Most read stories

Cremains

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I need a different storage solution

Specimen Subterranean: A Review

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. . . the greater length of the so-called “Montebaldi Corridor” can still be walked without the least exposure to direct sunlight as long as the traveler is not active from 9 am to 3 pm local time.

Test Results

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Six weeks, four thousand dollars, and twelve hundred miles later, I figured I was done with the cleansing process.

DING!

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He tapped his foot, swished his hips, swaying across the worn tile floor with an invisible partner in his arms, the batter-coated spoon still clutched in his right hand, momentarily forgotten. Nearly a decade had passed since he last shared a dance with h

Bring Me His Head

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Just bring me his head, that cerebral kiln of hot, ruddy verbiage and cadence.

Silent Summer

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It's eerie. There are no birds. My friend and I take our morning walk in a bubble of silence.

Denmark (or On the Death of John Updike)

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The impression old Updike left on a young mind.

How I Spent My Summer Vacation... When I Wasn't Drinking

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This is what my summer has come to: me, out of a job, aimlessly driving around the city looking for places to write, places to read, places to occupy my time.

Snatch (XIV)

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She's in charge.

He's Just Not That Into You -Part I

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“Too perfect.” my therapist intervenes in assurance, “You did enough, really. More than anyone else would.” I know the subtext is that I possibly did more than I should. My appointment is coincidentally later that day, after his goodbye letter arrives in

The Way Back Home

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500 miles all the way from Omaha nine hours on the back of a flatbed truck

Luminous Nights

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A great doubt had shut out the light inside us, but each of us called for our lover at the end, and she was generous. Carrying us along inside her over vast distances, chilling our soul with sudden terrible flashes of light.

Blues Machine

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Rockin' Joe Heath stumbled into the stairwell in nothing but a black Zildjian t-shirt, shushing himself, trying to see right, pounding head. He recalled the old lily pattern of the wall­paper and something about the tattered edges…

Velvet

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Bloop. Velvet's paws hit the carpet. The new man of the house is on the prowl for food, a walk. Breakfast was Rice-A-Roni; for lunch I'm serving Ring Dings. Perhaps he'd like a bite?

The birds who coo

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My mate and I are owned, but have freedom to take to the endless sky.

Golden

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No flinch, no stretch, no letting the cook get all golden about the chopping block.

THE SHIFT

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"leaves &damage, &shifts of shape"

Searching for Samuel Beckett

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At the Cimitiere Montparnasse he offers the girl his raincoat. I'm searching for Samuel Beckett, he says, and holds an umbrella over her as she consults her map. We're close, she says, pointing. I'll go with you. Then we can visit Simone de Beauvoir. My name is Scarlet.…

Aguilas Range

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When I was thirteen and still lived in the desert I saw a ghost woman at the top of a dry waterfall in the foothills.

Limboland

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She was a forward-motion girl. She never bothered to learn to walk as a baby. Instead, she stood up and ran.

Welcome to the Occupation

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You just watch, the schoolteachers’ll be next and then you’ll see shit go down. Imagine what happens when a fifth-grader sees his teacher getting frog-marched through a crowd on YouTube.

A Dispatch from an Enivironmental Lawyer Who is Trying to Grow a Mustache

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Angelina Jolie, seducer of Brad Pitt, tattooed mother of rescued orphans, and the unlikely daughter of Jon Voight who broke Billy Bob Thornton's heart, is only two blocks from me, in a travel trailer on Seventh Street, gently rousing herself from sleep.

Hand and Thumb

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Often we sit in silence and age. We are observers of dust, fashioning ourselves into antiques.

And her child

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The mother was happy, though. She was happy because she could make him some soup and then she could feed it to him in bed.

Half a Lotus

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An Ayurvedic astrologer tells her that she is a child of India. Is a girl born in Indiana a mistake of just two letters on a Scrabble board?

Poets House, NYC (revised)

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Oh, you can’t stay, your poetry/ Is still out in the world, maybe when you die/Your volumes will make their way/Not just here but everywhere

Cherry Stem

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He moved his rotten breath closer to my mouth, like he wanted to twirl his tongue around just to see how it felt.

Can't You Tell When I Get Lonely?

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“Can't you tell when I get lonely?”, she asks. “No”, I say. It gets awkward because she wants me to know when she gets lonely. I don't give her the attention she wants without realizing it. She moves away and stares at me for…

Roadside Daisies

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The phone rang. Pete wiped his heavy eyes and squinted so he could see. He looked at the clock. It was five o’clock in the morning. He rolled over and tucked his head under his pillow. The phone rang again. He ignored it. It rang again. He picked up.

Out of the Loop

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Ed wants to watch the last half of the football game. His wife wants him to mow the lawn.