Most read stories

Self Portrait Without Colors

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I am the ritual/ banalities of days numbered,/ numberless, and numb.

nests

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His wife left behind a mini-muffin tin, a cookie sheet and a gaudy, scratched green metal tray decorated with an artist’s renderings of New Hampshire tourist spots.

Prayers and Lotteries

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“What if every cloud you saw carried a bit of hope?” she said to the window, looking out at a rolling storm. There's something peaceful about stormy weather when you're inside. Stormy weather. It almost sounds quaint. “Well?” she said,…

The Mate

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It sits there, watching, waiting, multiple cycles over.

Regrets du Noir

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You want to be Teilhard de Chardin? You’re getting started way too late. There’s a better chance you’ll be tomorrow’s Peking Man if I bury you in the cellar.

The Right Kind of Magic

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1. During the outpouring of our newly discovered grief oh how we danced, electrical, into oblivion, maybe once, twice. It was toall to be expected, but not everything you feel is always real. After all the dust may settle, but it…

Palinode for a Love That Failed

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Palinode: A poem written to retract something said in a prior poem.

I Was Supposed to Write This

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I was supposed to write a history of the old world and expose the selfish ones who use their best kept love for evil against the good little witches of childhood, but it made no sense to me to go after them in that obvious a way. They…

Release My Pajamas

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And then I heard “Yea, for I have seen the Father The Son, and the Holy Toast” Okay now, something up was weird

we engendered song

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Ever the chance we were given, with luck always, fate. At least we engendered the song and the drink. Having sailed from the goddess of sensual love, having the best throw that beauty allowed, now you can call it will, though some will call it hate.

Let's All Go Down to the Rising River

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As the pastor of a small southern church, I'm often asked by our younger members about this prickly notion of global warming. They herd around me, as adolescents are prone to do, and they ask me, “Dear father, is this something that we should fear, these…

My Fuji Red Banannanana

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She had some fascinatingif incongruoustwins of swing hips.Her eyes made me thinkof opium densof fast women without a twitch,the sweet despair of gentlemen loserswith their 19th centuryhandbooks of moralityand witchcraft. But she only wanted mefor my Fuji Red…

For You

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Why should you go through that for me?

Nodding Off in the Paper Airplane Assembly Line

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The world's anxious fire breathing mob still wants in, but they don't know what in the smoke they are looking for. They aren't really thinking in that intellectual direction. All these wonderful, friendly books you see do not hold the answer or…

The Surrealist Corrections Department

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Brett Littman said that he had seen a costume drawing of a squid atop a pile of drawings at Dorothea Tanning's archive. Mr. Littman did not see a costume drawing featuring a squid at her archive.

Anxious Whittle Anxious

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Son, could you please step out of the car?

The Linguist

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I let the little fingers slip thinking they couldn't stand to hold on anymore. When they were done they said addled and I was left behind in the room with only my hand. I hurt myself trying to picture the pretty girls and they took out a piece above my eye. …

Watching the Clock

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Benjamin did everything by the clock. He ate when the little hand pointed to five and the big hand pointed to six. He danced when the little hand pointed to three and the big hand pointed to seven. He slept when they both hit twelve.To be more precise, he did everything…

From the Cradle

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Loss and awakening are irrevocable. Love and grief are one.

An excerpt from "Goodbye, Baseball"

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The boys were his biggest nuisance. The unwashed guttersnipes poured into the park early, all shoeless and half shirtless. He only imagined how thick the fleas must be in their thick tangle of hair, of which only two didn’t have covered with a cap with an

picture (im)perfect

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not

Spain

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Where scenery is property and time is a straight edge; where the clouds are billowed and still; where one sees a tinfoil ocean and perspective to the east; where the static waves begin to move; where an immobile sky rustles and kneels. Our eyes looking still are the…

Fugue No. 3

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The falcon cannot hear the falconer. The rain comes down in sheets.

Drowning

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I found Mathew face down, cold and ridged like a plastic doll. I had overslept because he never cried—never told me he was hungry. Rodney had to peel my arms from around my son so the paramedics could take him in a blaze of flashing red and white lights.…

A Night of Furversion

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Another subject of interest is "furverts"--"individuals who engage in sexual activity while dressed in animal costumes."

This Bud’s For You

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I suspect I’ll make the right decision.

Brucey

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I kept my seat. Passengers packed in the aisle weren't moving and until they were, neither was I.

George the Coward on Staying Home

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He knew she’d spend the day furiously scrubbing the best she could too, despite the hot house in the middle of a Southern Summer, and despite no matter how hard she tried, the place would always look filthy.

THE LATE SOLICITORS

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Writers, in general, enjoy the solitude that their profession allows, or more precisely, requires. I consider myself a member of that generalized group, along with a more exclusive club of writers who also tolerate an occasional…

Hearing the Usual Reports

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In its own defense against what is too concrete the mind allows a magical thought--