Most discussed stories

Orientations within the Zwischenwelt

866866 views1010 comments44 favs

Licking bowl and spoon taste and foretaste follow.

Faces of Death Revisited

12961296 views1010 comments99 favs

He looks outside, sees everything disappearing like crumbing cookies into what appears to be a giant mouth.

Closed Letter to Management

11171117 views1010 comments77 favs

don’t ask me to set my goals./ I have none except safe air to breathe,/ a reliable roof,/ something aromatic in the oven.

Apocalypse in G # Minor

867867 views1010 comments1111 favs

"What's it like?" Like everything else. We all do it, so how bad could it be?

Life during Wartime

16621662 views1010 comments88 favs

Nothing good comes from being lowered into a well to take a photograph, boy

Three Short Poems

14691469 views1010 comments88 favs

no more trying to keep / the peace, no more trying / to keep every person happy. / Just this: no more.

1968: What I Wanted

14921492 views1010 comments66 favs

Her smile dazzled me from across the room.

Fish Eye

150150 views1010 comments66 favs

The only way to get better at this writing thing, thought Melvin...

Tolstoy

104104 views1010 comments77 favs

At first, it was tedious, those long Russian names, the convoluted story, but recess after recess he stayed in and became enchanted

The Argument

16881688 views1010 comments88 favs

"What mouths could not say, hands did."

Existential Dioramas

13061306 views1010 comments55 favs

and, under foot,// dark caves waiting/ with their unseen pigments/ adorning forgotten walls.

Best

36043604 views1010 comments44 favs

Two thousand and two was the worst year for love in the history of sports. People carried their sadness around in wheelbarrows.

Cancer Always Calls Collect - Part 1

17481748 views1010 comments44 favs

Again, that was not the man I once knew. If they were taking Las Vegas odds; I should be the one dealing with this first. Why was it him and not me?

THERE IS AN I.V. OF THE TIMES I HAVE THOUGHT, "I DON'T KNOW WHAT I AM TALKING ABOUT" AND IT IS SWELLING MY VEINS

17971797 views1010 comments77 favs

god bless my shapeless head. we are good at becoming older. i feel incredibly negative all the time.

Unclear Antecedent (Uncl./Ant.)

10891089 views1010 comments22 favs

When I mentioned my visit to the museum during an A.A. meeting, I wanted to know whether the framers of The Big Book had been aware of the Nazi hospital sterilization and “euthanasia” programs.

A modicum of madness

12781278 views1010 comments88 favs

for the moment/ you think you know what you’re/ doing and do it.

Exhumation

12301230 views1010 comments55 favs

the poems/ we never got to will remain,

Basal Distance

16431643 views1010 comments66 favs

are you like the rest of us and you disagree with war yes i said i disagree with war and he said only one man agrees with war but he won t go to the war

MY Last Lecture: Achieving MY Childhood Dreams

44734473 views1010 comments88 favs

The following is an excerpt of my commencement speech at The Hamlin Refrigeration Vocational Institute. Although I am NOT terminally ill, in all honesty, I haven’t been feeling all that great since, I would say, around April…

Aloha

17711771 views1010 comments99 favs

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.

Attila the Bun and the Lost Paradigm

16101610 views1010 comments66 favs

I had a meeting with the editor of a well-known magazine. She said, “I think your paradigm got stuck up your monomyth.” “Oh dear. Is that bad?” “Bad? You want to be a writer, don't you?” “Well, I did. I'm not so sure now.…

The Sadness of Thrift Shops

15041504 views1010 comments66 favs

They couldn’t have done it better if they’d waved guns around in the air.

Boo!

18901890 views1010 comments99 favs

"Why didn't you tell me it was Halloween?" he asked. She shook her head. The doorbell rang.

September 26, 2016

907907 views1010 comments66 favs

I lack the intellect, discipline, and faith in anything but our ultimate erasure.

Forgiving the Governor of South Carolina

23992399 views1010 comments88 favs

(Originally appeared in Fourth Genre, April 2011) The waiting room of the Rosenfeld Cancer Center in Abington, Pennsylvania is my new home away from home, and I'm eager to prove it. When I step on the ridged, black rubber welcome mat and the sliding…

Sunrise at the Cock and Cooter Motel

17661766 views1010 comments77 favs

Difference 'twixt night and day

The Woman Who Loved Water

11971197 views1010 comments66 favs

I hear the woman upstairs running water. But that's incorrect. I should say the woman upstairs is running from water. She loves water. And water loves her. She loves cooking and doing dishes but especially running water. She runs water all day doing dishes, doing laundry…

Jesus, Borges, Jelly Roll

28002800 views1010 comments66 favs

It was Judge Fogarty who said “Thirty days in the market—take him away. Give him a good broom to sweep with—take him away.”

Resource Management

13321332 views1010 comments33 favs

’m sure they have their/ cleverest working on it, though.

Proust's Moustache

40074007 views1010 comments66 favs

My brother and I had often debated whether we could get our father to shave his moustache off, just to see if his sophistication remained intact without it.