Most recent stories

Killing with kindness

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I have a few medical issues.

Coffee Shop

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He wore his hip in his hips, his lipsShe wanted to know if he would lick the edgesWhen he pulled the coffee cup from his mouthA bit of foam clung to his moustacheShe watched it there, wondering if he wouldTwirl it off with his fingersOr lick it, his tongue darting out like…

The Oral Tradition

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No preview available due to the brevity of the piece. In fact, this comment itself is longer than the piece.

Father Dunne's School for Wayward Boys #5

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The big wigs call it aiding and abetting. I became an left-handed accountant with a tendency to fudge numbers for the damned.

Exit 30

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They meant no harm when they flooded farms in its swirls and eddies

I Want to Leave You With My Passwords

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I mean let's be real.

Source Code

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....the first/ in a long history of indignities.

The Shop Girl

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Just a little shop girl in for the summer. Working on a typewriter. Barely knowing where the keys were. That was her. She was terrible at it. He was in a suit. He looked short, and thin, but something about him was captivating. He was in his own way hands

Wordswhisperlove

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His eyes begin to glisten like hot green wax pooling around the wick of a pretty little candle.

Rwanda Suite: Slim

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Paris was a better place for African Americans in those days. Josephine Baker sent a spray of roses. James Baldwin helped him find a good apartment.

Dilemma

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Myrna came home from her new, midnight shift, waitressing job at the Waffle House saying she was sorry but she couldn't take any more gray-haired Jesus-types with their dollar bills held high, releasing a few so they would flutter, as if borne by wings, onto the tables as…

The Secret

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Of course then I did it all over again. Got married, that is. Fortunately, this one worked out.

Head Over Feet.

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And if I lived a thousand lives...

The Master of the Air

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He thought of it as magic, but magic that he understood, the way a magician knows about the hidden compartments in his hat and trunks.

Bus Ride Through SF

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Bud Light, B. O. and Freeloader Heaven, they step onto the back of the bus without a cent We pass by the Karma Wash but no one gets off the bus We pass by the Endless Soup and Salad Kitchen where we witness a crowd swarming over a ch

Solaris

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The night my mother dies we'd watched Solaris at the Quad Cinemas Afterward Hauser and I videotape each other, ask probing questions like where do you go when you die, and what is God, and who are you now? …

I've Got a Secret

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There's a man sitting in my room holding a jar of my ashes. That's what he claims.

If I Were a Chemist, Not Now, but Maybe In The 1920s

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She said, “I think I’m pregnant,” but I thought that the sidewalk looked cleaner than usual,

#1

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“I am the Successor of Peter!” he said, supporting himself on the shepherd’s staff topped with a crucifix: “And you are trespassing on Holy Ground.” Baal said: “No ground is Holy for me.

City Meat

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Of red snappers, flaccid on porcelain slabs...

Weltschmerz

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I clearly see the squirrels of negativity all around me or at least I sense that they are there, filling in the blank spaces as I read down the page prior to arriving at the meaning of everything. The greenness of figs before they

30 East Towards Texarkana

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44 miles out the gauntlet of Red River pines cast shadows pointing north.

The Fermi Panic

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Schrödinger's Cat twitched and nodded as he picked up the discards, casting his mind back to 2014, when local confidence seemed at its peak . . .

Tarzan on Mars

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Tarzan peers through a telescope. Earth, in its aphelion, is approximately 40 million miles away. A star. He lives alone. He is old. He worries about going blind. Mars is cold. But there are ways to keep warm. He reads poetry. He lets out bloodcurdling…

the girl who was my suicide

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last night a girl came to me in the shape of my suicide.

The Poetry of Wallace Stevens' Secretary

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What in the name of God’s green earth does this say? “Chifferobe if you can of Aztec in coffee can”?

Apprehensions in the Garden of Gethsemane

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The thumb, incarnate, knows/ the moment of the misplaced hammer blow;/ the tongue, incarnate, the cool invigoration/ of water drawn from the dark well.

Not Calculable

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saw the world was a mess I did nothing about it, poured myself some apple juice

1740: My 7th Great-grandfather

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a half-moon hung straight up and down

Silence of Joy

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like a reflection vanishes