Most read stories

Out of the Woods

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No, your clever costume won’t protect you.

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?

bucket of keys

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I imaged him at his mother's house, eating chicken and tabouli with her at her round marble table, leaning back and laughing, then reading my “love you” and excusing himself to cry in the bathroom.

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…

Kinky Eggs

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She plucks two eggs from the carton, weighs and measures them with the cup of her palm, the curve of her fingers.

Post-apocalyptic Fable # 8

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

(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…

Mo Band Names

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Her Majesty’s Glasses Umbilical Chord Linger Finger Okay Inkjet The Dragon Flies Horny Free Spirit Good Footnote Buttery Clams You’reUp Empty Bladder Star Butter Karmic Impulse Mr. On-the-Ve

Double Vision

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

I want to hear the man talk

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I remember going out to a restaurant with some guy and a friend of mine who brought her little boy along. And suddenly her boy said, “I want to hear the man talk.” Well, that stopped us. Smart kid, I thought. He was fed up hearing her women friends talk

The curtain

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In the evening the curtain recounts its day. Faces, images, incidents it has observed from the window. Its voice is nuanced, modulated, quivering, for it is made of lace. It appears to crochet its words with needle sounds. My eyes, during confinement, are not wide open, not…

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.

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

Rubber Chains

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He turned metal chains to rubber with the force of his mind. He prepared tacos for the paperboy.

A Slick Story

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After Slick Daddy — aka Billy Ray Thompson — gave up driving his log truck and took up with playing and singing the blues full-time he was what you might call a hot property around the juke joints along Highway 61. The women didn't seem to mind…

Soulspring, by Norman Klein.

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The call came...

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.

November 6th

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Need not remember, the 6th of November.

Jade Cicada

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Jade in the emperor’s death mouth – to the grave – all openings closed – no breath – no air – no life to enter to leave – the end should be silent – you stop my mouth

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.

Moving Out

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Lying in the blissful glow of young television. Idly sleeping, eyes open and ears closed.

Cause of Death

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“You sure?” He nods. “Maybe it was pneuomonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis.” Flash of a smile, sobbing laughter, like an abandoned seal.

All Wet

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the small break of consciousness that is my dreamswaterso much wateri can never forgive the watertoo many tears

Dreams Bright White Smash

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She was there then gone then there again. We were naked and wet and touching, she let me touch her, but she didn't want to be there. But she was, despite herself. It was my dream. You can go if you want. …

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

Old Photograph Stuck Between Documents

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I spent the evening looking at our old pictures. / We were never happy. I realize that now.

Yamoussoukro, 2012

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He is underneath them. His head is like the head of a worm.

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.

Chalky goes to night school and studies the Classics

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I don’t even want to think about Aethra shtupping Posiden and Aegeus

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.