Most read stories

Night Raid

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The president snapped awake at three AM. He realized he was a serial killer. Highly trained and equipped killers on his orders were summarily murdering thousands of raggedly dressed people in the name of Democracy.

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…

Monaco Memories

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Back then he raced, grinding gears and skimming the edges of death.

putting our bones together

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I can still see us sitting, somewhere (was it in a café?) imagining what it would be like if our mutual faces blended into the future (the waiters posing as in a Manet painting.) Putting our bones together, our broad features, Bohemia and Sweden. Yo

again that summer

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And there was Kathi R in the summer of 1969. She was from Wheaton. We had tons of unprotected sex that summer. She was short, almost no breasts, but man, she could reach down behind me somehow and grab my balls at precisely the right moment, and bam, ba

learning to unread

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what happens to literature's characters when their readers traverse the veil?

Year End Close-out

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Strauss does all the stirring at the start./ The rest is all murk and meander

truth be known

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It could be there is a little me, somewhere, truth be known. One time in Laguna Beach I slept with a girl I met at this café, the Jolly Roger, I think, when we went back to my apartment and had unprotected sex. She said she was on the pill, but you neve

Tuna Sandwiches

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The tuna fish sandwiches were laid out the way they had always been; they were cut into triangles, with wet paper towels between them. They stayed that way over an hour, untouched, aside from a dimple the size of my cousins finger to test the softness. …

blog - Feb - bad month - 42 cents

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Let’s see. February. Bad month. Made 42 cents on book sales. Sherry’s mom died. 98 years old. Holocaust survivor. Everybody’s dying all around us, it seems like. Somebody told us a portal has opened and people are making a dash for it. Hmmm. Portals. I wo

Woody met Louise

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Times were tough. They met out on the right-of-way on Highway 61 heading south, each trying to hitch a ride to New Orleans where they might find work. Albert walked up to her lugging a saxophone in a scuffed up case. Mamie had old cloth suitcase. After handshake bona fides…

That Painted Up Whore

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Some things stay with you. I got off the bus, petted my dog, Nick and walked in our house and saw Mother at the kitchen table, crying and clearly angry. I asked her if she was sick. She works. She said that she didn't go to work today and might not go tomorrow…

Split Streams Displace the Final Helical Index

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Split streams displace a spliced and shattered walkman with no connection of its dead batteries, projected into Styrofoam and plastic mirrors before hitting the brook water. Michael finds way, out of breath, eclipsed by an elm, his eyes visible with pupil

The Invaders

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“Elaine, what's that bee doing?”, asked Jonathan as he slid his reading glasses down and turned his attention from the morning paper to a bee that had landed on the his Nesbitt's Lime soda bottle. The bottle sat on the small, hand-made table in their back…

Jump-start

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"I don’t know what to do. I need to catch the 11:30 train, but what is the difference between doing it today or tomorrow?"

A Start

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I don’t like telling stories. I’m far too honest and give far too many things away.

Can I Get a New To-Do List

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I got a male bouffant hairdo like Trump I can’t wait to develop patience And the next time I have a ringing in my head I’m not going to answer it Can I Get a New To-Do List? I tried changing my name to Richard Vixen Until the State Dept. too

Mr. Barefoot & Rev. Broad

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Cold hurts at first, but you wake up.

.38

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His name was Gino. I’ll leave out the last name, not that I think it matters anymore. He came into my dad’s gas station on the near North side of Chicago to have work done on his fancy car. I was still a teenager. I accidentally opened the glove compartme

Basic Principles of Physical Space

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a body lost in thought stays hopelessly lost in thought for as long as the latte lasts and the coffee shop stays open and the moms don’t gather with their baby carriages and the bums don’t bum overly much and the trust funders don’t lose too

Resurrection

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The superhero is out there in the fields, discovering herself.

Strange Sign At the Outskirts to Paradise

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In an area of high winds and strong convictions, I have lived among the ever-changing crowd that is always the same. I must have died overnight, and now my wings are flapping in my own face. I used to be an owl, a night owl, to be sure

Dude Fish

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the wiggly word / floats toward the crowd

rib envy

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Flowers I didn’t like God or else nature must have had some brief happiness over. But it’s just forgetfulness for an old goddess like me, goddess of the moon, of hunting, of chastity once, since now I have changed. My opened flowery bosom went on to bec

A Word About Everything

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I remember having a beer once And feeling like a minor god And I know in some lie you told Your life began making sense And I also know that the mind likes logic But the heart loves chaos I just hope flies land on the butter of your soul

they in that eternal room

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And while they sat and while we danced for them, they in that eternal room of theirs, illumined by late sunlight, or moonlight, (or the lamp in your bedroom,) our skin moistened with oils, glistening… each of us shining as we turned, emitting littl

Motivation

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Motivation always needs to come from somewhere. For some all it takes is a sunny day, a smile from a stranger or a simple pat on the back. Others demand a fire lit, a carrot dangled or a whip cracked. Yet here the sun had set, the fire extinguished and th

Die Zwischenwelt: The World as It Is and as It Is Not

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These philosophic notions floated in my head for years and eventually helped inspire my pursuit of basic information in contemporary physics, astrophysics, astronomy, and cosmology when I was not reading or writing fiction or verse.

Revisionist History

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A break from bleak world history and events...

Yes Virginia, There is a Trustee in Bankruptcy

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“I thought bankruptcy was for people who didn’t have any money.” Skipper said. “Not exactly. It takes a lot of money to go broke,” I said, hoping to teach him an important lesson about thrift.