Most read stories

Surf Song

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Morning. A hot bright sun shines down on the cool dark depths of the deep blue sea.

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.

Aging Bikers and Biker Chicks on Vacation

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Chin beards, flannel shirts, Levis no boots anymore, just loose sandals their chicks with double triple multiple chins falling asleep on their own palms

The Ghost

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I stroll out to the front lawn, and find myself against the sea of grass, painted daubs within the frame of a distilled rock. My ears attuned to the starlets warbling on the twisted branches of the lone tree, flock of wings that find subtlety and shine in the rapture…

Gather Round

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When they first brought me home, I was their pride and joy. Then, one day, they put me in this wooden box.

The Joint is Out of Time: A Journal of the Plague Year, Day 108

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History in the unmaking.

Love Makes the Boundaries Disappear

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She was asked: “What would it mean to be in a great earthquake to you?” She said: “It would mean that I might never see him again.” Then she panicked. She came to me and said: “Do you mind riding in the other car? I have to ride in the same car wi

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

Query

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The murder of two teens late one humid night on a tiny rural Virginia island brings a dark, malignant mystery edging into the village known as Leicester Court House.

Poppy Seeds

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It might have had something to do with the boy’s pet hog, which was hulking, ageless, and liked eating poppy seed muffins

When You Love Someone

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you set the world in motion. When you lovesomeone you reset everything to glow. When you love someone you forgive the world. Everything is possible. When you love someone it is time to go on home. When you love someone you're reborn as someone else…

Downtown

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From the parking lot to the stadiumdown town waiting for the crossinglightthere are a few others in jerseys but not manywe are too early for that.Desert gravel crunching scuffle of canvas shoeskicking granitehop along wobble steps and I turn to seewho's off the…

gravelortian part 15

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Eager to please the guards, doctors and preachers

Nothing Beside Remains

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It was the early 80's My students carried / guns.

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.

New Year's Resolution

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“Hey, come on and sit down,” Jake motioned to her. It was three in the morning and after way too many gins the last thing Melisa wanted to do on New Year’s Eve was to chat with her ex-boyfriend. In fact if she had known he was goin

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…

Your party invitation just arrived (guest poem by Carolyn Martin)

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"I’d rather move a word around a page than raise a glass or pass a plate or work a room immune to poetry."

gravelortian part 21

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Happy is a look we are trying to wear better

The Quiet-Minded One

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Oh, wait — loosen the ropes, you say? Sorry. Can't do that.

Communion

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I dream empty, the wind blowing benzene blue. Shards of glass. Barbed wire. Bricks crushing flame into notions gone quick, never painless. Is it my blood? In my eyes. On my hands. Is it for you? I'm not sure where I'm walking here. Walking towards what from. Is it…

Exoskeleton

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

Perils of Poetry in a Pandemic

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...the bulk of poets are amateurs.

Still

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I wanted only to be still, to become a rustle for a moment of papery fall leaves sighing past one another on their way to the funeral pyre in the front lawn, sweetly fragrant with the scent of death and inevitable decline, fearless in their annihilation, incandescent…

Testing, Testing

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I awoke sweating like a Mormon at an anti-bigamy conference.

I will miss you

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I will miss you, sure, let it be known. The memory, and the dream, both. That familiar smell of Old Spice when someone wearing it comes near. And the smell of Coppertone Suntan Lotion on the beaches of our youth in Chicago. And the pressure of your fing

The Cat Beneath the Off Ramp

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Like Smart’s cat Jeoffrey, he’s a mixture of gravity and waggery.

Cadillacs, Candy Bars and Boogers

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I won't ever forget the image of my father, behind the wheel of the Cadillac he so loved. Even as a ten year old, and more as an adult, I could never figure out why he loved that car as much as he did. I must explain that he was really my step father,…

Bloody Toe

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Owen had never seen his boyfriend cry, but while he was in the bathroom having a cigarette through the open window, he heard Devin sniffling and coughing back tears. A bit shocked, he decided not to confront Devin or acknowledge that he had heard. Italian men could be…

Unsaid Words

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Some things are said. Others, never.