that, unlike the women who tell their stories here, I am not a…

The Roman Twin

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Reverend Peter Roman could stand it no more. He stopped his speech. He felt a fire burning through him, a hatred for humanity and all the weaknesses of beings not perfect before God. He stood a long while, staring at the congregation. Then, he slowly spok

The Hitler Channel

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The sound of a siren approaches his home. His wife asks him why he's so nervous. It's nothing, he says, but he rises from the couch and peers into the night from behind the curtains. The siren approaches relentlessly. The road twists and turns and the sound fades but always…

The Buddhist

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She is not centered, but she finds her way.

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…

Nevermore

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One said 'Yes, I remember.' He was dark and tall and slender A masterful pretender who laid roses on the floor Appearing on the eve of morrow, so slow and full of sorrow With a costume he did borrow, borrowed from the poet's lore From the rare and rad

The Rider

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"The rider rode his bike in Arizona just about every day and for all the usual reasons....."

Thanksgiving, 2018

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The cornbread for dressing cools./ The cranberries boil with one cup each/ of sugar and water. The aromas are nice

Commander of the Armies of the Four Winds

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"Commander of the Armies of the Four Winds" concerns a nightmare endured by Commander Daniel Bennett of the San Diego Police Department after he is assigned to recover the stolen Necromancer Artifact, which purports to invoke nefarious spirits imprisoned

It's Like That

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Like the term rogue cop

Pebbles Against Empire

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Whatever you have,/ we can monetize it

Into the Mystic

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Writing opens doors to perception. For example, the glockenspiel smells of gardenias, but the catwalk is opening a can of Franklin stove. It emits fumes of fairyland and olive. And in the green and pleasant country of Scotland and England, vintage trains go…

the weather past where roads end

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a soft wooden clatter, wind-battered reeds/bound to the banks of ditches rank,/ill-purposed waters slide into low swamps/whose waters into rivers seep and crawl.

Sailor's Visa

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He's got a rager for Casablanca, the old Bogart and Bergman classic. I can't snap him out of it.

Hold on

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I slept and it was pleasant. Then there was the kiss, and it was hot. Later you turned away, and all was November chill. Now there are touches, caresses and shouts, Marvelous nights flavored with favors bestowed, and blackened days,…

Carpe Mentis

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machine utility of thought, intangible aesthetic of sentiment.

It's My Birthday

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and the President didn't call.

Alfamadog

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It was that special ache between heart and stomach that made me stop things. That ache that cannot be caused by the mere knowledge that you have steered your life into a completely wrong direction. To feel this pain, you also need to have no clue why and how it…

Reality TV is Dead

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Welcome to the world of (un)reality television. He/she who dies with the most stories wins. Another kind of religion. The Church of Being Famous For Whatever.

To Christine, Whom I Loved Because Another Would

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She was from Tennessee, with advantages over me. An upbringing surrounded by books and sensitivity.