Most read stories

The Sham Wedding

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Mary Jo told me to hire somebody to marry us in a ceremony in the living room up at the house on Fairlawn. This was to take place in two days. Her divorce was final, and she had to get married or else it was all over for her child custody. I guess I was

Frostproof Suite: Clown Car

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My job was take the falls, act the dope, finish at the wrong end of the slap stick for the blow off. I was Auguste, the fool; I drove the clown car.

The Seagulls at the Parking Lot

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Turningturning the pale grey spot.She sits in her carin the parking lotwith the radio onleaning back picking a thin piece of skin from her finger.Turningturningthe seagulls move aroundand aroundabove the asphaltas though it was the wave,with…

The Gift

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There is no need to worry about art. Art in its ideal forms stays safe. Real art resists being the object of attention. It directs your gaze, and it swings in you forever.

Duet

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Love is music timed in heartbeat move to rhythms ages old

Sidewalk Opera

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She is left feeling like she has missed a stop, that she's at the last stop, that she's somewhere she wasn't meant to be.

On Perfect Marble

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So the subtle shadow settles onto perfect marble on the floor of the ocean when the sunlight blooms over space and time but only in the near future as it has always been

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…

Puppet On a String

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Spring break that year, (1963) I spent nearly every minute with Lynda. Her taste for sex was unquenchable once we’d gotten started. We did it in every position possible. The sitting position in the front seat of the car, which my brother Herb had to expla

For Seven Days

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The fluorescents above a constant hum. A hymn. The child lay on the bed as the parents worriedly hovered. Fretted and dreaded. Tubes and wires led from the broken body to machines and computers that fed and cataloged every minute detail occurring in the collapsing system.…

Liberation, 2

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It was Phil Collins on MTV, “In the Air Tonight,” that helped cement it for me. It was the beginning of the end of my marriage. Well, not exactly the true beginning of the end. You would have to go pretty far back, honestly, to find the true root of it

Sherando

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the Blue Ridge Mountains were entangled in their usual mist, but the early morning sky looked good

Facing Budget Cuts, Schools Hire Samurai Crossing Guards

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“Out-of-work samurai have a choice,” says Bobby Ito. “They can terrorize local peasants at county fairs, or underbid low-skilled workers for menial jobs.”

The Longer

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The longer this goes on the worse it gets.

justice in obverse and reverse

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seriously: let defendants choose their coin, / execute their own calls, make their own coin flips― / attentive referee, no need for a court.

be kind to your pieces…/torn

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Pieces that said shrug a shrug and then another and one to right with the eyes that squint and one to left with rhythm that never left. And piece after piece, after piece they stich themselves, née weave a tapestry that is the dance your very walk swayed

My Ten Chapter Memoir

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I am always impressed with your intelligence. I love watches. I'm not interested in time. I am well read so talking to myself can be fun.

Imaginary Friend

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"Where've you been?" the image in the mirror asked. "I haven't seen you since yesterday," she said. "Yeah, I miss you too," he said.

Moulin de la Galette. Renoir

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Light seen as sunlight through a Japanese shade Red through many of their mouths, and often their hair but also spots of a duller red on the back of this gentleman's coat and the back of his head The woman stares at him without smiling from thre

Mountain godfather

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“Look them straight in the eye, keep your mouth shut unless spoken to, and make no sudden moves.”

Perils of Poetry in a Pandemic

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...the bulk of poets are amateurs.

My Composite Girlfriend

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Her dad regaled me with stories of his up-from-the-bootstraps climb out of poverty on the hard-scrabble, rough-and-tumble Lower East Side of New York, where he founded the leading supplier of hyphens to writers of purple prose.

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

The beginning of the end

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(...) I know my eyes are shut and I’m on the kitchen floor but I see her and I’m not confused. (...)

Credits

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I fuck myself. I say never three times. There is a movie in this movie in this. I say hello. Fish are named after capitals of invisible cities. I say so. There is a movie in this movie in. I say flush for a dumpster. The sound of a sound never made. I say equations for…

Chills On My Opposite Hip

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You gave me chills on my opposite hip whenever you touched me from behind, when we spooned under the rough woolen blanket in your basement. Whenever your essence touched my life like that. Just like when you said, “You came, that’s all.” That’s all? T

Results

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“I don't want to talk about this right now.” “Oh you don't want to…

The Museum of Inner Light

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On the way to The Museum of Inner Light Expect delays Expect bumps in the road Expect potholes and such Expect a murder of crows Rolling acorns over the rooftops But what I want to know is who Who eats a butterfly On the way to

Cracks

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the cracks in the concrete look like rivers or highways crossing from the air but only a few feet below me

I Said God Damn

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the space between two antelopes is a canyon,