Most read stories

Who Will Carry Us?

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1. People avoided Mac, the Great White Hunter, which was how he liked to think of himself, even though he was not white. Mac was cocoa colored and stalked his prey nearly nude. The city was his…

Wild Strawberries of Mars

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might leave NYC or Earth

Possum Woman

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They always referred to her as the possum woman back home. She scoured the streets just as the sun fell into deep slumber behind the sentinel, sun tanned shoulders of the mountains encircling small town anywhere.

Brief Studies of Doomed Females

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She is unsure if it will work, despite all her reading of physics and flying carpets and propeller planes. The practicalities of aerodynamics in application remain to be tested.

Contentment

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On the bed he tickled her until she was crying with laughter. And then the tickles became caresses, the fingers, lips.

Dear Joe,

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Walk alone at night, quietly. Pause for eye contact with raccoons and night cats, your drunk self, and lights in the graveyard. Don't apologize for it in the morning. Instead of the shame you feel for one time acting selfishly and chasing a future, say…

Three Poems, One for Each Eye

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1. a bone to pick"It seems to be accepted nowadays more than ever that killing,individual and mass killing,is the order of the day;it is accepted."--Henry MillerWhy can't you leave well enough alone just long enough for it to make its own miraculous escape…

The Hunter

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...I pray for the animal souls I have taken -- panther, gazelle, hyena, vulture...

Steady Keel

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He stands. Shoes for dashing, and he could dash, if the audience would stand for it, through one of two exits, beneath one of three wreaths. This year, the year of the Millennium, the wreaths seem dark and Germanic. The stage seems like a Great Hall set for a solitary…

Emoji Problems

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Our problems started with a few back and forth texts of emojis late one night. The next evening, a Friday, typically my poker night with the guys, my girlfriend came to the door.“You brought over pizza, how nice,” I said. “And, oh, gosh, look at that, a…

Polite Grafitti

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He was entirely guilty of what he had done and wanted that to be acknowledged and understood by the arresting officer.

Realizing I Have Not Moved From My Bed for Two Days

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Quite frankly you are ruining my life. / I know you don’t mean to, but you are.

Crocodilian

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it ate her and then I was next in line

Retreat

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We are in search of free hor d’oeuvres, me and Jane – Jane from H.R., Jane who is exactly as plain as her name implies, Jane, who, for now anyway, for this company retreat, is my kindred spirit in broke-ass hangover land.

Hotel Khadijah

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"A prostitute of the Hotel Khadijah in Rahab fell in love with my father...."

For Carol: Life Bursts Out

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Life was small. It was tiny even, so tiny it was hard to see it sometimes. Life curled up to make itself even smaller, to fit into the kinds of holes that insects crawl into to get away from bigger insects. Life was sad. Life didn't want to be an insect.

RUBYRED AND PARSHOOTER

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This stage of Junior’s young life was static, moving very little off-center since his graduation from high school five years ago. Treading water both professionally and emotionally never worried him. Not until after what transpired that night when Pr

The Ballad Of Sideshow Sam & The Heckler

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"You know what a hobo is, my young friend? Or a tramp? Or a bum? Well, I'll tell ya, 'cuz you'll meet all of 'em in yer life and it's a good thing to know since they are each one of 'em different and the difference is this. Bums sit around and loaf. T

Four Noble Lies

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When Carlotta left me, I cried / into my soup. I shriveled into / harsh mathematics.

We Must Be Carefully Taut

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In the dread / of night, navigate by the sliver moon

Already Dead

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It was already dead and was hanging from her ceiling.

Fort Stark, New Hampshire

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Sometimes you have to make sacrifices to get where you need to be.

Men Are Beasts

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Now when she speaks to him, he no longer responds with an interrogative but rather a cheery, "You're absolutely right, dear" or "I'll get right on it," or "What a great idea!"

Scrabbled Sensitivities

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It was fun, until he started winning every time.

Old Church Slavonic

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Because it seems never to be beginning, always picking up in the middle with it’s long resonant tones, which themselves begin as if they’ve always been. Maybe that’s why we love old, sacred music. And by we I, of course, mean my two-year-old Charlie and m

How Jellyfish Make Love

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It was 1986 when I met you. We both lived on Decatur Avenue in a tank that had enough room for you, me, and all our fake plastic accoutrement. I was 30 years old -- really old for a jellyfish. Some people thought I'd die sooner. But I knew better. I was…

In Her Wake

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A piece of her skull landed here. But it fell off. Then I couldn't find it.

HUNGRY

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Quiet. You sit quiet as a mouse in the corner. Push a little doll around and hum la-la-la so they forget you’re there while they have the cocktail hour. That’s how you find out they’re killing Grandma.

Moses Reborn

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Influenza Jones knew she was Moses. Reborn, of course, because the real Moses had been dead for longer than Influenza could remember. It didn’t matter that she was a woman and Moses was a man, she knew what her body say and her body say she be Moses. Sh

The several stages of grief

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Robert was not in any sort of metaphysical or spiritual sense seeing himself, as in the scales falling from his eyes and seeing himself as he was. He was a long way from that kind of insight. He was literally seeing another himself.