Most recent stories

Take Two Llamas and Call Me in the Morning

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A Massachusetts nursing home that doesn’t believe in antipsychotic drugs uses a llama named Travis to calm patients.

Vasilissa the Brave and Beautiful

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When the dust cleared, she saw him, standing silently, bow and arrow in his left hand. His face was the same as her middle brother's, broad and handsome, his dark eyes slits for light. This was her father. …

Throw

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She was a dead bird the morning I found her, wings clipped in dirt and blood vanished into tiny braille maps on concrete.

77 Words About Nothing [5-01-12]

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You looked innocent and I was the epitome of just that …

::HARD (excerpt)

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It wasn’t funny. It wasn’t scary. It wasn’t great. And it never is with people. Except..eventually..when you meet the right person..it is.

Having Read the Poems of Matt Dennison

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Having read the poetry of Dennison I hereby give up writing.

Bananas

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Dog winged the monkey's gerdonderplonk just past ceremony. Winkle-wizzened water garglers awoke wanderjanked while apple-gated confederates slept on. Rusty pipe smack-down cancelled water lily gumbo's two o'clock and Patsy sang Crazy for the millionth time.…

Drunk and Driving the Family Home

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I felt like-

Last Token of the New York Doll

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I took four of them, and put on “Heroin” by the Velvet Underground, and sat in the bathtub, filling it with warm water. Submerging myself, I watched the water level dance in front of me, listening to Lou Reed wail, dragging him under the water level.

'My Mother Was My Sister' — Rejection Letter to a Young Writer (Memoir)

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When I was 10 or 11, some people thought that my father was my grandfather, that my brother was my father, and that my mother was my sister!

'With All Due Respect . . . '

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Our deepest, most heartfelt apologies about the recent MySpace Bulletin, which mentioned your name and recent film and quoted you in jest. Your fifteen-page retalitory riposte was received by this office this morning, via fax sent by your assistant.

The Death App

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The phone owner pre-writes his or her dying words! The app stores them and releases them at the moment of his death!

When The Conversation Ends

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It was a strange mood, unfamiliar, not one of her usual “I'm busy wrestling with my personal demons” type of moods. She'd been steeped in it all day and I, like a shipwrecked victim reaching out for any piece of flotsam…

Moony Star Moony Star

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a lost children…

AK (excerpt)

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They said AK, AK, if you want to come here, if you want to come to Antioch, you have to bring your A+ game. If you want to run with the big boys. That’s what they said. So I brought my A+ game.

Summer

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for my father I want to memorize this our time together — what we did without her there to tell me You wouldn't want this life you're not cut out for it — and me the child…

Party in Sierra Madre Canyon

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“You’re just like me,” she said, as dawn was breaking. “You like sex.”

Show Talk

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Do you mind if we cut the attack on the settlers, asked Sitting Bull. But that’s the center attraction, said Buffalo Bill. Everyone expects it. But it’s a lie, a gross misrepresentation, said Sitting Bull. I feel like I am endorsing a great fraud.

Rib Songs

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A thrum of imminent sentience-

Standing in Line for Pac Man

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Sitting on the couch when we got cable television, on that first day. Pressing buttons that sounded like the slap that your attention span would take as you made your way through the twenty, thirty, forty channels. As you grew older, the amount of channel

The Narrow Confines of Existence

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It seems like that is all I really knowThe narrow confines of my existenceThe sun rises and falls somewhere,And all living things, move, work struggle and fightCarrying a bucket of water, while the sunBangs the day's rhythm on my armsThere's a war going on, all the…

An Eventful Inconclusive Evening

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. . . I just didn’t think to call the mortician from the phone outside the grocer’s store, how gauche that would have sounded to any passers-by, a call to a mortuary from outside a grocer’s store!

the menace from prague

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...the dead have...communicated into the high tech microwave towers of modern Prague. And their messages now may mount to the stars, confusing millions.

Little Yappy Dog

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Should I believe you now? I said fuck you. I knew better but I said it. He kicked me some but I covered up, he didn’t get me bad as he thought. When he got tired, he took my doorkey off my ring. Said make me come back, and I’ll kill you. And he left.

Simon Says

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Simon never looked ethereal. I’d expect someone who grew up seeing ghosts to dress in black every day. I’d expect him to be gaunt and to chain-smoke foreign cigarettes, Gauloises maybe. The kind wrapped in black paper. Strong. Two puffs and you’ve got thr

Marilyn, of NYC

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I remember another one night stand in NYC with a girl named Marilyn. We’d met up at Bread Loaf Writer’s Conference in Vermont. It was the Summer of Love, and a number of us student writers were planning a trip out to San Francisco to participate in that f

The Man Who Couldn't Speak His Love

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I considered explaining that the universe is still evolving and changing, but the look on her face said GENESIS ONE.

Nothing Beside Remains

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It was the early 80's My students carried / guns.

Party at my Place

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My vagina invites you to a party Whenever your time frees up Or now, Now would be better

Who Set Off the Liberal Detectors?

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I sense that I may have won a few hearts and minds with my stirring peroration. "Can I get anybody a Republican Party beer koozie to take home?"