Most read stories

Ode to a Shopping Mall

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In 1609 Ben Jonson was hired to write a work in celebration of the opening of a new shopping mall.

Lips Like Oysters

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By the end of my Saturday night shift at the Oyster Bar I look like some kind of filthy nurse

WHAT I LEARNED IN HEBREW SCHOOL

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There was a big pile of dirt in back, where the little Hebrew School bochurs would play King of the Mountain—tugging, tearing, biting, punching, using whatever weapons they could get their tiny hands on to topple whoever scrambled up the mound first.

The Nude Pianist: A Novel: Chapter 53

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—Francesco, said Zambrano, rising from his desk and putting his arm around Frank's shoulder. You and me, we're business partners. Regular capital crime buddies.

The Pain of Memory

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It's awfulYou remember everythingYou never forgetEvery insultEvery bruiseEvery scarEvery burnEvery nickEvery blow You never forgetI never forget The pain of memoryYou think you forgetBut you never forgetThe dread of some wholly misfortuneThe pain that left you…

Harry

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in a complete rage he lifted his entire golf bag full of clubs over his head and threw them into the creek.

Surprise!

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We were fleeing Hurricane Katrina We stopped somewhere in Texas at a roadside diner But found a sign that said it was closed All of a sudden as we sat there in our car The shop’s owner knocked on the window And asked what he could get for us

Two More for Akutagawa

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Heading for the fields one morning to paint haystacks, Vincent noticed his neighbor’s house ablaze.

Writing Poems

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We bring words together and set them up on blind dates. Watch them build a history together, get married and fight together. Make offspring syllables cradled warm in cribs of punctuation. Phonemes squeezed into existence by two parenthesis. Words…

Amble

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I sulk across the room to feed you,hold your hand, tell you everything will be fine. It is the right time of night,the light from the street falls onto the chairat the perfect angle. I look at you, gray, shimmering, persnickety. Don't move, thisis just the dust, helping me…

Silenced

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Into the silence

The Merry Go Round

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I felt that love could not be paid for or else could never be paid for enough.

WHEN YOUR HULL HAS BEEN BREACHED AND THE HEART OF THE OCEAN IS NOT IN YOUR POCKET

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Her heart is the color of fuck. Not the color she'd imagined; the soft pink of parting lips, the fading hand print on steamed—up windows, like Leo and Kate in that fancy car the night it sank. His car was a dented jeep…

Walking My Lobster Back Home

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Gee but it’s great after being out late, Walking my lobster back home. There’s little risk that she’ll turn into bisque, Walking my lobster back home.

Testament Part 4 of 6

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We once saw giants in the clouds and in/ connected points of stars, and named/ them, gods. We placed them in their high-halled villas,/ on the mountaintop, to game and frolic

Cottontail Morning

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A murder of bunnies nibble the St. Augustine,

How the Other Half Lives

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Most of life, it turns out, is pathetic. Very little is funny. We have to generate our own laughter. Canned laughter may have to do. Even if we have to carry the can around our neck like a Saint Bernard or strapped to our hip

"No lights shine out tonight high hung in heaven"

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(From Postcards fom a Railway Station (final poem)) No lights shine out tonight high hung in heaven: And the constellations like a dead man fall. No sight of polar eyes, whose sons are seven, And I stand unthinking and beyond it all I own it all a…

Exoskeleton

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Watching himself dissolve comes with no sense of meaning. It is simply what it is. He finds that curious.

Like Exiles in a Testicle Museum

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Balls excite our interest because we live on a ball. We travel through space on a ball.

Thanks for the Unsolicited Advice

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And what is it I’m supposed to do With all this unsolicited advice?

icing on the cake

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The sexuality comes over us in waves. We need to hold things, someone. The women, the men, side by side, our features blending together. We notice the small curved lines at the corners of the mouth. We notice everything. And the animal is still inside m

commitment

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but isn't that the case in most long-term, committed relationships?

The 27 Club

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Jimi, Jim, and Janis Kurt and Amy too They died and gone to heaven And fit inside a shoe Room 114’s where they lie Their eyes wide open

the plight continues

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but at least I wasn't drinking as much anymore.

- excerpt from - Whitehouse 180

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Bloggers venomously characterized Mitt as a "bumper sticker Patriot", the kind of coward who wraps himself up in a flag, puts a bumper sticker on his car, sings the national anthem at the top of his lungs and is the first person to yell out "Freedome Isnt

Loretta McKinley

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After Loretta McKinley had sat for just such a time on a rock near the tribe, hallucinating and coming as close to death and God as she ever had, she walked into the camp and asked to speak with the elders.

Memoirs from a Book

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I know you want to hold me. I won't break. I love you. Your hands - when they caress me are soft and gentle. My words speak only to you. They speak of love and of how we spend…

Why I Write- Item Seventeen

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I feel I am, in fact,/ the dimmest and least wise/ man on earth.

Savages

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Dream