Most recent stories

Storage Access Framework

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At first we thought metadata rich, non-hierarchical, network based, multi-provider filesystems were our future. An arduous journey but well worth the efforts for the beforehand unimaginable user experiences enabled by new technologies that thereupon displaced the…

Sake

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I had the smallest taste. Liquid heat, gifted from lips. One long moment spent lost in her warmth. Fleeting. I should have drunk more. Would she have relented to one more sip? One final taste? “Be careful,” she…

Artist's Statement: Oracle

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Mark Reep is a faded Polaroid oracle taped to the only unbroken window of an abandoned house in Ithaca NY.

The Parade

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I see them walking. They pass right by my house. If I’m outside, I sit down on our porch and watch the parade. Sometimes I watch them out of a front window.

Stuffed Shirt

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It was the losers’ bar in my neighborhood.

Cryptsville USA

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pornographic bookmarks

Interior: Classroom

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No girl hits hard enough.

Diet Plans

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She positioned the mouse cursor over the word Bikini and double clicked. The hard drive of the ageing work PC chugged into life as an Excel document dragged itself onto the screen.

Duvet Poem

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Like Frank O'Hara'I do this, I do that.' Her high heels click-click, a sexy click track, across the street: a cliché of seedy male desire, a worn-out image written too many times. Am I a poet or just a voyeur? Sur les trottoirs…

Act Of Contrition

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I haven’t written a poem in months.

Are You A Handywoman? Take This (Not Entirely Serious) Test and Find Out!

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As I was reading “Not Your Mother's Book on Home Improvement,” a new collection of light-hearted essays by (primarily) middle-aged female do-it-yourselfers, it became abundantly clear to me that, unlike the women who tell their stories here, I am not a…

Stingray

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My teeth chew out onrubber sparkle handle fromSting ray bicycleSchwinnpants downrush of cars going byOld Cutler Roadclutch of my stomachmy balls black and bluebruisedby the bicycle chain and when I was punched, in the facewhile riding red dreamSchwinn Sting…

Thalassophobia

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Except where its waves break gently,/ white frothed and reassuring along the shore,

The She-Wolf of Leningrad

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The heavyset blind woman came into the art opening without a dog or a cane.

Who Do You Want To Live With?

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“Guys, who would you rather live with.... Mom... or Dad.” His younger siblings giggled in shock, not that they hadn’t thought about it... apparently. "You know I'm right here..." I joked, waving at them. “I’d rather live with mom.” the question-a

Cavafy's Double Helix

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The store was closing for good, and so I purchased a book of poems by Cavafy, that poet of ruins and tombstones, and fragments from disintegration.

When Spring Comes Will the Grass Grow by Itself?

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Lila began to hear whispers coming from her home's air vents and quickly assumed people were watching her. Maybe that was why the yard was not progressing she thought. The unknowns talking to her through the vents had control over everything she did.

Scar

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I stared at these meteor impacts, feeling far away, a lone sentient cloud admiring the scoured yet wondrous earth-of-this-girl below me, the lean slope of her side, the soft dip of her neck, the sharp edge of her cheekbone, the monarch wing of her eyelash

Art Class

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The model takes off her clothes and poses nude for our class. We draw her likeness on paper.

Every Day Away From You Is A Gift

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People suck. They suck you down, and if you're not careful, they'll ruin you.

Keep more opinions to yourself

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You read your fortune cookie:

My Cyber Companion

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Jannsun started working for Matrix back when he gave up on writing the next great American Novel, which was about five years ago, right after the war. He was old for a Web Zone designer but who knew? Who cared? His work was all done via satellite and as l

Five Million Yen: Chapter 65

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Zoë was stunning in a designer gown so revealing and form-fitting that only static electricity could keep it on her body.

Carry On

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But God could tell that Adam was still not/ right with His world, alone as he was. Alone/ is fine for a Maker of Worlds but facsimiles/ are so much less than the Original.

The Tide

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DRIVING WITH JON

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“There’s no real freedom in this world. But a car and the open road is close enough for government work.”

Birds Fly

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Birds fly and people hurry in the wind and rain like it's a matter of pity.

Pathology

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PATHOLOGY How awful it is to dissect a marriage! It lays naked on the therapist's steely table. He makes his first incision into the bloated stomach of our malnourished union. He polishes his glasses and peers, cuts the thin taut skin of our…

When Bad Things Happen To Other People

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Years ago, I was involved in a freakish tragedy so startling and heartbreaking that it made the front page of not only my local newspaper, but “People” and “The National Enquirer.” I'm not going to tell you anything about it. This means that…

Eighth Wonder of Mississippi?

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Lula’s fried chicken should be served on the hem of Jesus’s robe rather than out of a styrofoam box. It’s so good that I kept glancing at the little tray on the steam table, hoping to be hungry again, ready to yank pieces out of the grasp of strangers, to