Alphabetical stories

A Boy Named Suicide

13841384 views77 comments55 favs

Came to admire Kiyoko Matsumoto. Japanese. Aged 19. Lesbian. 1933. Jumped into a volcano.

A Boy Who Looks Like Horses, or A Horse Who Looks Like Boys

22992299 views44 comments33 favs

He nuzzled the breasts with his face for a moment, his leathery skin and tangles of hair tickling her in the process.

A Break in the Cloud

10221022 views22 comments00 favs

Each had jostled and laboured for his or her place upon the blunt outcrop, in the cold persistent darkness, where the outcrop was merely something that had fallen and not quite been washed away.

A Breviary

11391139 views99 comments77 favs

Whistle for silence.

A Brief Conversation With A Man Who Fell Off a Cliff

11031103 views1313 comments1212 favs

I asked him where he hurt and he said everywhere.

A Brief History of The Real

767767 views99 comments55 favs

A little contempuous aside by the critical theorist guy, Frederick Jameson-- that it was logically absurd to call anything that human beings do, produce or effect “unnatural,”-- has brought forth the following. We are…

A Brief History of Water

492492 views1010 comments44 favs

amphibians returning to the scene of the crime

A Brief Meditation on Smoking

16441644 views2727 comments66 favs

There are two kinds of stupid in the world of smoking. The first kind includes anyone who smokes – knowing well that it is likely to cause terrible pain at a later point in their lives. The second kind includes the people who tell the first kind that sm

A Brief, Protracted Reflection

10051005 views00 comments00 favs

...Loves and fights and retires; / And dies.

A Broken Ankle, Canasta, and a Weirdly Sexy Jesus Sighting

13071307 views1010 comments88 favs

nothing can stop a group of genteel Southern women from a card game, and divine intervention makes one's participation in such an event quite worthwhile

A Broken Frame

915915 views44 comments33 favs

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…

A Brooklyn Tale

13101310 views1212 comments88 favs

"Everything except food and sex."

A Bum and his Shopping Cart, Giving Up his Ways

970970 views44 comments11 fav

A bum leaves his shopping cart in the middle of the intersection at 7th Ave and Perry St and walks away leaving everything behind Shopping cart gets hit by an onslaught of yellow taxis whizzing by The contents flying out into the hum

A Burst of Color

629629 views55 comments33 favs

There’s a sudden Burst of color Like the dispersal of a ghost In a light wind And now candy wrappers are Scattered all over the heavens It looks like God got lit up By the sky As we flew too c

A Butterfly For A Married Woman

12181218 views33 comments22 favs

A married woman requests a butterfly tattoo that won't please her husband from an old tattoo artist.

A Cameo (for no-one)

11871187 views77 comments55 favs

I bleed my heart into my computer, peruse The fact they have proclaimed my root unfit for use But it is I! This manhood, this tower Extending up toward the heavens like a miraculous flower, Purple headed warrior of generation, See it standing…

a can of emotional worms

10211021 views00 comments11 fav

Is any person is worthy of the kind of ache?

A CAPITAL TIME FOR TWEETING, PLUS WHEN TO SHOOT A MOOSE

11721172 views44 comments33 favs

“Buy Shoes On Wednesday and Tweet at 4:00” is a new advice book which tells the reader the best possible time to get everything done, from flossing ones teeth to visiting Zanzibar. As a public service, I've used the information provided in that book to create an…

A Caregiver's Homage To The Very Old

35853585 views3232 comments1010 favs

When you take her grocery shopping take a list and make her stick to it as she forgets and duplicates a lot She is also very generous and will insist on buying you something I think she cannot live without fresh flowers or plants that are bl

A Case of Mo Yan Blues

11071107 views2121 comments99 favs

my speech/ in Oslo.

A Catalogue of Ways to Die at Sea

10291029 views33 comments33 favs

Quimby’s eyes lit up. “Oh, lads, there must be a thousan’ ways to die at sea! I’ve made th’ Atlantic passage a good many time; lemme recount some manners of death I’ve witnessed with mine own eyes.”

A Cautionary Tale of Bike Swapping

11701170 views11 comment11 fav

There is no Vinny’s Liquor store as far as she can tell. She begins to think there is something odd, that people are jerking her chain, sending her on a fruitless mission. It feels familiar, like sorority hell week. Maybe there is no liquor store at al

A Certain Boy

15421542 views66 comments66 favs

Every single girl, from junior to senior (and a few counselors too, I suspected), wanted to make out with Marty Miller. Did he know how drunk with attraction I was?

A Certain Distance

11581158 views77 comments55 favs

...a headwater stream that has never had a name....

A Change in Plan

10151015 views1313 comments1212 favs

Times were tough back then. Just a few jobs. This was in the late thirties. It's the story of how Albert hooked up with Iris. Their unlikely meeting took place when they met out on the Highway 61 right-of-way just outside of Natchez, Mississippi, each trying to hitch…

A Change in Status on the Facebook of Cement

11081108 views88 comments77 favs

First he wrote it in wet cement at the intersection: “Tad Loves Kimberley,” with a big heart around it. He was real proud, you could see. But then later on that year, the graffiti began appearing everywhere, on all the store walls: “Kimberle

A Chaos Theory

13211321 views00 comments00 favs

—with spinster goddesses in the middle of things / circling looms.

A Character Rebellion

763763 views11 comment00 favs

I had coffee with one of my characters today. It did not go well. I thought we were friends, but I guess I was wrong.

a chat between Li Bai and Du Fu

10361036 views88 comments77 favs

graves left or graves lost, into silence death sinks:/it's leaving the living that leaves us such pain.

A Child is Born

817817 views55 comments33 favs

I came out of the Quick Stop and found her in the back seat of my ten-year-old Camry. I don’t know who she is, or why she chose my car. I do know she’s having a baby any minute now.