Most read stories

Ways in Which Looks Deceive

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Everything is illuminated. If anyone is watching, we look happy.

Grand-Dad

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Grand Dad was born in the time where men of honor were never too far when danger arose, like the phlegm and fevers of an oncoming plague.The oversized house felt stagnate and angry as he closed the heavy solid wooden front door behind him. There was an echo that made…

We Talk in a Roundabout Way

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You are a boy with a birthday bike smiling like our son, standing in a photograph surrounded by other sons, who turn rocks over and over, who keep snakes in plastic bread bags, who find the bones of something wild in the woods. You smile that way still.

Summer Flip Flops

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Sal, a finder of misplaced objects notices the sunglasses, flip flops and boxers left on the pathway heading to the beach. They are his gifts today, so gallant is he of these ‘strays’ seeking ownership. He tries the glasses on first and feels dizzy.

Confetti

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We go in gently at first, skimming over the first few swells and dropping speed, but then we pitch hard, tail over. The windshield holds. I think of Lily. I think of the baby. And I see my life.

Sam and the Planets

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No, she hated the vain, overweight, pathetic, glass-of-merlot-a-day, SUV piloting, Carmen-cell-phone-ring-toned, housewives and consumer sluts that charged through the store like starving hyenas through the fallen, decaying, putrid, corpses of a plague-ri

Siam

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Our city is really two cities, conjoined. One lives during the day, the other at night. Those who live and breathe daytime air call the city by one name, a name which evokes the relative newness of the place, a name with words just barely invented.…

The Shreds of Flame

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For years I watched behind the glass While merry parties purpled past But now the world’s a Solemn Mass And I can only think.

Where Time is Water

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Dog time is water. Incidents bob near the surface, fall into whirlpools, sink or drift with the flow.

The Invasion Of Iraq

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The U.S. blasted into Iraq like gangbangers, baby! All that Shock and Awe shit... Zeep, excitement rekindled within him, hired three chippies, Foxy, Loxy, and Roxy, and partied! He managed between…

Liebe Grüße

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Left, I see parkland and cyclists and sun. Right: picnic blankets, naked men and lunchtime assignations.

No Dirt In Common

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I feel a strange loneliness for her...I think I will go to the beach, and forgive it for its sharp sand and lack of trees.

The Beatle Suite:7 Beatle Inspired Poems

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I took 7 Beatle Song Titles and Made 7 Darryl Poems Out of Them"Some musicians heal ethnic groups. Some musicians heal nations. The Beatles healed an entire planet."--Joe Queenan"There was adventure,knowingness,love,and abundant charm.From any angle,they are the…

The Common Cold

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There was dad sitting at the table, wide awake, reading glasses on nose, pen in hand above a Doppler graph of numbers on paper, one of many now-lost theorems, looking up as his son walked into the room.

The Four Seasons

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In the hotel lobby, the gold light and warmth and flower arrangements were all lies, but they reminded us of spring. We imagined happiness. We checked in.

In the Waiting Room

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She sits and waitsOn a chair that is hardWith a neck that hurtsAnd an eyeball that stings.She sitsSo stiffOn a chair that is hardWith a neck that hurtsAnd an eyeball that stings.She sitsAnd the hand on her lapHas a joint that cracksWith a neck that hurtsAnd an eyeball that…

Trader Joe's, on a Sunday

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When you think I'm not looking, I always am. You say it's like nicotine, your best analogy as a non-smoker. The kind of hit that is hard to live without and isn't it human nature, you ponder.

So If You See The Vulture Coming

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Dale of the threadbare corduroy blazer and the same two plaid button-down shirts, of the unkempt beard and short-shorn hair and holed ears, the plugs overloose and then lost so that the effect was not a toughening edginess, but deformity, the same self-in

The King Provides

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Our sons do nothing but drink and roar

Looney Tunes

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I put my arms around her and whisper to her while she plays the piano. She wiggles and tells me to stop it.

(5) Forgiveness

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“Charlie was right about you, Nan,” she said in a voice of pure defeat. “You are a gentle spirit. And probably too good for people like us.”

Hemingway for Gloria

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He disliked intrusion and very specifically innocuous intrusion, nice guys, one might say, who tried to be near him to learn something from him or who admired him but who, as in that passage, came merely to disturb his work.

The Master of Sleep

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The Master of Sleep had lived alone for many years, so when his daughters first moved into his house he welcomed them, seemingly glad for their company...

Heart 1.1

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you wear the warmth of death/ and your heat eternity/ blasts on mourn from your heart

The Accidental Arsonist

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Henry yells at her when she lights cigarettes and candles. But this is her small secret ritual, her way of making good with the god she is no longer sure she believes in...

What if god was one of us?

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an old Black woman, a sequined black cap poised on the left of her crown of black infused gray hair.  A gray wool shawl that seemed to perfectly match her hair's color wrapped her all the way down to her hips, where a battered pair of blue jeans rested

Trumpet Voluntary

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"There's a concert next month," Sherry said. "Why don't you come to that and I'll introduce you? Then we can go from there."

The Vorpal Blade

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Pow! I shoot him through his jelly donut.

The Deli Worker

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This is the story of my friend, Gil

How I Invented the Designer Jean in 1968 (Memoir)

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Before I was 18 years old, in my small home town of Bridgewater, Nova Scotia, Canada, I invented the designer jean...