Most read stories

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

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

Postcard

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"Special delivery for a friend?" he asked. "Postcards are a wonderful thing. All people want to do nowadays is send e-mails. But what's better than putting a postcard on the fridge?"

From The Doctor, With Love

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I love how you touch me, your hands warm on my shape...

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

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.”

Swimming Lessons

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The trainers looked at her and smiled and they were still one creature with four legs and two heads. The old man’s left eye moved in sync with the younger one’s right eye.

Keep a Lid on It

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Eventually, all the windows on the street went dark, each small house cloaking its occupants in a world unto itself, soundproofed and emotionally remote.

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.

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.

The Watchman

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The coffins pile up gnawing dust on the glass panes to the rims of my binoculars. Shadowy cracks of stifling proportions, gliding over my eyes a requiem of mahogany. At dawn they heave between the workers’ hands, leave their resting places for a green tra

Twedes

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“Last night the Scots invaded Sweden,” I wrote, “to retrieve the silver filched from the Irish the Norwegians had in their coffers when Sweden conquered. The Swedes offered the Nobel to a Scots writer to keep ... the peace."

Infinity Pool

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I sink until water saturates my lashes, waiting, breathless, for the words to stop.

(From an Awakened Sleep)

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pluck me from the charred grate

She Waited for Him

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what smells like love may not be love at all

Still Life with a Bottle of Olives

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On the table the image is by Chardin but the puzzle is by someone else and that is what he has dumped out of the box.

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.

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…

LUPUS

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Unexpected Fever

The Dead in Paris, Complete

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Did we get Jihadi John?/ And the highway to Mosul?// What’s the score?

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.

Like Counting Raindrops

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When I glance at the bedside clock I realize that we have been making love in one way or another for nearly three hours now. I am filled with a certain secret smugness that I am still going strong. It has been a long time since I’ve done anything quite li

April

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

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.

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.

Catalog of Disappeared Things

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He runs a mail-order business from a storefront and distributes a catalog of disappeared things.

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…

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.

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.

1993, What I Wanted

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Two-way conversation with God.