Most recent stories

Who In This Room Shared a Drink with Johnny Cash? (Memoir)

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...where I grew up the only celebrity one could count on seeing was Santa Claus...

Exhibit B

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My sweet granny was like Exhibit A that I was adopted. I mean, how can anyone be sure?

A Safe Place

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I think of our first morning in front of the mirror and the hairbrush that we shared—the hairs in it brown from you, blonde from me. I miss this day and when I cannot sleep, I watch your window from my room until your light goes out. Sometimes, I can se

Catalog of Disappeared Things

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He runs a mail-order business from a storefront and distributes a catalog of disappeared things.

Dinner with Sam Rockwell

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“I liked you best in Choke–you were sexy in a lazy, sort of ‘70s way.”

Gator v. Funky Worm: Which Office Party Dance to Choose?

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It’s that time of year. The combustible mixture of booze, poinsettia corsages and the soulful sounds of Eddie Venturi and the Fastidians will cause people to get up and dance at holiday office parties who have no business doing so.

Berniece

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"I expect 50% of the agreed fee. In cash.” I dropped the envelope at the designated spot and parked up the street.

Ping Pong

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In between, they love each other madly, fuck like the rare....

The Caganer

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Jaume jumped up from the bar, a wide smile across his face. He hugged his old friend and planted a kiss on his wife's cheeks. He was buzzing from the chance encounter, marveling how life had brought them together after all these years. There had to be a r

whose soul do you have?

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Whose soul do you have, now? (How many are you?) There are several around here running from death, laughing, whom you might know. I burned ahead, with life. I found my own haughtiness had little bearing on the unbraided thread of pleasure (when I wa

Shadow Play

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I read it all wrong. In writing her novel, I thought Marilynne Robinson was writing about twins — writing, in some way, about me. Instead, these characters, Lucille and Ruthie, were standard sisters, one older than the other. In fact, Robinson explains th

Lost In The City

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They found it naught however as it was lost at metro stops, canceled appointments and in ever dimming light that failed to reflect what was instead of what could have been.

Wax Off

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The time has come to scrape the wax from my menorah.

Tick

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Palms planted firmly against his temples, Travis paced the room like a caged animal. Giant black bats screeched in his brain, their pointy wings scraping at the edges of his cranium.

Santa's Little Helper : A Memory

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“Well, Danny, what do you want for Christmas?”

Punk

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My mother used to say she'll be just like you and you‘ll deserve it. I was a Punk Rocker. A rebel. Emily worries about things like grades and sports. She's on the soccer team. I got stoned under the bleachers. Emily, is a good kid. …

Almanac

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I said, “Marcy, Source Almanac is a guide for the Apple.”

It's Not Too Soon to Feel Crabby 'bout Christmas

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Call it Chanukkah, call it Kwanzaa Whatever the name, I just don’t wanzaa!

Poem to My New Lover, All for Free

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Come, bring your sadness to the precipice of my body, bury it within me like a tool

they in that eternal room

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And while they sat and while we danced for them, they in that eternal room of theirs, illumined by late sunlight, or moonlight, (or the lamp in your bedroom,) our skin moistened with oils, glistening… each of us shining as we turned, emitting littl

Liked and Similar

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I haven't been here in a while!

The Weight of Water

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Water and its damages followed Bianca. Every time she looked up. Everywhere she looked up. Up up up up. Water stains, in darkening whorls, curling across the drywall or fiberglass panels, filling them with rot and mold.

Jumping Beans

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The red laser flashes. He asks if I have an Ace Rewards card. I can't even answer because my beans have stopped jumping. I wonder if the laser light harmed them. Then one jumps and another, and I hand the boy some money, suddenly very fond of my beans.

With the Federal Reserve at the Saturday Matinee

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Everybody makes a big deal outta Black Friday, but it’s the next day that’s more important to America’s economists. I mean home economists, like my mom.

Seattle November

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He ate husks of bone and old paper scraps with yesterday's headlines, blowing down the street like tumbleweeds now at four o'clock in the morning.He wrapped himself in an old army coat against the November winds as he tramped back and forth, back and forth, up the ten…

The Making of Mermaids

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You ran so quickly for a while no one could find you. Finally, you sent us a report. You had retreated to the sea, you had your legs stitched together, you became a mermaid and were applying to join the school.

patti, did art get us?

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often as i lie awake i wonder are you awake too?/ we never had any children, he said ruefully/ that summer i cried so much that robert called me soakie/ robert, dying: creating silence

A Little Fishing

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Harpo sits and looks at something I can't see. I drink beer and ask him questions. I ask him how they found the cancer. Backache, he says. He went to see a doctor.

Cotter Pin Blues

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"I like to see your juicy cheeks wiggle."

Road Work '92

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This is how she does it: Forward………… ...Reverse..........…….....Forward..........……...Reverse