Most read stories

Rain Song at Summer’s End

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Soft rain, small rain, steady rain— what the shrubs and tangled young red oak tree need—

Quel Bordel

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Our friend, M. Dieu-Juste partnered in a used car business with a Vietnamese mechanic, Mr. Tran. Cars however, were not their only venture.

Speculation on the Quantum Mechanism of Death

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With whatever else physicists may learn . . . perhaps they will begin to see that the connections between the physical world and non-physical domains of existence have an explanatory power which has only barely been considered.

They Don't Get to Say Everything

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The world hasn't ended. Your part in it is still ongoing. The going on world hasn't winked out. Every possibility is still out there. In there, out there, it doesn't matter where you are. The here and now claims you for its only tribe. They only want someone to tell them…

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.…

Classic

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"I love you.”“Night.”Back at the screen door she answers “What?” I stand under her nose and say “Box is out of juice.” Inside she sits me on the black and white polka-dotted sofa we make love around here and there.…

space mountain in ghost region from absent-minded continent of misshaped planet

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Cody had a face, a still and shivering dark basement of a face, one with a negative intake that seemed like it was leaning at a downward angle, as if falling off of itself, or committing suicide, jumping off the edge of the world and leaving behind the su

The Wedding Is Off

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I sat in the kitchen with the phone in my hand. The phone had just stopped ringing. When it rang, its screen lit up with the face of the caller. It vibrated and played a tune called "Dusk 2 Dawn." Now the kitchen was silent.

Band Names Too

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Gun Notches Working Stiffs Garlic Torch Dog Crouch Menbrain Membrane Ein Zwei Drei Fake German Soldier Wet Tissue Tissue Paper Pants Tough Stain Adam and Evil Closed Loophole Wait For It Fiscal Cliff and the Cliffhangers Repu

Mr. Bourgeois Drowns His Sorrows

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Late last night down at Jim's Saloon Everyone expected that the last balloon Would go Boom! The one they all saw coming And Lady Liberty would send the bad guys running

Along the Battlement

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We creep the hill, flat on our bellies through yellowed grass and stone, black dirt grimed on our bright faces like powdered war paint. We are sitting ducks as we approach, out in the open like this but Cobb believes no one will be watching this side; it

Letter to Garrison Keillor

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Hilda Raz lost a daughter. Her son gained a persona, backed by biological components. I was impressed by his male-pattern baldness. A biological genius. And yet, I was reduced and in the elevator mentioned crying about it.

Spinneret

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It's true. I like to walk on the ceiling. But please. Don't hold it against me. The ceiling is cold. Nobody lives there. Just a spider. A curious arachnid. She lets herself down sometimes. If I'm on the bed, trying to sleep, staring at the ceiling, watching her…

Promenade

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At the week's end, memories may come to you Of weekends same as those just gone before, That fade away from seeing as a tide's grey flue, That vanishes once travelled to a shifting shore: Still, hope you'll know a girl for an hour anew, One who fades…

Fortune Favours

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We're all just meat and atoms who can no more sense into the great beyond than a horse can fly a plane.

Genius

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Everything I write is gold, he mused. My words spill onto the page like ambrosia, nectar of the gods, filling an empty vessel with immortal life.

Condimental

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"Excuse me, ma'am? You wanted the mayonnaise on the side, right?"No one ever called her ma'am again.

Loop

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At night, I watch TV shows with fictional characters who lead my life.

Youngstown

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Last night I met a man from the same littleshithole townthat you are fromand I kissed him in the mouth to find out if he tasted like coallike you do.While he slept, I tried to pinpoint on a map I drew on his back exactly how far apart you might have been:how many years…

The Roses of Gettysburg

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

a random thought

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They shake, shake, while mouths say the words.

Siren

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There it it again, that noise. That low hum that I know so well now, spinning, gaining momentum in my head, like a cyclist in a velodrome, until its steadiness and roundness becomes sharp, painful, cutting like glass.

Molly

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Molly stared at the woman behind the desk with a headset attached to her head, and sighed.

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…

The Infamous Kiss

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When the sailor heard the 2nd World War had just ended He grabbed the woman in the white dress Bent her backwards in Times Square And kissed her real good And the photographer Just happened to be there At the right moment But then As

If You Trace Even One of My Words

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with a finger I will (let you) know. If you mean even just one given look at the moon I will know that, too. If you peel off one lonely star and put that shining shell in your watch pocket for later or to skip across your sad …

Error Bars

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Is death like standing in a room at night and turning off the lights? You would still hear your breathing. You hold your breath. Silence. Darkness. Yet you feel gravity, your feet on the floor. Then the air brushes your skin. Remove the air,…

Portrait without Birds

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so Tippi has no interest

My First Winter in Massachusetts

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My first winter in Massachusetts feels medieval: cold, dark, and endless.