Most recent stories

Where Do We Come From? What Are We? Where Are We Going?

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Marcel Proust had never been to a big-box store before. He was dazzled by the sheer size and scope of the store and the seeming impassivity of the shoppers. So many products, so many shelves, such strangely intriguing examples of the human condition. The people seemed…

You Can't Say Meat is Murder

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but chopping down a tree isn't. It's all murder. People just like to choose their poison. You can't say stealing land is murder, but stealing somebody's freedom isn't. It all leads to the same thing. Shooting a lovely bird out of the sky is…

TERRI AND THE BOXING MATCH

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You were the prize. He was the sudden wedge.

Deanna Croce.

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["And you can tear a building down ... but you can't replace ... the MEMORIES ... "]

No New Clothes for the Empress

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Because I was not sure if the poet had said yearn or urine, I zoomed in on her mouth as she commanded the lectern...

The Hex

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Viet Thanh Nguyen: Nothing is Resolved

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"I write out of a deep need within myself for beauty. A beauty that I think can only be found through the practice, through the sacrifice over time that's required."

Pointers

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Which way are the Pointer Sisters pointing

Muffled

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A poem not about fog written in fog with an erasable pen.

Birthday Makeover

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Iris is beside herself with excitement that the most popular girl in her eighth-grade class invited her to join her circle of friends after school. On the sound of the bell, she charges to the door to be the first out of the room and to race to meet Ange

Pleaser

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Yes keeps falling out of my mouth

Visitation

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Nothing but the motion

OBLIGATORIES

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You Pour Vodka In Your Coffee

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I wonder if she is my real mother, if I could get one of those paternity tests and find out if she’s my real mother and if the guy she told me was my father was really my father. I can’t remember him very well, just a lot of him screaming and hollering an

Wake

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At my daughter's wake Mr. Aleford, her teacher, poked out his pointy nose, sniffing my cologne. How could I be plastered with this, at a time like this? Well, dear Sir, Two reasons. One, to hide the booze. And two, because my wife and I had made feverish love that…

No More Little Bridget

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I spend my time sitting on the back step—poison oak reddening my arm—under the eaves, waiting to escape.

American MEOW

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No American ghosts are friendly. I hate to be the one to break the news to you, amigo. American ghosts speak in blood and smoke signals and guttural cries. American ghosts MEOW.

Flesh Alive

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Rise up, carcass—march! / Naught is new beneath the jaundiced sun: / last of the last of Louis' gold, / light is sliced through clean / beneath flecks and films of time.

Tonight's Special

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I didn't arrive at the Wicked Spoon every night in the same mood. Some nights I would arrive under the spell of a generous emptiness, what I like to call the euphoria of futility. Not exactly a state of bliss, but a dazed detachment in which everything is so pointlessly…

Chewie and R2D2

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The door was locked. Han Solo couldn't believe it. After they'd come all this way! …

The Pitch

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This is what I am saying now.

fork

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xxxxxx

Interview with a Jesus Lizard

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Interviewer: So, you walk on water, right? How is that possible? Jesus Lizard: Well, I only run on water, and upright on my hind legs. Haha, if I tried just walking on water I’d sink quicker than St. Peter!

Smooth Criminal

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In the 2015 Marvel movie Ant-Man the film's protagonist, Scott Lang, a convicted felon and former burglar, is summoned to his boss Dale's office at Baskin-Robbins."Three years at San Quentin, huh?" says Dale."You found out," Scott replies."Baskin-Robbins always finds out."A…

The Tertiary Stage (he probably thinks this poem is about him)

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They say his irrational outbursts and insane rantsare the results of untreated syphilis. Well, thatmakes perfect sense to me. I've always thoughtof him as a tessellated spirochete, a narcissistic chancre,festering pustule of a blistered imposthume. And whywouldn't a…

Borderline

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You slipped me the key

Midlife

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Even suffering all of these conditions, Louise considers herself one of the lucky ones, as she’s learned there are pills, drops, and creams for all of her problems.

This Story Will Break Your Heart

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The first years of her life she had been owned by a bear hunter and trained to hunt bear, a terrible turn of luck for her.

Death Dreams, by Norman Klein

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My hand falling...

All About You

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Sometimes you want to strike out at me. What is stopping you? There is no stopping you. You know I will not retaliate. Gone is all that I will be to you then.