Most read stories

Telling Maybelline Jones

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Maybelline Jones is my sister, my friend, and I try to tell her the right way to be.

COYOTE BAIT

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Light was always fucking with you in LA, especially in the afternoon where it possessed a golden hue that could knock you over if you weren’t careful. Its beauty reminded you of what you lacked.

BLAH BLAH

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I get out of the pitstop at the reststop, wade through parking lot hiphop. Hummers with Jesus Luvs George W bumper stickers, and a subdued slow hurricane of dour obese women in powder blue and tepid brown walking about the place like zombies. And I see t

Haze

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I slide my hand under the sheets. It’s cool there. An impression. This is where she would be.

After Dinner/Ice Melts/A Sage in the Copse

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AFTER DINNER Another cycle gone, wasted. She stares into her bowl of full-fat ice cream (just half a cup a day, every day, for fertility). Beside her sits her husband, building a sundae. When he's done she reaches over, picks the cherry off the top, and hurls it into the…

Harry, Giselle and Joyce

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Harry Reed does not want to die in this room, in front of Giselle, who has been his wife for exactly six months, who has slept beside him for twelve months.

desire

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burning for You, caught in between, yearning to remain completely wrapped around Your finger, feeling panoramic, and this alive.

Grandma

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It was a subtle change. Jeffrey's grandmother was never graceful. Her figure was like a garbage bag filled with rounded masses of leaves and the unexpected angle of the odd stick, the entire shambling affair draped in soiled and yellowed hand-knit clothing…

Black Coffee

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“I don’t see how anybody could do it.” “I could do it. I could do it because it ought to be done. When a thing needs doing, it’s best to go on and do it.”

Miss Winter Solstice

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The palm trees bent upon her passing stride From fishnet stockings running up her hide;

to day

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I turn my head. Time starts running.

Drought

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burnt-up leaves rustle and fall

The Intervention

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"You're publishing too much too / quickly. We think that's unhealthy. We want you / to slow down. You're becoming a fame whore."

Defender

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He had what was commonly referred to in junior high as the ‘bullshit mustache’.

Josephine Skinny Jeans: Chapter 1

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Lee found a ship’s figurehead in a dumpster behind some shitty Indian restaurant last night.

Reverie

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There is a tall and leafy tree in our backyard. Also a bride, a groom, and a chicken.

SEPTEMBER GOLD or DAISY'S SONG

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We left Louisville two weeks after daddy died...

634 Orchards, fruits & forestry

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The juice that stays on my neck when you tip me back, catching me in an alleyway, holding me upright as the oranges tumble and strike the backs of my knees. You cup your strong-smelling, sticky-soft fingers around my ear and say let's blow this city.

Elephant in the City

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No beeping of horns, just complete silence. No panic, just calmness. There’s this one word: serendipity.

Alfalfa

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The year I lick so much windowpane off stamps I have to use Elmer's glue to back the twenty-center for a postcard cash request to my mother, that I am alive note at the end of term, is the year of all the "wine" parties. "Wine" is what we put down

Soon, and for the Rest of Your Life

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. . . and the last thing you’ll smell will be new-cut pine.

Oh, Clyde. I must be your Bonnie.

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This is the best kind of crime scene. Spattered like gore from gunshots, I'm left covered in trace evidence.

Mr. Natural and a Little Opium On the Side

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It was a sloppy little factory town that could be beautiful, but never bothered trying. Sits on a big lake. More bars than churches, and too many of both. Racist. We hated anybody who didn’t believe in white Jesus

Rittenhouse Square: excert from Ari Figue's Cat

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Trunks of plane trees with parchment bark, their shaggy pillars bear a canopy of green like a great tent spread over the square of the park. Cool misting lawn sprinklers, their umbral spay--brick walks glisten in the mottled light. Fading blooms of rhodo

The Color of Sound

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The girl put her elbows on the table and rested her chin in cupped hands and this was for comfort but she appeared symmetrical the way an etheric visitor might and the brightness was just then trying to find a way through an opening in morning dining room…

The Bond Trader Goes Hunting

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The Bond Trader begins his morning with coffee and a hit of LSD.

Letter to Neruda

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You have been my woman’s lover now for seven years, ever since your two souls met at La Isla Negra.

Breath

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And here you are. Before your time. Behind the glass.

See Jane

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Jane watched her mother remove her wedding ring with butter.

So You Want to Be a Poet

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You’re the girl that would sneak out to poetry readings instead of parties, watching fierce semi-bearded men reading their poems from hand-stapled zines.