Most recent stories

No More Ideas

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And then, one fateful day, the world ran out of ideas. The last one was gone, floating away like a balloon full of the helium we had already squandered.

The TV

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The absence sits on the window sillIt looks like the tree growing in front of itlimbs long and crookedwretched clocktime passes like torn silkShe sits at the mirror looking past thingsHer TV blasts the newsconfront the questionCovid -19 The vaccinationTrump is…

decades since minutes with moments to

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the drive-ins now are dead and gone / where once we laught through splatter films: / our screens too small, our horrors do not fit— / no monumental screens are left, / no close-ups show us what we think we fear.

Stableford

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Mike Summer's moustache was perfect. Hard bristle and so symmetrical it looked cut to the angles of a military imperative. He was pretty proud of it, thought the team of beaters, who watched him as he sat on the boot ledge of his sage green Mercedes 123 T, combing…

Dear Credit Card Thief

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Dear Credit Card Thief, I think of you—hunched, green cast, a zombie of the ephemeral, greedily parsing code, stealth hands like a lover's over my plastic doppelgänger, wafer of identity, your key to the internet of things, to me. Did you have a pleasant…

it

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where will we be/ when it happens?

Rock the Rhombi

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This is the place you need a third hand

Sparrow

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I don't care what my reincarnated self thinks about today. I'm already aware that everything stinks in the end. Well. It's supposed to. But all things must seek travel while they can. Dance while they can. Dream while they can. Laugh while they can.…

Mirror, Handheld

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the making by taking away

Up

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See if you can come up with the pattern. There is very little run-up to the theme. I am not making this up...

The Noise

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I'm hearing a noise. I can't see it. It's hiding and seems to be coming from the other side of the creek. With boots on I slowly wade across. The water makes its light lapping sounds. Reaching the bank, I search for the noise. It must have a face, suntanned and warm, that I…

Пушкин и Baudelaire, via странников

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—but night does not reduce me to sleep / the dragging minutes keep awake / the dark that only opens its deep . . .

Drifting

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it's all a bit like the quiet steam drifting to nowhere off my microwaved hot coffee in the sunflower mug

My Secret Pen Pal

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What if I let it be known that I've been enjoying a heavy correspondence with Queen Elizabeth my entire life? We began the correspondence on the very day she was coronated. February 6th, 1952. I was four years old and working as a bartender in Cheyenne, Wyoming. …

I Can Sacrifice My Self

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The sacrificial tendency is a real ugly one A pound of flesh, because it grows back But gnarled and scarred For you, So you may smile or cry Whatever you need How about an ounce of truth? How about I make a maze And you walk through…

Testosterone

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"All he wants to do is watch the Hallmark Channel"

Heirloom

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“Have the tomatoes come in yet?”“Dottie…”Mrs. Dorothea Tilden pointed a trembling finger at Harriet.“You promised me tomatoes, Harry.”Harriet put her hands on her hips, a stance Dorothea knew well. One more sharp word meant fight; two…

Snow Angel in the Sand

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"It goes to infinity and back.That is how much I love you".She looked down into the sandplopped down and made a snow angel,Pushing the mudwith her arm and legs,like windshield wipersof a caron a rainy day"Auntie ... Auntie,How much I love you".

Shakespeare's Dark Lady -- John Hudson (review disguised as fiction)

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William Shakespeare (a surname that meant "wanker" back in the day, by the way)

A Journal of the Plague Year: Day 237: A pandemic miscellany

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Wheel turning, round and round again

The Memory

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The old lady is losing her memory. She forgets people's names yet so familiar to her. A little sheepish, she takes her basket and walks to the village. Just like when her legs were young, suntanned, shapely and attractive. Along the footpath, by the shop windows, over the…

A Special Assignment

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In the graph of life or death, two axes will inevitably meet. Will it be as jarring as two sharp and well-hewn axes colliding?

How to Save a Shell from a Mountain

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"Love is just a word I've heard when things are being said"--James.TaylorThat thing that is empty now is me. I never thought I'd disappear, so crazily far from being myself. The love key has been thrown away, dropped without much fanfare. I carried…

times out of time

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muse of my heart, with each palace in love: / when Januaries lash with storm and sleet, / their dread dark nights all muffled in bright snows, / will you find coals to warm your purpled feet?

Chemical Assistance

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Through your veins

Existential Weather Report (Election Day 2020)

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Later, at home, on the internet, I assemble fragments of street celebrations from cities one coast to the other. I watch them and listen in the compressed fidelity of computer speakers. How strangely things feel.

Full

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The trash is full. Again. I open the bathroom trash—because the diaper genie is stuffed—but there’s no room. I try the kitchen next. The lid swings open, catapulting carrot shavings onto the floor. I lay the diaper on the counter for later.

Interlude in Trader Joe's Parking Lot

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I'm pulled in by the music like a rogue wave and he has no idea I'm drowning...

What It Took To Be God

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You had to put up with Sunday drivers You had to love children All children, all of them! This is what it took to be God It wasn’t fun You had to be patient, sometimes You had to pretend to look the other way You needed to lose your he

Big Blue

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Standing on the edge of the great shelf