Most read stories

this was very symbolic

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I remember this vivid dream I had once. Maybe you were in it? I’m not sure. There was a gang of spitting men outside this bar, standing beside a whole row of gleaming motorcycles, with tons of chrome, and I remember my dreams were their feathers. They

Us Kids in Left Field

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Us kids in left field steal out bedroom windows after dark to pinch hit Lucky Strikes between first and second fingers, arc the glow of shop-lifted hot-boxed cigarettes over the chain link homerun fence sprawl on perfectly ridiculous grass passing a bottle…

Stump the Nuns!

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“It's a combination of ‘Survivor' and ‘College Bowl' says Sister Mary Agnesita, the show's host. “We take four very strict nuns and match them up with boys who were cut-ups in their grade school classes."

Allergic Reaction

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On his way to his first fishing expedition in the Bay Area, the man remembered the rustle and shimmer of the willows by the muddied Jemez River in New Mexico, cold beer, the clean camaraderie of childhood friends. He walked along a path choked with greenery to the San Pablo…

The Human Phenom Project

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I sat at the vast graveyard of broken hearts on the mending fence of wonderment unsealing the silence of the wounds I began to put the pieces together like a puzzle against forgetting

Collect Enough Fragments, You've Got Yourself a Poem

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I. The sun's corona. Empty boxes near the firehouse. Red birth. A bird's lost wing. II. The bitterness of littleness. Apples in a pile.Early love.A spider, swinging. III. A father's harshness.Twelve bills unpaid. Leaves in a crevice. A dream…

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?

Sticking My Head Out of the Car Window

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Standing on the beach, watching the waves crash onto the shore, before the storm. It is easy to understand why dogs like sticking their head out of the car window. Standing on my favorite part of the beach, merely feet from the beach house. The house you weren't…

Rescued From A Dream

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There were six people on the bridge, myself included, and we were making our way across when something exploded—it was more a rifle shot than explosion, actually—and it cut like a razor through the delicate fabric of the moment.

Watch

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At six a.m. he was awakened by the alarm on the watch, and found he could not remove it from his wrist, though he was able to turn it off. Of course, she was gone, but had left a little patchouli-scented note on a pillow.

Double Vision

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To conceive of them separated was unthinkable to every wet-eyed soul at the burial.

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…

tremendous thousand years' charisma

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Okay, I’ll admit it, the earth was shaken on the world's underside, when you left for California. And I sometimes slept on the shores of Lake Michigan and Fox River for your tremendous thousand years’ charisma. To say I cried out in pain would be lettin

Harried or Employed

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Irony is written sarcasm. Sarcasm is spoken irony: the opposite of what is meant. Catholic irony in fiction seems deeper and more related to theme. Protestant irony starts with P as do other þing.

Notebook (excerpt)

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I try as much as I can to write but only in as much as you believe―am I successful.

The Form of a Cyclist

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His legs were pedaling hard and his heart was beating fast, He's got his scars; He can't outrun his past, Down the hill he goes, wind whipped his hair, a new style with each draft. He broke his brakes long ago; He cut the cable and ripped off the pads. He cried…

The Bricks

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He ordered a palace built, and the builders came to blows, which is why the father’s eyes have swollen shut, and the oldest son’s knuckles are bright plums.

Why?

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A perennial question.

God Wanted Us to Come Here

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Betty had been looking for a distraction; the lawsuits were out of control. Her last nonprofit, Faith and Life Children's Organization, had run into some difficulties due to the recession and the obvious result of trying to do more with less. Why couldn't people…

The Hostage

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My mother should have been a minister or a peace officer. Instead, she was a homemaker who ran the home like an agency. There were certain hard and fast rules.

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 Fourth Prague Defenestration: 18

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I went back to the Charles Bridge over the Vltava River and felt the plaque of the Wall of Gropers, and that was where we hatched our plan, in front of my ancestors. I could just feel their presence there. They would be with me, the Gropers of Prague.

The Night She Took Her Dignity Back

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She had endured three years of abuse for those hot, fleeting moments of tenderness—just enough warmth to keep her second-guessing the bitter frost. Now the ring promised a lifetime of biting back her pain.

Love Is All You Get

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"All these people," Rammstein complained, "seems all they wanna do is write about love, and sex along with it, you know? And I think it's because it's all feelgood shit; you know, your sweet baby loves you, and he or she's hot as Angie or Brad, and…

instead

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instead of gun metal deceit, sounds of malice;be a drop of rain.

Post-apocalyptic Fable # 8

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Crouching like little children in a game of hide & seek, we entered the old house, slowly

Wireless

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It seems that back in 1911, Kaiser Wilhelm came to this town

(Withheld) 1970

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The Moon The hatch of the lunar module hissed as it opened, a few puffs of leftover water vapor escaped toward them in a sparkling white cloud that rapidly dissolved…

Mother's Day

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By lunch: The dryer is an F-5 dervish of mismatched socks, blue jeans and your yellowing college T's, lovingly held onto. For a moment there is a comforting warmth and softness to their smell. In the debris strewn landscape of the living room a carcass

13 statements about the United States of Chimerica made by the Bird King during a press conference

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1. Jesus made the United States of Chimerica from the hide of a gator he killed with his bare hands back in the winter of '81.2. The people of the United States of Chimerica are watched over by a straight-talkin' angel with hillbilly eyes and a crown of nuclear missiles.3.…