Most read stories

in that time

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in that time people had gone away and i waited in the inside and looked out on balconies. the ending of the dusk was coming and the details of the railings and brick, the tree branches holding purple plums, the stacked railway ties and a thousand other details became…

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.…

Professor University

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Is this a tenure track position?

PTSD

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the queue for hell

American Passage

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The moon, a cataract cloaked in its charcoal fog, slowly seeps among the trees; night's unguent.Its glance is constant and white,its arc known. I watch its brow of bone with constant wonder.The long, slow funeral of America is taking its time; its…

Picked Up

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Tucker walked the long and lonely stretch of highway in front of him. The loneliness didn't matter; he had his own way of handling that feeling. The walking, however, was wearing away at his mind. How…

What was your first Combat Mobile Team experience?

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My first Combat Mobile experience was as the only Specialist in an ATC ("air traffic control") assignment. The rest of the squad were simple grunts lead by the massive Sergeant James T. Adams, Regular Army, the ghost of the Central Highlands. Sgt. Adams m

The Woman Who Loved Water

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I hear the woman upstairs running water. But that's incorrect. I should say the woman upstairs is running from water. She loves water. And water loves her. She loves cooking and doing dishes but especially running water. She runs water all day doing dishes, doing laundry…

Exhibit

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Late in the morning, standing in line, clutching a bag of Meow Mix, I listen to the woman waiting behind me. She's having a cell phone conversation about the Treasures of Ancient Egypt exhibit. It‘s in New Orleans, she says, and the kids liked the mummy. I slide…

Behold the New Day That Allows the Rabbit Hole to Disappear

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For hours and hours she swirled, and swirled some more. She was trying to be there for everyone, yet no one realized how much pain they were causing her. Some of them had thrown invisible darts of anger all day, and she had endured each one, because she c

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.

Danse Macabre

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Between the commercials, the local news is rampant with fusillade of bullets going raving mad, driven by some Machiavellian brainfuck, or bombshells smiling down with angels in black; emoticons of solid metal and pride. But you would put your faith in…

Gray Lizard

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

Old Beat-Up Trunk (containing a History of Forgotten Paintings)

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The world can still be viewed as a honey drop of sparkling rain, but not all washed up tears can be revealed as such. The stories swirling inside are constantly shifting their own gears, searching for the lost highway, and sometimes…

Garbage in, garbage out

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Sam tapped the stick against the small mountain of trash bags, a dull thud predictably followed by a dozen rats scurrying out of the mass. He's started to make a personal game of it — seeing how many he can kill with one whack; if he swings hard enough, and in…

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

House Next Door

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It all began with me. I was first and for many years, the only.

Second Collage

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B developed a thick emulsion that he paints onto the pieces of meat on which he prints photographs.

In the Sequence of Events

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Eroica sprawled among/ the horns and violins

Departures

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Fingers scrabble idly at pocket seams, forage between teeth, grasp for tepid cups, patter a drumbeat on knees.

Bell Ringer

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Zal’s first day on the job they had 16 customers. They took turns crying, “Bring out your dead!”

The Giver and The Gone

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They were once a crown,of some living stag -- not quite old,not quite young: now bone. Something at the cusp of its age. Here they stand, given by a loved friendon a place in my home; smelling, whenI get very close, of time. They are shaped like small…

Appearance

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After you lost sight in your left eye, mom made me go on the road with you that last summer to help you see.

At the Balcony

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I was setting up a mattress and a lamp in the balcony of my house because a boy, G., told me he was coming to fuck me.

Two Snapshots of A Drowning Girl

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One fine afternoon a few months after her husband's death, Susan awoke in the porcelain tub of her gigantic, empty house with: two champagne bottles, one only half-empty; a Xanax bottle, completely empty; and a loaded gun, which was most startling

The Further Chronicles of Mars (tribute to Ray Bradbury)

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And in the dark caves a new secret, hidden from flyby probes and the imagination of men. In these new caves, names for the loved ones, Bradbury, Clarke, Rover

Precisely

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Is it my imagination, or is her chair afraid of her?

The Boss

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When I was eighteenI worked at a convenient storeAnd the owner was from PakistanAnd he dressed well and Smelled of cologneAnd owned two storesAnd was always going back and forthBetween the two of themHe had to make sure we were doingOur jobsAnd whenever some kid…

hyperdust

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summon the chamois to hyperspace

Precipitants

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we’ll never win/ the ongoing battle with dirt.