Most recent stories

The Thief of Words

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That's my memory, kept and clutched as with a sixth sense, that it was a prim Oriental afternoon, with the pink streaks in the sky going God-knows-where down across the park, but very far away. Ghostly, melancholy travellers. Birds met and crashed headlong somewhere up…

Black Eyes, Blue Tears, and Dark Thoughts

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At five a family relative took my life away from me and no one cared

Touchstone: Excerpt 6.

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Some places she knew better than others; some battle sites were more notable or more recent, and always the memories came back on the flood.

Krauts and Doubts

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Moral Dilemmas at Harvard

Nicotine Clouds and Depleting Oxygen

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I spent the summer of 2001 in disguise;

A Man More Like Your Mother

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Does he pack you a lunch when you're running late for work? Even when you're not running late? Does he insist on regular medical check-ups, for which he'll pay because you don't have insurance? Will he disapprove of your objectionable behavior, and not turn the…

Bendable

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“You're bendable,” he said, and then there was this silence as we looked into the space in front of us. I understood what he meant right off and thought it a gift to speak to someone that did not get the words exactly right, but in not doing so, got…

Tutorial Frustration

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Incorrigible swine,

Searching

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The sun was bright, warm and blew through my hair like the wind.

Rocky 4

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Rocky looked iron-built, tall and lean, not round like April. Russian lawn ornament, I said, mistaking the thought as mine.

The End of Fun and Games

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A procession of our somber youth— stoned and stunned and broken beyond repair—viewed the boy carved of putty. The mortician painted him stuffed him, presented him to us, the semi-living.

Shouting the Muse Down

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In the tumbled-down now there's too much material, culled from pretty boys that don't notice me and tattooed ones that do, and I'm certain there's at least one dreamer soaking eyes into me who knows all the twisted lyrics invoking pretty little horses.

forgiveness

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she sees that no one has considered her needsshe feels left out, and so she strikes outon the offensive, nostrils flaringpoints her finger and makes her caseshe has been wronged, justified in her angershe will not back downthe accused one is hurtstrikes back with her own…

New White Blouses

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always thought you'd show up with a good friendly grin, your heart full of gnosis and the rest of you dressed in denim or terrene hues,back from across the world to honor our sacrosanct thing maybe it would be in the wind chiseled afternoon,or the dusk by tables…

Bully of the Town

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The woman was dancing, holding her bottle in the air as she slowly turned around, blocking the way to the exit. “I asked Miss Pansy Blossom if she would wing a reel,” she sang.

Things I Like To Do When I Don't Feel Like Doing Anything

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Run up and down the hill shouting Hollywood! Hollywood! Hollywood! Order a penis size enhancer for everyone in the neighborhood. Invent theorems for the unrivalled glory of eggnog. Get drunk on utter futility. Pack my favorite suitcase with tree bark…

Mr. Barefoot & Rev. Broad

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Cold hurts at first, but you wake up.

Almost Like Love

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Because it was almost like love, love. Because the potential for that innocence beckoned me, and I became reckless in search of it. I exposed my heart.

Here Comes the Sun

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I watch my brother carry her into the hospital, and I love him with parts of myself I didn’t know were capable of love. I love my brother with the space behind my eyes, the skin between my fingers, the ends of my hair, the crease in my neck. I love him wi

Cause of Death

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“You sure?” He nods. “Maybe it was pneuomonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis.” Flash of a smile, sobbing laughter, like an abandoned seal.

Heavenly Grandmother

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I always hated God for the Holocaust,

In Mimetic Sympathy with the Dark Core of the Galaxy

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It renders the inner ears inoperative-/ Music that once reverberated inside 
/ the brain-hut concert hall squeaks

The Keratin Experience

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Lisa Pottratz's mother illustrated fashion for Lord & Taylor from home in the 1970s. There is more to say about fertility, naming, and diabetes.

A Visitor

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A man came to my door today. He said little and invited himself in. He only stood in the doorway, a bit menacingly, if you ask me. He was dressed very darkly in a long grey coat and hat, and seemed bent on not allowing the light of day to pass through (he

Mr. Sunrise

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To a tech-savvy millennial, the definition of progress is a hands-free blowjob, and the real number is not how many men you’ve been with but how many minutes you’ve made them wait.

A Broken Frame

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The photograph has no date,but these are my long-ago kin,ancestors just before the boat,six stone-faced on the English shore,sepia on cardstock under glassstill clear in severe, dark clothesexcept one who has been markedout, maybe with black wax,which runs to the bottom…

Running Wild in the Neighborhood Today

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The psychiatrist was a man who clearly meant to calm his patients, the students. You could tell by his sweater and his neatly combed, plumy hair and the wire-rim glasses he wore. But he was not good at his job. You could tell this by how bad he was at cal

A Guy's Guy Kind of Guy

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I like to keep my mind uncluttered for truly fresh information, like the fact that T.S. Eliot taught Virginia Woolf the Chicken Strut. That's news you can use.

M Tractor

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If I saw a little old man out there, a fellow with a hunched up back, I shouldn't be afraid.

Assiduity Twenty Four

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The grand piano, . . .