Most read stories

Skunks

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I tell people that we leave out food for the creatures to appease the skunk gods.

Free Magic Lessons

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" No honest poet can ever feel quite sure of the permanent value of what he has written: he may have wasted his time and messed up his life for nothing."--T.S. EliotI think, okay now I know, the poem's starting to wear off. But I'm alive, at least…

In The Place Between

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We played and had joy. As the seasons changed in that peripheral world, we did not feel it. We only saw the snow a bit, only felt the wind a bit, we were not really in it. We still kept ourselves busy. There was something that I did begin to notice. I cou

Day One

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I lounged in my captain’s chair growing a beard. Things continued in this way and then the president called.He wanted to know the meaning of virtue.

The Bridge

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And the urban sprawl doesn’t hesitate. All around me, I taste the aftermath of bricks, dust and dirt, freshly laid concrete slabs.

Gray Lizard

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He can’t enlarge the rock—/ can only find its safest distance

Micromanaged Truth

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Let your father stay through that dinner when his mistress needed him, while your mother was on the verge.

SHOPPERS MAKE ME NAUSEOUS

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A meaningful conversation Subdued the huge Toys “R” Us question mark Standing sun-bleached and sprinkler-dirtied In our flowerbed On the patio Explode your fanny pack, A clinking most dangerous The Mysterious: Its …

The way the sky was now

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I’d like to say we didn’t remember the Alamo, but one of ours had to piss. We ran into youknowwho and he was fighting Mexicans and it was so beautiful and there were fireworks, or else it was God’s wrath, or else it was the sky now.

Shouting the Muse Down

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In the tumbled-down now there's too much material, culled from pretty boys that don't notice me and tattooed ones that do, and I'm certain there's at least one dreamer soaking eyes into me who knows all the twisted lyrics invoking pretty little horses.

Free As A Bird

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The cell was crowded, barely enough room to swing a cat.

Lilies

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Every spring, outside on the back deck, my mother and I have the same talk about how time flies, and she always waves her hand in the air as if swatting at a fly, but there's never anything there. She thinks the lilies will live all summer spread like a rainbow,…

Fernando

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“It's not him,” Kelly says. “I think it might be,” says her Mom. The three of us are sitting on the long sofa facing the wall which is one …

Dreamless

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We call it the alley of the shadows, the low sunless concavity of earth between the stalks, the acrid scent of the ripened arrow-points.

Five Million Yen: Chapter 33

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This will take forever. I’ll never get to Antibes to meet Isabella, much less make it to Marseille to deliver the picture and then catch the overnight train to Paris. I may have to call Jean-Claude Lyon, the orchestra manager of the Monte Carlo orchestra,

Notes to the Dead

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The kind of poem poets write and read. I mean, hey I was feelin’ it HARD at 3:24 am, and this is what spilled out.

Our Date Was Better In Reverse

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I felt my words reach out and try to grab him by the heart. They missed.

Always nervous

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and still every time I walked up there - so it can't be the cycling - I was nervous I would do it wrong

Five Million Yen: Chapter 21

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Some friends of mine took him for a ride out to Broad Channel, you know that enclave of crazies that live in houses on stilts on the island in Jamaica Bay on Cross Bay Boulevard. He might find that when the tide comes in, the water might be a little deepe

The City

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“A story shines brighter through a tear in your eye,” You say

A Rave for "How the Sixties Ended"

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"At a bare minimum it deserves to be a major cult hit."

Unlimited And Limited

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Despite kryptonite not actually existing it became possible to buy, for 300 dollars, pieces of kryptonite on eBay. Personal protection, the sales pitch said. The pieces of kryptonite looked suspiciously like green plastic.

Smack

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They shoot up through the soles of their feet once the veins in their arms are all used up. They shoot up in their necks like the cows on the African Savannah

On Senior Prom & Being Profoundly Unpleasant

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When I was in high school, we had a prom. The juniors were paired with the seniors; and when I was a senior, I recall meeting my date for the first time. You can imagine she was not enthralled.

How to Lose Control of Your Pencil

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Real hands

Dream

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Lately, instead of the images of dreams waking me up, as has always been the case, it is sounds that jolt me awake. The thumps and roars and slithering of creatures unseen. The ghosts that slam cupboards shut. The apparitions of robbers breaking down the front door:…

I Want to Leave You With My Passwords

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I mean let's be real.

Mantis

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Sally knows the situation: if your name's on the list you can't come in. If they try to walk past her, swipe their card on the electronic barrier's scanner, instead of a short benevolent bleep and the gate sliding open, it will fail. The hapless individua

Left On The Scrap Heap

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Daylight and cold sensed as an abstract, a number in my mind. Air thin, polluted, lacking oxygen. But the Recyclers are at it again.

Elevator Music

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Of course, no one can control what goes on in an elevator.