Most read stories

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.…

My Plumber

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It sounds so good.

gravelortian part 4

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rinse plate cup glass spoon bowl soapy water

Con Artist

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The name he was using this time was Paul Sterling.

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

Broken

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I rang the doorbell. Claire opened the door, wearing jeans and a T-shirt. I opened my arms to give her a big hug. She stiffened and pulled away. Stunned, my lips parted, but I couldn’t think of a single word to say. Ideal, Phillis. ”Broken”, Pure

Ares Considers a Career Change

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Barbarians and savages wore feathers/ or frightful face paint or skin tones// one could recognize and aim for/ with weapons one could feel

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—

Palinode for a Love That Failed

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

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.

Attacking Panic

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I'm panicking trying to think of the next line in this poem

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.…

"It's Just Breakfast" Fills Dating Service Niche

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"Too many people were presenting themselves in a false light on lunch dates,” she says. “The power ties on the men, the come-you-know-what-me pumps on the women–that’s not what married life is about.”

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.

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

Wind Calling

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Listening to old friends speak the same way, the same things tells me they have been dead a long time. They are in their form of living, their self, there is no new season of growth. I witness each of them continue on the same path because it is familiar

a random thought

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They shake, shake, while mouths say the words.

On news of your demise

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The news just now that you are dead

Good Use

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I found a field where all the unanswered prayers were once buried but someone someone someone had dug them up again and was putting them to good use

Same As You

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What would people say about me? He was immoderately adrift. Maybe pathologically narcissistic. A shame he dumped Gina, the best he ever did. In essence, a man-child.

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…

Falling Rocks in Equal Doses

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Not sure I remember what's important, but I remember you. That's the whole problem I think. You're a drain where all my words wind up going down. All of them get lost inside of you. Eventually. And I'm left with nothing to say. Because all my words are…

Until We See Again

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I saw a big dog By the side of the road I saw a small deer By the side of the road A little maroon water in a glass As I was driving home Under darkness With the wind that was under a rose New blood will fill the earth And we must lo

traffic incident

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and i start screaming. i check the damage in my rearview mirror but there's nothing.

they came to explain the wind

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How we segued from exploring the wind to eating a nitwit sandwich.

Love in the Nick of Time

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a dance in the moonlight

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 …

Colors of the Last Bright Morning

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I am a housekeeper at a private women's college in upstate New York.

Wish for the Left Hand

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Hardly a soul could pin him for creating the vehemence that found a streamule to her pen if she wrote in cursive or a fanjet to her keyboard if she typed quickly and satisfyingly in print, employing eight fingers and two thumbs—