Most read stories

Blood and Rain

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There's no rain--there hasn't been rain in weeks--but the clouds are dark without the sun, and I can't see the stars.

Politicouscous II

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In which era was it not a scary world?/ Last century, the perils were both red and yellow/ after Jerry was undone. Now, they’re brown/ and cross, without respect, the Rio Grande

Ask the Language Monitor

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A woman I work with is always going on about her daughter is an expert water-skier and has a collection of antique thimbles and makes prize-winning congo bars.

The Flame Child

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Lupe drove. She didn't know where she was going, but still she drove. The Mustang whined because she did not shift gears. The street was wet from a night rain and if…

To Sleep

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The woman wrings her hands again and again, reaching up to place one under her chin, then to her cheek as though there is some pending trepidation no one else can see...

Burying the Tramp

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Heaven and hell. Hadley believed in neither. One way or another you’re a meal ticket for someone, best to be the one spending than the one being spent. The worms and insects are getting their meal ticket now, that’s for sure.

Urban Skunks

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Urban skunks want to visit your neighborhood and be bold in your neighborhood.

Edith Head's Heady Day

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Rain dressed for winter, a win, she thought

Three Easy Steps:the little genuine things in life/sauteed whole peppers/easy roof repair

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So, once, we were all like sitting around the kitchen table, and it was so kind of like an okay sort of day to begin with. We were all like a secret theater of strangers, a living children's secret circle, meeting right in…

The First Several Chapters of His Memoirs

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He went for long, quiet walks. These seemed to quell the seething rages swirling about him as he exhumed and reconstructed the truth of himself.

Twenty Percent

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That September, he had enjoyed drinks in the company of now-dead utopians.

Not Lao-tzu's Magna Carta, lxxiii - lxxxi

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proper words fail to get proper points across . . . truthful words have no beauty,/beautiful words have no truth.

Magdalene's dream

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That night Magdalene dreamt about Jesus.

Meet Your Happy-Go-Lucky Poet

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"Time is an ocean, but it ends at the shore. You may not see me tomorrow."--Bob DylanThey're writing poems, but not for me. Guess I'll write one for my own. For nobody that I know now. It's a pretty lonely world for someone who sings, not you, not with…

Twisting Destiny

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And so, many ideas and stories and wonders crash onto the shores of my conscience...

End Game

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Where the Story LiesEverybody wants to knowwhere the story lies. Does itlie in childhood? Does it liein old age? Does it lie in anangry outburst or a stingingrebuke? Does it lie in a momentof compassion or in the recognitionof calloused selfishness? Bruisedlove or…

Fly n' Jelly

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Listening for a chain saw with one ear and to Todd and the trooper with the other, I’m trying to hustle up and finish my business - sweating in my coat and sweatshirt - and I think this: not so silly now, is it, this invisible or being able to fly choice?

The Threat of Distance

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The lone young man walking in the distance,/receding silently,

War Story: Alternate Duty II - crash landing

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I was only allowed ten hours in the tower a month so the Army in its infinite wisdom gave me lots of alternate duty which in the I-Corp area mostly meant loaning me to the Marines. That worked out because the alternate duty the Army came up with tended to

Split Decisions

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Many colored eyes move slow between the mirror and my heart, begging questions. I offer no explanation. None suffice to breed either my content or theirs.

Kathy

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"Happy New Year Willie."

Convoluted Title

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She came to him with her arms open and a smile on her face; the kind of smile that assured him everything would be fine. He longed for that smile for months now; seeing her wearing that smile that he…

Lazarus argentatus

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They take the blue man out on a stretcher, stiff in cyanotic repose until the paramedics shake him. He sits bolt upright, startled, confused, indignant. ‘Lazarus?' I ask. ‘Argyria. Happens every fucking time he naps on the …

assemblage x + 1

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so here we all are/ deep in debt

Probability of Rain

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haiku

Best blurb (pitch) -- and thanks, Sally and Prickly

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The author's note explains...

from Tsalmaveth

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Anastomose my veins to / yours so we may / share // a dream pooled between us

Sorting It All Out

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To understand how and when things have gone wrong, it works best to proceed from the beginning and put them in order.

The Roses of Gettysburg

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Mothers and sons and war, an old story...

london walking (empty streets)

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st. paul is steeped in fog. mist and rain make the north side a grainy faded photograph, almost timeless.