Most read stories

About My Dad

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My dad drove a Model A Roadster and had a photo taken of him on a hunting trip up in Wisconsin with one leather boot up on the running board and a .22 caliber pistol in his hand like Ernest Hemingway and Clark Gable rolled into one My dad ro

How Elm Trees Die

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I had felt suddenly lighter and next thing I knew I was watching Leonard Tucker and Sister William from somewhere near the ceiling. I saw myself, too, at my desk, holding my songbook out in front of me like everyone else.

Apollinaire's Trepanned Skull

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It was only when blood began to drip onto the page that he realized he'd been hit.

Love Story

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You longed to rip off her butterfly wings and watch her scream in agony. You ached to carve the steel from her eyes.

Human Frailty

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Conceptio culpa Nasci pena Labor vita Necesse mori

An Object for the Sun God

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this one was abandoned... a splinter left under the skin, pushed out by protective flesh

LUPUS

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Unexpected Fever

Heart Line

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One sunny morning, a big-bellied ball of yellow fur surveyed a yard full of prospective adopters and ran straight to one. She’d been chosen.

Blowing Up While Fading Out

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It calmed the guilt in my heart while kids reveled, laughed, and "made time" with the neighborhood girls on that final night of freedom. No one would talk to those girls again.

World Trade Center

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I can feel the souls of those who perished here They’re still here like old kites hanging in the sky tattered, but they won’t come down or can’t come down just yet because they haven’t fulfilled their unborn promises t

Cremains

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I need a different storage solution

You Were This Close

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I don't know if we'll meet again in the sea of light. Circumstances aren't only up to human beings. After all maybe it's all drunk circumstance, but that doesn't answer the blinding question, it only poses some more. This is…

Tornado Diary

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The storm grew in might until it spawned the worst kind of tornado, an F-5 or Finger of God.

People Called Our Windows Art

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Mama hung them everywhere. It started with just a few, in our apartment and outside on the brick. She made walls into windows.

The Nielsens (part two)

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[continued from part one...]After sweeps, my schoolwork started to slip. I had trouble paying attention in class, and my workbooks and tests came back from the teacher marked in ketchup red ink. I had always been a good student, and this academic…

One Bag of Popcorn

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“Dad’s a dick,” my sister said. I nodded. He threw $20 on the candy counter for one small bag of popcorn and told the girl to keep the change.

Tomorrows Never Written and Subsequent Unrehearsed Memory

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For some, a vertical pattern will evoke prison bars, for others, product bar codes.

PLAYGROUND

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Marie shrugs. “Maybe she’s just late. Come on, let's wait by the jungle gym.” She runs over and starts climbing. The jungle gym is closest to the path that goes into the woods and down into the canyon. She has to get him into the woods somehow.

Three Poems in March, after Baca

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I could love them all, your people, / Learn their differences, speak their tongues, / When there is no one there to hold you / But me, my arms would be wide enough / To hold armies of your need. Do not forget.

The Perils of Open Hand

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There are worse things than getting your ass kicked by a 12 year old Puerto Rican kid. This was exactly my thinking as he stood over me, his pre-pubescent screams sounding like a baby Bruce Lee, preparing to finish me off.

Admiral Cheng Ho's Lost Compass

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“Cheng Ho didn’t go just Cape Horn; treasure ships visit Australia and America. His very advanced compass. Not just point north-south. Show east-west too.”

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.

She Waited for Him

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what smells like love may not be love at all

Finite Automatons in Winter Quarter

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To my right, blank stares interchange with closed eyelids on an unkempt face. The minutes drip into the endless sea of night outside the window, each time creating a deeper blackness.

The Things That Danny Said

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Danny said that you like him now. He smiled like it was the best news that he could give me, but his eyes dared me. …

April

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...he thought often of the rollicking waves, of being pulled under, of being weightless and senseless...

Good For The Ducks

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It's dawn. It's quiet on the pond in the Public Garden. The light is calm, the pollution is mild, and everything is still,except for the occasional cruising taxi. It's the beginning of spring-- tulips out, leaves…

(From an Awakened Sleep)

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pluck me from the charred grate

To Live It Again

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She began guiding Penny’s arms, whispering movements through her body. Memory and experience sang through every fiber of their being. The song had become her life.

Lens

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Night fell and the photographer slept, one hand between Prue's legs.