Most read stories

Swan Dance

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The house stood quietly in its surrounds. Unnerved by the beauty that enveloped it. Green forest trees loomed round the house protecting it from the outside world and in front of it lay a sweeping lake that disappeared into the trees on…

The Empty Stool

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I walked up to the bar and sat down on the empty stool.“You don't want to sit there,” said the bartender.“Oh? Why not?” I replied.“It's haunted.”I laughed, but then stopped when I saw he was not laughing with me.“You're…

Slammer

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“Please, please grant me probation and a deferred sentence with no time behind these walls. I have never had a driving ticket before. NOW one Margarita and a DUI. Never again!”

Introspection

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The piss monster looks for clues of its childhood in the stains it leaves behind on the furniture.

headaches not worth having

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this is one of those "there are two kinds of people" sort of things.

Washing

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Scraping the baked on Bar B Q sauce from the grabbing ends of the stainless steel tongs has my total attention.

Party in Sierra Madre Canyon

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“You’re just like me,” she said, as dawn was breaking. “You like sex.”

Sonnet II

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When gratitude on lovers' lips rings false/ As flattery by courtly sycophants,/ Take care to well distinguish gold from dross/ So as to gild gladder remembrances.

77 Words About Nothing (Tangled)

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You carved my initials into your inner thigh with a jagged stem -

Brother Dream

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It’s always daylight there My brother comes running down the sidewalk holding out his arms and calling my name He’s wearing suspenders. He’s gotten thinner in heaven He embraces me warmly wanting us to be friends I give up trying to resist

A Tinder Ghost

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Do you know if you were actually speaking to me there?

My Book of Frozen Ponds

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We broke our hearts rather than sit in your reversible seats with the plain brown paper packages tied on our laps, we did so together. You don't want to hear about that. It gets too close to the actual murder of love. I…

Encounter with Lover's Daughter

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What happens when you accidentally run into your lover's daughter on a plane.

The Mad Ones

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On the parking lot of the bar, two in the afternoonYou notice the battered car, dented up body of a Ford escort,No hubcaps, plastic in two of windows,It yells a story to youA familiar storyHead into the bar2 O' clock in the afternoonIt's a nice, sunny, warm Saturday…

Cockroaches From Heaven

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Cockroaches may be falling through the holes in the floorboards of heaven, but we will not be disturbed. We are agents, free and clear, even if a little bit mean. I want to quit worrying about money, but the angels upstairs won’t let me. The

My Wife, the Registry of Motor Vehicles

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We’ve been married for 24.1667 years now and–well–my wife was starting to remind me of a public building. The Registry of Motor Vehicles, to be precise.

People Get Haircuts

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like they are trying to not get noticed by fickle death. It clearly marks them in a targeted way. Very ironic. Here's the only message I want you to ever have from me : quick, scramble like a monkey with a stolen banana in your tiny hairy…

The Pheasant

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Times they were a blazing, the Pheasant met God in Piccadilly meadows

For Colleen McCullough

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She was reading The Thorn Birds. Always on her side, in a pink cotton housecoat. The Buddha rested on his side. And drank milk. We drank plenty of milk, but, being Catholic, didn't know anything about Buddha. I would sit there. Piles of books were around. I…

in the bad dreams of bums under the freeway overpass

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In the bad dreams of bums living under the freeway overpass dwells the laughing gas of their previous lives the humorous opium operas of unsatisfactory whore-wars and the open sores of ether-filled balloons in the bad dreams of bums under

Wilbur

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This girl who looks about ten years old and her Pomeranian puppy are staring at my left arm and my right hand keeps filling out the form and I know I shouldn't but I say what she's been begging me to for the last half hour: It wasn't Wilbur. It was a woman. A girl,…

The Incredible Distance Between Sleeping and Waking

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She has almost-black eyes and auburn hair and round brown nipples that are always taut – as though in anticipation. I don’t know what color auburn is. I just know that’s the word that comes to mind when I look at her hair. She calls herself Mama Legb

observations on an autumn day

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macho bucks in velvet defy you driving down the lane

When We Knew

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That son of a bitch meant every word. Every filthy mouthful of insults that hit me was intentional and focused.

Death (and a Girl)

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I toyed with the idea of suicide, then quickly cast it off. Death wouldn’t be interesting. Liberating, perhaps, but not interesting. I hadn’t yet lived enough to die.

Selfie

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a few numbers/ and a handful of their operations,

Who you pretended to be

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Who You Pretended To Be I only appeared to belong to my mother --Jane Kenyon I almost died when Ulysses sailed leaving behind the dowager queen complaining of processed sugar as Grandfather's limousine tooled to Saks to browse brassieres…

On All of Those Bad Guys in Movies

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What about the poor nobodies to somebodies being tossed like wet rags onto more wet rags?

Vivian Considers Vivian

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She's been considering her breasts more now.

From T.S. Eliot's Copybook

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Thanks for the invitation, although you don't make the Undergraduate Verse Society Ice Cream Social and Poetry Slam sound very appealing.