Most read stories

Haiku, Sort Of

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“You look so … distinguished. My!” she said.

Where is Home?

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We are both 53 and this is the first time I’ve gotten past a third date with anyone from Match. Seth is different. I’m not sure why. My therapist said, “Well, maybe you’ll be good for each other. You both have to accept that you are recovering, or in reco

Pebbles Against Empire

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Whatever you have,/ we can monetize it

Government Contract

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So what happensTo the VFWIn a global economyAnd the monumentsErected in reverenceAfter the boysWho became menCame back homeTo be fathersThen grandfathersGreat-grandfathersAnd start to fall awayAs the days creep byThat petty paceOf politics as usualFamily DiasporasAnd maybe…

we used to drop her off along the way

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We do it all the time...

Carpe Mentis

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machine utility of thought, intangible aesthetic of sentiment.

Fundamentals

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You can have two threes, or three twos. I hear the beat both ways. It goes back and forth in my head, like magic, transforming from one to the other and back again. And I am learning the basics of music theory, and painting geometric shapes with primary colors. I am…

twitter quitter

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you can reach me at hashtag this!

Trust

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I wonder if it was my voice or the words I was almost but not quite saying, cautious words, the kind that wander deep inside one's mind ...

Red and Blue Lines of the German Painter, Otto Dix

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They can’t help Seeing a child even there In the crude brushstrokes. They say it is me.

Now Lay in It

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The phone rang again at midnight. Maury sat straight up in bed, a reflex from his days in the barracks. Linda, his wife, was already sitting up. In the hint of moonlight, she dabbed her nose with a wadded tissue and made helpless little noises. Maury…

Full Moon

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Creatures of the dark don’t follow daylight savings

The Condescending Skies of June

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I have become a prisoner of my own fractured mind/ A paranoid weirdo behind the horizontal bars of window shades

The Maple Leaf Club

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One of his operas was confiscated when he couldn’t pay a hotel bill. He ended up in a mental home, demented from syphilis.

Liberty of Cooking

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My dish was slut ("all done" in Swedish). It tasted good though aroused no draft, of mutton, for example. My grandparents' bed held flat. I filed alone, in realist kitchen, reading Froeding, standing, striding, continent as gym.

Drummer Boy

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A door slams. The vibrations rattle through the floor, up his legs and into his chest. He can hear the yells, and the tears that mar her voice. Rat-ta-tatRat-ta-tat A door slams. Eyes closed while images of a life he will never live flicker on…

Manet Nightmare

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the tall, thin ectomorph sat on the verdant, green grass as the unclothed naked woman on the Sunday-picnic blanket poured white cow’s milk into a vodka shot glass

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…

it was after a revolution, or a war, or some disaster

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I had this dream. We were living together, and we were in bed asleep when strange, enormous cats began crowding around our windows and meowing. They made awful scratching and scraping noises at the windows, trying to come in. But I couldn’t wake you up.

postscript

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the sand is hot to walk upon so you must run if caught there w/out footwear. it is like a painter has colored the sea and made parts of it dark blue yet other areas green. little birds jump around the fine grain world and that is when you wonder where they came…

Coming Home

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How many years has he dreamed he would be home again?

Survival

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When nothing's coming in All I have are fragments Cloudy memories Uncompleted projects Disappointments loom large and threaten to define me I am only as good as what I produce And now I feel empty So how do I shine How do I find the spark that…

Milky Way of Impossibility

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Can we meet in the desert, I will stand with a cactus flower clenched between my teeth and balance en pointe. I will tame snakes and find your serpent tongue with my eyes closed. I will usher in the clouds, when it grows hot, and, should you becom

Interior: Classroom

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No girl hits hard enough.

Five Million Yen: Chapter 32

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Wait a minute, said Ben. What do we really know?

The Fourth Prague Defenestration: 5

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Vladimir walked down the little path next to the creek with us. I stopped along the way and picked off a sliver of some of the bedrock that was sticking out alongside the narrow path, to take home with me as a souvenir of my family castle, just to be ab

His house

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His house incubates memories. As he sleeps, they hatch.His house is neither here nor there. It occupies a space between watchfulness and insomnia. Grey birds nest on its roof.His house is a refuge from everything except himself. The floor, walls, roof are fat with him.…

Mural, Mosaic, and Satori

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He thought of natural violence that had to do with the wind and the Atlantic Ocean. He thought of the Gulf Stream, that important title, that someone had shown him on a map and explained about in detail.

Clipboard Cutie

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Perhaps she’s also a do-gooder. One of those socially conscious, change-the-world type girls complete with a never ending supply of life’s own contagious enthusiasm.

Anniversary

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He honestly could care less.  We should converse, you and I, he says. All right, she says.  She lays down the baster in her drawn out way, heel to toe on the countertop, one step in a…