Most read stories

Heirloom

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“Have the tomatoes come in yet?”“Dottie…”Mrs. Dorothea Tilden pointed a trembling finger at Harriet.“You promised me tomatoes, Harry.”Harriet put her hands on her hips, a stance Dorothea knew well. One more sharp word meant fight; two…

On Discerning That a Woman Had a Nose Job Before He Met Her

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The new nose-- I won’t ask how much it cost, but something’s been lost.

Prairie Schooner

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The town is a wheel-less prairie schooner aground in a vast field of static

Tonight's Special

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I didn't arrive at the Wicked Spoon every night in the same mood. Some nights I would arrive under the spell of a generous emptiness, what I like to call the euphoria of futility. Not exactly a state of bliss, but a dazed detachment in which everything is so pointlessly…

Pink Tights, Tu-Tus and Schmaltzy Music

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And then I get a call from a different kind of bar They say you’re drunk on Cosmos and actin’ quite bizarre.

Borderline

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You slipped me the key

consolations from Cold Mountain

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not otherwise employed, writing verse,/ line by tenuous line the substance of pulse./ ―but no one collects unemployed verse:/ self-lacerations must yield blood, not ink.

Wind Enough in your Sail?

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Don’t think you can play God with me There are enough songs To fill the heavens already I don’t need you Whispering in my ear Gone virile, are you? That’s what they used to say About me too

Gaze

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to think of him looking at me / for he to be I and I to be he / it is almost unbearable / to occupy two bodies at once—

I Can Sacrifice My Self

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The sacrificial tendency is a real ugly one A pound of flesh, because it grows back But gnarled and scarred For you, So you may smile or cry Whatever you need How about an ounce of truth? How about I make a maze And you walk through…

Short Blonde, Long Red

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Natalie blushed the vodka with an almost pointless twist of the fruit juice as I fought in my inside jacket pocket for my wallet...

there was a shameful attempt to steal fire and now the vultures always come for my livers and my God I Am sorry

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The Divine and merciful Understanding Calls out to me But let me not speak its name. You are an unworthy hearer And I am a secret-keeper, cunning With keen thoughts and prayers of swift Justice Single is our thought and act And when we pray we know not what it…

The Theory Behind the Statue of the Unclothed Horseman

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With his toga thrown over one shoulder because it was so hot out which has led to various and sundry theories of the naked centurions riding on horses in this manner through some unimaginable desert on a long march or even along the banks…

The Here Here Here Lately

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electron metastasis

We're Pieces of God & We've Found Each Other

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The gates going up and down like gigantic windshield wipers to let the existent boxcars pass. We went across these real bumpy railroad tracks into a town so small there wasn’t enough room for the car, so we got out and went ahe

I Found Myself in Waters

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Unready for the world, we pawned ourselves for a longer lease on youth.

'How I Came To Find Out I'm Like Thomas Pynchon and Bruce Sterling' by ... yours TRULY!!! The third born of three. Or four. Or

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yup.

Cosmicatholiconfession

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My sister walked in the room while I read Ginsberg / reciting the lines to Jaweh & Allah Battle to myself /sweating in the heat contour of my ugly body on the bed / the room the stench of rottenhumanasscracksemen

The Frogman

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http://www.punchnels.com/fiction/the-frogman/

Slightly Down And Off To The Left

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It was just her way. Slightly down and off to the left. Mom never looked anyone in the eye.

Suspenders

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As soon as I got the suspenders adjusted I felt different. I felt like Wilfred Brimley.

Trapping for Poetesses

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So many ingenious traps for catching and hamstringing female poets have been invented that it is a rare editor who ever really sees one. H.L. Mencken

“What will I do if I run out of stories,” she asked?

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You better not come home drunk, you shithead, or you'll be sleeping in the yard!

Fugue State on the Waterway

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I am so lost in thought as I ride out of the woods that I forget which way I ought to turn, left or right; this can’t be good.

I'm Going Either Way

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Will you join me kneeling in a Homegoods parking lot

The Endless Dream of Humanity

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Pigeons are really the souls of what were once beggars in the endless squares of Paris, Venice, or Jerusalem. They are born with the soul of a beggar attached to them. It is stuck beneath their wings. They cannot fly without it, and they ar

Dead Kennedys

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Death is both alien and intimate to us; neither wholly strange nor purely one's own.

(girls in their summer dresses)

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The life, the burning up that works up our loveliness, hot under the surface that is tempted to show forth its parts after being confined, enclosed, shut in. Beautiful honey-water sliding out of long bleak skies, after all the howling of our legendary you

Post-Revolutionary Sports Boredom

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It isn’t easy being the #1 Jewish lesbian revolutionary bank robber in America–every Rebecca and Rachel who comes down the pike tries to knock you off.

Go Ahead, Be the Opposite of Love

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"Living is easy with eyes closed/misunderstanding all you see.'--John Lennon That's an ache that's always inside me. How you'd rathertreat people as if they don't matteras much as some nice sounding words in a song. Their voicesas less than an annoying wind? Because…