Most recent stories

You're Never Going to Break My Heart

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Like any lovable lump of hidden rocks, these hills she breathes life into, blinking existence, are all well worth jumping up and over again and again. Just ask the little kids. Their endless landscape of discovery…

Eleutheria

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She watched an inky cloud suck all the color / from the trees.

“Adrien Brody,” Adrien Brody, and Adrien Brody’s Nose: A Response to Tao Lin’s Response to “Tumblr ‘Shit-Talking’”

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Here is “Adrien Brody” through a Freudian lens: Calloway wanted to fuck her father. She flew to New York City to fuck a version of her father who has a name similar to an actor with an interesting nose and a lot of talent. Neither Calloway nor the actor n

Phil's Last Stand

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Phil was scared. Not of his own shadow, but of the three men from ConAgra who'd dropped a duffel bag of green outside his den the week before.

Let me tell you about the smell of the rain.

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You are lonely. Let me tell you about the smell of the rain.

beepbeepbeep

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Howard needed to finish this time. As his marriage slid further down the sinkhole toward divorce, it was important to him that his affair be successful.

Extra Ticket

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My best friend died yesterday. His name was Franklin Seever, but we all called him Lin. It started when we were in Little League. There were two Franklins on the team so Coach, who was my dad, called the fat one Frank and my best friend Lin.

The Untold Story

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I kept a journal for so many years I've forgotten everything I wrote.

Antarctica

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I don't have the feelings of self-worth a young woman should have, Monica Lewinsky tells the nation. She seems to understand there will always be some amount of ice beneath her.

No Word for Enchantment

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fanned lashes on rouged cheek a glamorous sea creature in violet perfume

The Naming

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we name invasive species,

How I Made My Fortune

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At the time I first went to work for Mr. Byron my family was in a sorrowful state. My dad, much as I can recall, was one of those roving kinds, called himself a carpenter or contractor, depending on the kind of job he was aspiring to, and was subject to f

Portrait of the poet as midwife

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Some poems slip out easily Thick and solid Well-oiled and fully formed

Last Night On Oil Street

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Tomorrow the authority smashes. Tonight we march, splash, carve letters in wet paint from room to room until steel blades bend. The letters will tilt in shadows gliding over the walls to mask our tales born of fractured wrists and the ghosts, our keepers.

Horizon

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She liked talking to him, even now, when they’d spent three years talking. She thought about other conversations with other men at other bars, some of the bars on the water and some of them tucked behind shopping centers or off of different h

Notebook (excerpt)

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I try as much as I can to write but only in as much as you believe―am I successful.

Shuffle

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Something is clearly wrong with them and we're supposed to socialize them.

Eidetic (from OPEN CITY Magazine Number 16)

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Who do you think are the true intellectuals? I'm a fan of both Gore Vidal and Harold Bloom although most people can't stand either of them. George Plimpton is interesting...

Never

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When a woman dies too young, Say at 42, Her bones broken, Her body bruised Beyond recognition Much less repair; When she dies Thrashing In the street Amid rainbow-hued pools Of water and gasoline And blood, Anointed on a bed Of broken glass In a…

Glue

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There is no cement stronger than the one holding a miserable couple together.

Plath's Plague

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Before my mother died, she developed an unhealthy relationship with Sylvia Plath. Under the faded florescent lights of the university they would speak to each other, as I quietly did my homework. I was only seven, but I knew something was the matter. I…

How To Profit As Copper Becomes The New Gold

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We have no more leaders, only rulers who live in another country. I don't ask why my cousin's hand is bandaged, what he's been burning, what's tarped in his truck.

Arcana Magi Divine

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Amyra pressed her hands on the brick wall and rubbed it. She thought about hanging something on there, but she did not have the tools to make a hole. In fact, the thought of having a hole in the wall would be enough.

On Writing about Velveeta

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You are fishing in a coffee cup. (Your fishing pole is a record player.)

Aloha

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It’s a little known fact that eels are often lost in translation – only the spotted variety, not the striped or the common and certainly not the electric.... I think about that lovely hippie girl and her knowledge of eels, sometimes.

Break Time in the Army Corps of Engineers Mascot Lounge

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The Army Corps of Engineers spent $92,000 in federal stimulus money on costumes for mascots such as Bobber the Water Safety Dog.

Hurricane Shutters

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The thing that really gets you about the house is the hurricane shutters. They're up already, even though it's the end of May, because Buck's uncle is back in Rhode Island for the summer and he's prepped the house on Key Largo like Armageddon is coming.

Prairie Yields

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The river’s not/ a river but/ a FEMA map/ of flooding probabilities.

Dirty Aubade

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We could kiss under the elder tree, even though it was forbidden, even though we were drowned by the noise of the river and nothing we said was right

I’m Not a Needy Film Project

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Thanks to the popular funding platform Kickstarter, I am finally getting my life in order with the help of generous people like you. Dating in this economy, without a job, is surprisingly expensive.